Page 141 of Somno Slave

“I’m sorry,” I say immediately. Panic starts climbing hard into my throat. “I’m sorry, I just—I couldn’t—”

“You asked to see me.”

His voice is quiet now.

“I know.” Tears spill down my face. “I know, I know, I’m sorry—”

“No.” His eyes stay fixed on mine. “You wanted the parts of me that would make you love me.”

The sentence slices straight through my chest.

“That’s not true.”

“No?” His gaze drops briefly to the bracelet around my wrist. “Then why are you frightened now?”

I realise too late what I’ve done.

“Please,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.”

My hand reaches for him before I can stop it. He lets me almost touch him, then withdraws another inch. The rejection lands like a slap.

The words settle beneath my skin before I can reject them. For a second, I feel the chamber around me too clearly—the wet stone, the ruined breathing behind him, the cold bite of silver around my wrist.

He steps back again.

The distance opens like a wound. “Deogal—”

But the torchlight has already begun to gutter. One flame folds into darkness, then another. His face is the last thing to go,watching me with that quiet, disappointed patience until even that is swallowed.

The chamber empties, but the pain does not. My hand clamped around my wrist so tightly my nails have left half-moon marks in the skin. The bracelet is cold beneath my palm.

For several seconds, I can’t move. I just stare at it. Silver links. Red skin beneath. Pain pulsing deep where no injury should be. I press my thumb against the bone and nearly sob when it answers.

It felt broken. It still feels broken.

And the worst part is not the pain. The worst part is that he’s gone. He left me. And the absence hits so hard I wake choking on the grief of it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Deogal

She says enough. So I give her absence.

It is a cleaner instrument than touch.

Sharper, if used correctly.

She will pace there. She will bruise herself against the walls of it. She will call it worry first, then guilt, then longing, because humans rename things when they’re ashamed of wanting them.

I do not need to pull her apart every night.

Not anymore.

Her mind knows the shape of my hands now. Soon, it will do the work without me.

Chapter Forty