Page 57 of Whispers of Ruin

Iwake up with a heavy head, the kind of dull fog that clings to you after too much sleep—or maybe too much alcohol. The sunlight bleeding through the curtains tells me it is morning. Not just early morning. Late. I have slept straight through the night like a corpse, unmoving and unaware.

Yesterday.

Oh, God—yesterday.

The realization slams into my head, and I jolt upright so fast the room tilts. My heart is already racing as I stumble to my feet, legs shaky with panic and confusion.

I rush to my bedroom. It might still hold evidence of what I did—what I became. But the moment I burst through the door, my breath catches.

Everything is… spotless.

No blood. No broken glass. No ropes or knife. Not a single drop of Julian’s existence remains. The carpet is clean. The bed is made. The air smells faintly of citrus, not even a trace of Xan.No sign of the madness we unleashed. No sign of the first time I let him take me, mind and body.

It is like nothing ever happened.

I stand there in stunned silence, trying to process the disconnect. My mind races to fill in the blanks, to explain away the gaping hole between memory and reality. Maybe I drank too much. Maybe this was some twisted hallucination—some elaborate nightmare conjured by guilt, wine and trauma. The human brain is terrifying like that. It can make you believe anything. And part of me wants to buy it. Because the alternative?

That I killed Julian.

That I watched him bleed.

That I let Xan drag me to hell and liked the taste of the abyss?

That is harder to face.

My body is still humming from the aftershocks of it all, yet my mind is scrambling to tell me it was just a dream.

Awesome. I either invented the world’s most deranged wet dream… or I committed murder and got laid by my stalker on the same night.

So, why does my body ache like it happened? Why does my throat feel like I screamed? And why the hell do I still smell his cologne? The perfume of all sins dressed in silk with smoke, dark spices and leather.

I look at my reflection on the way out.

Hair:chaos. Skin:flushed. Eyes:haunted.

If this is my subconscious at work, she is a troubled bitch with a flair for cinematic detail. I should feel relief. I should laugh it off, call Zoey, book a spa day, do anything remotely normal. Instead, I find myself looking for something more. Anything. A clue. A wrinkle in the fabric of reality. Because what scares me most is not that it was real.

It’s that I want it to be.

I pull my hair into a messy knot, trying to shake off the weight in my skull. But when I catch my reflection in the mirror, I freeze.

There—just at the beginning of my neck. Faint. Faded. Yet unmistakable. A handprint. My fingers brush over it, and suddenly a flash hits me—hot breath against my skin. A grip tightening just as his mouth found mine. My legs wrapped around him, the sound of skin, of teeth, of his voice—low, praising, filthy.

I blink, and it is gone. It had to be a dream. Right?

Right?

I stare at myself again, unblinking this time. The handprint remains. Soft bruising, just enough to show fingertips splayed along my throat, curving beneath my jaw like a collar. Not accidental. Not imagined.

Intentional.

My pulse flutters beneath it like a trapped bird. I can almost feel his possessive hand again. I drag my fingers over the marks, and now I know for certain—this was not a dream. I did not imagine it. I did not imagine the way he looked at me, I theway he touched me. And I definitely did not imagine the way I wanted it.

Stillwant it.

Shame creeps in. I swallow it down. There is no blood. No Julian. No mess. The apartment is faultless.Sterile. Like nothing ever happened. Like someone came through and erased the anarchy with surgical precision.

Though they did not erase me. Not the bruises. Not the ache in my body. Nor the image of Xan, mouth against my throat, whispering things no one should want to hear—and yet I did.

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