Page 148 of Somno Slave

My phone glows softly on the bedside table.

2:13 a.m.

The numbers move like they are mocking me. Every few minutes I check again, hoping time will have skipped forward, that sleep might have taken me without permission. It never does.

I turn onto my side and stare at the wall.

“Fine,” I whisper into the dark. “Don’t come.”

The words leave my mouth and shame follows immediately. Childish. Desperate. Worse—true.

If he is here, if he is watching the way I sometimes think he is, then he knows exactly what this silence is doing to me. He knows I am waiting for him. That I am lying here with my body tense and traitorous, trying to chase sleep because sleep is the closest thing I have to him.

I press my face into the pillow, irrationally embarrassed by the thought of him seeing me like this. Reduced to this.

Because the truth is worse than loneliness.

I want him to come back.

I want his hand in my hair, cruel fingers tightening at the root. I want him to force my head back and make me look at him. I want that terrible stillness in his eyes when he sees straightthrough me. I want every flinch noticed. Every lie pulled apart. Every tremblingnomet with the quiet certainty that my body means yes.

I want him.

And that truth sits in me like sickness.

Sleep tries to pull at me eventually, pressing down on my limbs like gravity changing its mind. My bones ache for it. My body begs for rest. But my mind will not stop.

Every few seconds, a memory flicks through it.

The market square he showed me. His father’s hands tugging his collar higher to hide something. The whispering guards. The Friars.

And then—the bracelet.

I lift my wrist slowly into the dim light. It glints faintly.

I still haven’t taken it off. I tried to earlier, but the clasp refused to budge like permanent teeth sinking into its own tail.

Perhaps, if I’d tried harder, I could have broken it off. Found a hammer. Something heavy. Or used the nail file I confiscated off a patient half a year ago and mindlessly slipped into my trouser pocket. I might have been able to free myself.

But I didn’t.

I left it on because it was too pretty to break. This is the lie I’m going with. Because the truth that I left it on as a reminder of him, feels too painful to swallow. I can’t confess that I need it. Something real and tangible and cold, something that mirrors the dreams. Something that reminds me I’m not losing my mind. That this is real. He is real.

That he’ll come back soon. That we will resume from where we left of.

But now it sits cold against my skin.

I run my thumb over the etched pattern circling it. The design is strange. The lines weave into each other like tiny vines.

The clock reads 2:33am.

Still nothing.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. The floor creaks faintly beneath my feet as I walk toward the kitchen. The apartment is colder tonight like a heart has stopped pumping blood into the walls.

I pour a glass of water and drink it slowly.

The silence follows me from room to room.