Page 108 of The Vespertine Treaty

I felt his hand on my skin. Cold. Wet. Violating.

"No!" I screamed, thrashing against the mattress. "Get off! Get off me!"

I woke up swinging.

My fist connected with something solid.

"Ophelia!"

The voice cracked through the nightmare.

I gasped, sitting bolt upright, my chest heaving, sweat soaking my nightgown. The room was dark, lit only by the dying embers of the fire.

Cain was standing by the bed. He had caught my wrist mid-swing.

His eyes were blown wide, silver pits in the gloom, his stormy grey swirling with life inside them. He smelled heavily of brandy tonight—sharper, more acrid.

"You were screaming," he said, his voice rough.

I pulled my wrist back, scrambling away from him until my back hit the headboard. "Don't," I choked out, the dream still bleeding into reality. "Don't touch me, please.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Cain flinched as if I had struck him with a whip. He took a step back, his hands raising in a gesture of surrender.

"I am not him," he rasped.

"I know," I wept, pulling my knees to my chest. "I know, I know. But I can still feel it, Cain. I can feel his hands. It won't stop. Why won't it stop?"

I looked at him, begging him to fix it. Begging him to do something.

But he didn't move. He stood there, frozen in the shadows, looking at me with an expression of such profound self-loathing that it scared me more than the nightmare.

He wanted to comfort me. I saw his hand twitch, reaching out. But then he looked at his own fingers—the fingers that carried the Death Touch—and he curled them into a fist.

"I cannot wash it away," he whispered, speaking to himself. "I cannot cut it out."

“Can you just hold me?” I whispered. "Please."

He shook his head. "I am poison, Ophelia. You are already sick. I will not make it worse."

He turned and walked back to his chair by the window. He sat down, pouring another glass of brandy, his back to me.

I lay there in the dark, crying silently, watching the rigid line of his shoulders. I fell asleep eventually, and just as I drifted off, I felt it.

A touch.

Light as a moth's wing. A brush against my cheek, wiping away a tear. It carried the scent of petrichor and pomegranate.

I didn't open my eyes. I didn't want to know if it was real, or if it was just my desperate heart conjuring the ghost of the male I was desperately starting to cling to.

The ninth day since Cain brought mehome.

The word felt heavy in my mind. Home. Not prison. Not fortress. Home.

The storm outside matched the one inside the room. Thunder rattled the windowpanes, flashing stark white light across Cain’s face.

It had been nine days. Nine days of him watching me. Nine days of him drinking until his eyes were glazed and his aura was a chaotic mess of spikes and blades. Nine days of him treating me like a porcelain doll that was already cracked—precious, but too dangerous to handle.