His hair was pulled back from his face, like someone had tied it, gathered it away from where it might fall. His skin was flushed an ugly red, sheened with sweat that caught the clinical light. His eyes—
His eyes were wrong.
Glassy. Unfocused. Staring at nothing with the blank emptiness of a doll. His mouth hung slack, and there was bile on his chin, over the corner of the cot, dripping into a bucket on the floor that was already half full. He was leaning over the edge of the cot, shoulders heaving with dry retches that produced nothing.
Where are my robes?
Brother Matthias’s voice seeped through the door again, distant and watery. “Almost there. The earthly attachments run so deep in you.”
“I don’t feel good,” the version of himself on the cot slurred and heaved again. A thin whine escaped his slack mouth, animal and broken.
And then he looked up, those glassy eyes finding the crack in the door with real Cass watching. For one horrible moment, they focused, sharp with something that might have been recognition, might have been warning, might have been a plea.
“Close the door.” He heaved again, his hands gripping the edge of the cot. “Close the door. Close the door. CLOSE THE FUCKING—”
His voice cut off, his body jerking forward on the cot as Brother Matthias made a weird sound.
Cass slammed the door shut.
The force of it reverberated through his skull with a spike of pain so sharp it yanked him out of sleep.
But the bedroom was wrong. Everything was wrong. There were hands on him and weight pressing down and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t—
He screamed.
His body moved without permission—thrashing, clawing, desperate to get away. His elbow connected with something solid that let out a grunt of pain. Hands grabbed at his wrists and he fought harder, blind with terror, still feeling the echo of something pressing inside his skull.
“Cass! Cass! It’s me—stop—it’s Riot—”
Strawberries.
The scent cut through the panic like a blade through smoke. Strawberries and cream and cordite. Riot. Safe. Riot. Safe.
Cass stopped fighting. He went limp so suddenly he would have collapsed forward on the bed if Riot hadn’t been holding him up.
“There you go.” Riot’s voice was steady, but there was something underneath it. Something strained. “You’re okay. You’re with me. You’re safe.”
Cass was shaking. His whole body shook so hard his teeth chattered as he looked up and saw a red mark blooming on Riot’s cheekbone. Cass had hit him. He’d hit Riot. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I couldn’t tell it was you—”
“It’s okay.” Riot’s voice was gentle. “Did you have a bad dream?”
“The door was open.” Cass’s head was pounding and the phantom sensation was still clinging to him, fading but there, wrong but there. “I saw—there was a cot—and I was—”
His stomach lurched.
Cass clapped a hand over his mouth and scrambled out of bed, legs tangled in sheets, knees hitting the floor hard as he darted toward the bathroom. He made it to the toilet just in time, his body heaving, bringing up nothing but bile and fear.
Footsteps behind him. Riot’s hands, reaching for his hair, gathering it back from his face and Cass flinched so violently he nearly cracked his skull on the toilet rim.
“Sorry—shit—sorry.” Riot’s hands retreated immediately. “I won’t touch your hair. I’m right here. I won’t touch.”
Cass couldn’t answer. He was still heaving, his body trying to turn itself inside out, tears and snot streaming down his face. The tile was freezing under his bare knees. The phantom pressure was finally fading, finally leaving, but the wrongness lingered like a stain.
When the heaving stopped, Cass slumped against the toilet, too hollowed out to move. His head was pounding—the warning throb of the door being pushed on—and his throat burned frombile. A cool washcloth pressed against the back of his neck. Cass flinched again, but less this time.
It’s Riot. Just Riot.
“Better?”
