My heart slams against my ribs. I try to move. Can't. Vodka and exhaustion have pinned me to the floor like a butterfly on a board.
The shadow reaches me. Looms over me. I can't see a face—if there is a face—but I can feel its attention. Cold. Ancient. Hungry.
Then it touches me.
Fingers—if they can be called fingers—wrap around my throat. Ice cold. So cold it burns. My skin screams. I gasp, trying to pull air through a windpipe that's constricting, freezing, dying.
And something inside me snaps.
Not fear.
Not despair.
Rage.
Pure, white-hot, fucking RAGE.
I've spent days—weeks—my whole goddamn life letting them hurt me. Letting them scar me. Letting them take and take and take until there's nothing left. Letting Drogo leave without a word. Letting myself fall apart on this floor like I'm already dead.
No.
No more.
I roar—guttural, animal, a sound I didn't know I could make. My hand shoots up and grabs the shadow's wrist. It's solid under my fingers. Cold as death but real. Tangible. Vulnerable.
The room goes silent.
The whispers stop.
The temperature plummets so fast the windows crack—spiderwebs of ice racing across the glass, the sound like gunshots in the stillness.
My neck burns where the shadow touched me. I feel blood—hot, wet, trickling down to my collarbone. The scar. It's bleeding again. But I don't let go.
I pull myself to my knees, still gripping the shadow's wrist, and I look up into the void where its face should be.
And I whisper one word.
"Enough."
The shadow recoils.
Actually recoils.
For the first time in my life, it's afraid of me.
It tries to pull away but I hold on, fingers digging into whatever substance makes up its form. My grip tightens. Blood runs faster down my neck, soaking into the hoodie, warm against the ice-cold air.
The shadow writhes. Twists. Tries to dissolve back into darkness.
I don't let it.
The room shudders.
The shadows in the corners retreat—not vanish, but pull back, watching, wary. The whispers start again but quieter now. Uncertain.
The shadow in my grip goes still.
Then it dissolves.
