But now that he has, now that he’s lying here, torn and stitched and haunted, I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t know if he’s still the same soul I memorized in the quiet, in the cracks between war and survival.
And worst of all; I don’t know if he’ll ever come back fully.
The boy he once was, they buried him somewhere inside this broken man.
Chapter 55
She is Real
Aslanov
I wake like I’m surfacing from something thick and black, lungs aching, muscles torn between fire and ice. My breath catches before it comes, my chest rising sharp against something tight, too tight.
I try to move.
I can’t.
A panic detonates somewhere deep in my ribs, spiraling up, clawing against the sedated weight of my limbs. My hands, trapped. My legs, trapped. My wrists burn, and for a moment I think I’m back there, back in the dark with the lights and the screams and the steel bite of shackles carving into bone. I thrash, no sound, just instinct, animal, feral.
But something stops me.
A weight.
Heavy.
Warm.
Not metal. Not leather. Soft.
It rests over my hand like a fallen wing. I turn my head, slowly, with effort like drowning, and the world stutters before it sharpens.
Red hair.
A mess of it, spilling like blood over the white sheet. Pale skin, still as death. Lips parted slightly, lashes dark against cheeksthat shouldn’t be this color.
Her body is curled on the floor beside me, limp, almost folded. Her head lies just centimeters away from where my hand is strapped to the mattress.
Isabella.
My heart lurches so violently I think it might rip straight through the restraints. She looks asleep, but too still. Too quiet. My vision blurs, not from the liquids being poured into me but from something else; fear so intense it borders on grief.
I stretch my finger, as far as the restraint will allow. It’s nothing. A few inches. But I reach like it’s my last breath, until finally, finally, I touch her cheek.
Warm.
Real.
The breath leaves me in a soundless shudder. I trace the shape of her jaw with my trembling thumb, and something inside me crumbles. Her skin is cold, but not dead. Her presence isn’t a ghost. She’s here. Somehow, she’s here.
I don’t know how long I lie there, my thumb trembling against her cheek, afraid to move in case she vanishes.
The restraints bite gently into my wrists, too kind to be real, but I still test them like they’ll turn cruel if I breathe too loud. The sedatives weigh me down like wet chains, but they don’t dull everything. Not this. Not her.
My eyes drag across the ceiling. No lights. No mirrors.
No screaming. No interrogations or red bulbs casting war shadows on the walls. Just soft grey-blue—colors chosen on purpose.
The cot I’m strapped to isn’t metal. It doesn’t creak under my weight. The corners are rounded. No sharp edges.
