A cold thread slips through me. I swallow and shift slightly. The movement is smooth. Efficient. My body responds like it knows exactly what it’s doing, like it’s already recalibrated.
I don’t like that.
This isn’t adrenaline. This isn’t shock.
This is something else.
I don’t feel watched. That’s the part that unnerves me most. No prickle between my shoulder blades. No sense of pursuit.
I try to catalogue what I feel. Fear: present, but muted. Pain: present, but retreating. Anger: distant. Banked.
Control.
That one sits wrong.
I didn’t escape.
The thought arrives fully formed, unquestioned.
I was allowed to leave.
My hand returns to my stomach, this time consciously. The calm there hasn’t changed. If anything, it feels reinforced, like a system that stabilised under pressure and learned from it.
Whatever they were measuring didn’t fail.
It adjusted.
I open my eyes.
Nightshade is still there, seated in the armchair near the window, posture unchanged, attention fixed entirely on me. He doesn’t move when I wake. Doesn’t rush. Doesn’t speak.
He was waiting for this moment.
“You’re awake,” he says, tone low and measured.
It isn’t a question.
“I shouldn’t feel like this,” I say quietly.
“No,” he agrees. “You shouldn’t.”
That’s all.
No reassurance. No correction. Just confirmation that I’m not imagining it.
I close my eyes for a second, letting the thought settle.This wasn’t an escape.The words don’t finish forming, but the weight of them presses in anyway.
Something about me moved through that place without breaking.
Something adjusted.
When I open my eyes again, he’s watching me closely. Waiting.
“I don’t think it’s finished,” I say.
His jaw tightens – just a fraction. “It’s not. But we’ll deal with it later. Together.”
“When?”
