Page 184 of Somno Slave

My mouth goes dry instantly.

Headquarters.

The word opens something ugly in me.

“You need to come with me.” His voice is calm, but the sentence lands like a hand closing around my throat.

I nod once because anything else would look like panic. I push back from the desk. The chair scrapes softly against the floor, the sound sharp enough to make me flinch.

As I stand, that same wrong sensation moves over me again. My eyes flick back to the screen on instinct alone. The frozen image sits there exactly as I left it. And yet, for one fractured second, I expect it to change. I expect him to be looking back at me. I expect proof that I am not imagining any of this, or worse—that I am.

Peter shifts slightly. “Leave it.”

The words are simple, but they hit like a warning.

I realise then that my hand is still hovering near the controls, fingers half-curled like I was about to rewind again, like if I just looked one more time, I might find something that would save me.

Slowly, I pull it back.

When I turn, he still hasn’t moved from the doorway. He is watching me. There is something in his face that makes cold spread through my chest—something too measured, too quiet. Not suspicion exactly. Something worse. Like he has already seen enough and is only waiting to see what I will admit.

“After you,” he says.

I step past him, and he doesn’t move enough to let me.

I must brush close enough to feel the heat of him through the thin space between us. His shoulder almost catches mine. He could have stepped back. He chooses not to.

His voice comes low. “I’d advise you to be careful with your next few answers.”

The words slide under my skin like a blade.

“Whatever you think you’re hiding, stop acting like it isn’t showing.”

I stop for half a second. My stomach turns, cold and immediate. There is no threat in his tone, which somehow makes it worse. It’s as if he already knows I have something to hide, like this warning is mercy.

I keep my eyes forward. I don’t look at him. I walk into the corridor, into the harsh fluorescent light, trying to ignore the way my pulse has started climbing again.

By the time the door clicks shut, my pulse is in my throat. Peter walks beside me without looking over. And I understand, with a sick little drop in my stomach, that Deogal isn’t the one being watched anymore.

Chapter Fifty-One

Rheda

The room is too full.

It isn’t the number of people. It’s the way the space holds them—tight, compressed, like the walls have shifted inward by degrees too small to measure but large enough to feel. The air is stale in a way that doesn’t match the ventilation. Warm where it should be neutral. Still where it should move.

No-one talks.

Peter is at the head of the table. Forward-leaning, weight through his forearms. To his right, a suited man I don’t recognise—quiet, watchful, pen already moving across a pad he hasn’t looked up from since I walked in.

Two guards stand at the back wall. They are not needed for this meeting, which means they’ve been placed here deliberately.

I take the seat opposite Peter, trying to control the shake.

I align my fingers with the edge of the table in front of me, creating symmetry without thinking about it. My toes curl hard inside my shoes, searching for pressure, pain, anything small enough to control.

Which is exactly why I know this is not going to go well.