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So why did it feel like something had been stolen straight from her chest?

She finally climbed into the shower and stayed in till her fingers wrinkled and her knees wobbled. She turned the water off and stared at nothing.

She dried off slow. Put lotion on her legs she didn’t plan to show. Combed her short hair twice. She flossed. She changed. She folded the towel, unfolded it, then folded it again.

Maybe he’d fallen asleep. Maybe if she waited it out, the weight in her chest would let her breathe again.

She pressed her ear to the door.

Silence.

The weight in her chest didn’t move.

Kaos was there. Just like she’d once wanted. Same room. Same mattress. Same air.

She reached for the doorknob. Her hand stalled.

This wasn’t about him touching her.

It was about what it would feel like if he didn’t.

She opened the door. Steam spilled out behind her, but the air in the bedroom sat flat. And he sat on the far side of the bed,shirtless. Elbows on his knees. Back curved forward, spine a sculpted line drawn in tension. Beautiful pale skin wrapped perfectly over muscle, shoulders set hard.

A row of pillows ran down the center. The barrier. She barely registered it.

Her eyes caught on his back and her throat tightened. She moved before she could think too long. Fast steps. No sound. Blanket up to her neck before her body even settled. She turned toward the wall, arms locked tight around herself.

Her chest refused to rise steady.

“If I wanted to take something,” he said, quiet behind her, “you wouldn’t have reached the bed.”

She swallowed. Flicked her tongue over dry lips.

“You're real proud of that spine, huh.”

It landed weak. Off rhythm. And too late.

Just like her.

****

The floor was cool beneath her feet.

Stone, polished to a shine too perfect to belong anywhere real. Her breath didn’t echo, but she felt it—tight in her throat, drawn low into her lungs like it didn’t need to leave.

Where was she?

She followed the stretch of the ceiling where windows glowed with light that didn’t belong to any sky she knew. And impossibly high. The light bled down in soft columns, pale and maybe holy. Or maybe wrong.

The air suddenly pulsed around her like it had a heartbeat.

She turned. And he was there.

Not a man. Not a monster. Something between a god and… maybe a weapon—sculpted from white stone and black fury. Wings rose behind him like cathedral walls, black with veins of red threaded through the membrane. Horns crowned his head, claws curled from his fingers. And those eyes. They burned straight through her without blinking.

She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. Her pulse forgot how to beat.

He stood still, like he’d been carved into the world first and the rest of it had come after. His gaze didn’t ask. It commanded.