Her voice turns sharp. Not angry, but terrified.
She presses her forehead against mine, eyes squeezing shut. She tilts her head like she’s listening to music only she can hear. Her smile widens, unsteady, trembling at the edges.
“I don’t know,” she says brightly. “I forget things all the time.”
And that’s it.
The moment is gone.
Any flicker I thought I saw evaporates like steam. Before I can speak, she leans forward and kisses me again. But the kiss is wrong. It’s not intimate, not searching for passion or clarity, it’s almost mechanical. Like she’s repeating something she was taught, a programmed gesture with no understanding behind it. Her lips are soft but her mind is somewhere else entirely.
“Wait Nat, stop,” I mumble between her kisses and she finally pulls away, studying my face.
“You remember them,” I say a little louder.
Her eyes widen, like I just tore her out of some moment.
“Who?”
“Adrien,” I say quietly, my voice shaking.
Her face breaks into something dark, like some agonizing pain just hit her.
"They’re dead,” she breathes out and falls to the shower floor, gripping her hair like a maniac. I quickly kneel down in front of her, trying to hold her hands in mine.
“No, Nat. They’re not.”
“Stop. I know they are. Make it stop.” She sobs and cries out loud.
“Nat, listen to me.” I try to take her face in my palms and lift her up, but she’s shaking with sobs and keeps pressing her head down to the shower wall.
“Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP!”
Natalya’s scream ricochets off the tiles, sharp enough to slice through my skull. I drop lower, but she thrashes violently, her wet skin slipping through my fingers.
“Nat, look at me—please—”
She can’t. She’s not even here. Her whole body convulses with sobs, her forehead pressed to the cold shower wall, fingers clawing at her temple as if she’s trying to dig the memories out with her bare hands. Black tears run down her face.
“They’re dead,” she cries more, voice cracking and raw. “MAKE IT STOP—MAKE IT STOP—MAKE IT—”
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe. The warm shower spray turns colder, like the entire room is exhaling around us. I try to lift her, but she slips, collapsing deeper into herself, shaking so violently the cuffs on my wrists rattle from how hard I’m trying to hold her. I keep trying to cup her face and make her look at me so I can explain but she’s fighting me.
Then my fingers graze something on her skin, on her temple. Her skin is so soft and delicate under the water but there is suddenly something wrong. I run my fingers through her hair to move them and see it.
Oh my God.
A faint mark, not even coin size but it is there, I can feel it. The skin is dark red there, on her temple. I quickly shoot my otherhand on the other side, on the second temple. It’s there. The same thing.
A violent gasp escapes me when I realize the terrifying truth and I have to cover my mouth to catch the sobs.
And then, a sound freezes us both. A slow, deliberate knock on the bathroom door.
Nat’s scream dies instantly in her throat, cut off like someone yanked a cord inside her. She goes rigid, hands dropping from her head. Her breath stops. Her eyes go blank.
A soft voice slips through the door, smooth and cold as marble.
“Angel? Is everything okay there? Come out already.”
