Page 191 of Somno Slave

I know it for certain.

The back of my neck burns. My jaw locks.

I force myself to turn.

But he isn’t looking at me. He’s angled toward one of the screens, one hand lifted slightly as if he’s mid-explanation, expression loose, easy, nothing in it that suggests anything beyond the moment he’s in. Sean nods once. Peter doesn’t react at all.

No one is watching me.

No one is even facing me.

My gut hollows out.

It wasn’t about me. Of course it wasn’t.

My fingers press slightly harder into the table. I release them immediately.

This is nothing.

This is normal.

People talk. People shift. People—

I keep my eyes on the screen until they burn. Looking gives me something to do with my body that’s not shaking.

The footage holds steady beneath the fluorescent glare, the interrogation room scrubbed so clean it barely feels real. Steel, glass, white light flattening everything into something clinical and dead. Deogal sits exactly where he should, restrained, still, his body angled the same way it was when I first looked, the same way it was when I sat down.

“Give it a few minutes.” The words drift from somewhere behind me, low enough that they should disappear into the room.

My gaze drags back to the glass like there’s a hook behind my ribs. He remains exactly as he was, and the longer I stare, the more my skin begins to prickle beneath my sleeves.

“Yeah, leave it.” Another voice, somewhere to my left, easy, casual. But the words slide against the first sentence too neatly, like they belong together, like I have heard them in sequence before. The space between them feels wrong, and suddenly my skin feels too tight.

My grip tightens again. I force my hand open.

Someone behind me starts speaking again, voice low, directed toward Peter. “If he doesn’t respond to the—”

“—second interval,” I say. The words leave my mouth at the exact same time as his.

I go still.

How did I know that?

My mouth goes dry so fast it hurts. No one reacts which is somehow worse.

My gaze snaps back to the glass without permission.

My attention narrows.

There is no reason to keep watching him like this, no professional justification. But I can’t stop. Because somewhere inside me, something has already decided the answer is there.

Everything else arrives wrong now. Voices. Movement. My own breathing. All of it half a beat late, except him. He is the only thing in the room that keeps its shape.

I press my palm harder into the table until pain sparks up my wrist, and even then, my gaze stays on him.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Deogal