chapter five -the dream

The night presses heavy.

I turn for what feels like the hundredth time, the silk sheets dragging across my skin like restraints. Every breath seems too loud shallow, shaky, as if the silence of the room has sharpened into something watchful.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Nothing. I open them again. Darkness blinks back.

But the air is wrong.

It isn’t just the restless heat beneath my blanket anymore. It’s thicker, colder, humming as if the shadows themselves have taken a breath. My body stiffens.

I know, before I even see him.

The floor beneath me is no longer the mattress I collapsed onto hours earlier it is stone, slick and cold, seeping into my bare feet. My sheets have vanished. In their place stretches a vast chamber cloaked in a suffocating, impenetrable fog.

The silence is absolute. No hum of the city streets outside, no ticking clock. Even my heartbeat seems muffled, as though the chamber itself is swallowing the sound of my life. The air smells of iron, rain, and damp stone heavy and ancient, pressing hard against my lungs.

Only him.

He emerges from the dark as if the shadows have been hiding him, tall, his massive shoulders squared, every step measured. The mask gleams faintly under a nonexistent light, its hollow expression unreadable, yet I feel his gaze fix on me like a physical blade.

My breath falters, catching in my throat. I try to step back, but the stone floor tilts beneath me, gravity itself betraying me, forcing me forward instead. The space between us shrinks slowly unbearably slow each stride of his hammering directly into my chest.

I want to scream, but my lips only part soundlessly.

When he finally reaches me, the shadows cling to his towering figure, and still I can’t see the face behind the mask. But I can feel him. A suffocating, magnetic heat radiates from his body, trapping me.

A gloved hand lifts.

He doesn’t touch me. Not yet. The leather hovers barely inches from my cheek, the air between his hand and my bare skin vibrating with an agonizing anticipation. The longer he waits, the more my body betrays me. My knees tremble. My breath spirals into shallow gasps. My chest tightens with a desperate, wild need I don’t dare name.

Finally, the glove closes around my wrist.

Firm. Unyielding. My skin burns beneath the leather, my pulse hammering wildly against his iron grip.

He tugs, sharp and certain, and I collide with him.

My gasp slips free, muffled against the hard, unyielding plane of his chest. The mask tilts down, its cold edge grazing my temple, while his breath spills hot and wicked along my ear.

“You shouldn’t crave what hunts you,” he murmurs. The voice is low, a mix of velvet and dangerous gravel.

My eyes flutter shut. The words strike like sparks, igniting places inside me I thought were permanently locked away.

His other hand curves around my waist, dragging me closer until there is no space left between us, only his heat and my trembling. The mask brushes my jaw, a teasing, agonizing scrape. His breath ghosts my lips, close enough to taste, but he denies me the kiss, keeping it just out of reach.

“You want this,” he whispers against my mouth.

“Don’t lie.”

I answer can’t. The sound that escapes me is no denial; it is just a broken, raw, and desperate whimper.

A dark chuckle rumbles through him, vibrating where our bodies are pressed flush. The gloved hand slides lower, gripping my hip, claiming me. My thighs clench instinctively, a sudden surge of unbearable heat pooling low in my belly.

“Mine,” he says. The single word is rough, final, sealing me like a brand.

The moment the syllable leaves his hidden lips, a violent, agonizing spike of pain shoots directly behind my eyes, tearing the dream-chamber to shreds.

The vast stone hall is suddenly gone.

The smell of damp iron is instantly replaced by the suffocating stench of real smoke, melting solder, and burning wood. I’m crouching in the dark beneath a heavy wooden workbench, my knees scraped, my fingers trembling as I press a clean cloth against a deep, bleeding gash on a boy's collarbone.

He is young hardly more than a boy but his broad shoulders are already turning to iron. He is shaking, his jaw clenched so hard a vein pulses in his neck. His face is splattered with soot, but his eyes... those piercing, terrifyingly intense blue eyes are locked onto mine in the pitch black.

"Don't look out the window, Lisa," the boy whispers, his voice a cracked, raw version of the baritone from the mask. He reaches up, his large, calloused hand wrapping firmly around my upper arms, pulling me flush against his chest to hide me from a terrifying orange glare roaring outside. "Keep your eyes on me. I’ve got you. I'm not letting them take you."

I wake up with a violent jolt.

The memory or whatever it was shatters into a million pieces. The smoky workshop vanishes, sucked instantly back into the dark corners of my mind.

The sheets are twisted tightly around my legs, clinging damply to my skin. My chest rises and falls in frantic bursts, my lungs dragging in the Manhattan bedroom air like I’ve been drowning.

The room is real again but my body isn’t. It pulses, restless, aching, completely unsatisfied. And my head is pounding with a phantom headache, a heavy pressure right behind my eyes that makes me feel like I just looked at the sun.

What was that? A fire? A boy with blue eyes? I’ve never seen that workshop in my life. I grew up in a quiet upstate suburb. It makes no sense.