Page 71 of Breaking Isolde
The bed is not mine. The room is not mine. I don’t even have the right to call this body mine, not with the way it feels, like someone borrowed it and gave it back broken.
The first thing I register is the size of the bed—too big for just one monster. Heavy, carved headboard, the sort of thing you see in palace documentaries, all angular wood, no softness. It’s all white. The sheets are expensive, but the pillowcases smell like boy sweat and cigarette smoke, the after-scent of bourbon and whatever soap he uses to burn the stink out of his own hands. It’s familiar, and not in a good way. Like all men in this town, he covers the animal with expensive chemical fragrance. But the animal is still here, somewhere.
I move my head, careful, and the view widens: the bedroom is massive, ceilings so high the lightbulb is a tiny angry star overhead. The windows are swaddled in blackout drapes, the sunlight leaking in only where the fabric has pulled loose. The furniture is modern, black, low. There’s a desk covered in unread letters, a glass decanter and four matching tumblers, an antique chess set arranged as if mid-war. There’s a single armchair by the window, a blanket thrown over it, and a stack of books beside it, all spines creased and battered.
I catalog everything because it’s easier than cataloging myself.
But there’s no getting around it. My feet are the first thing I check—both wrapped in gauze, toes sticking out, nails torn. The pain is white-hot, a fire lit under the bone. I wiggle them and nearly scream. Next, my hands: palms bandaged, one thumb taped. Knuckles swollen and scraped to the meat. My elbows and knees are raw. My ribs ache with every breath. There’s atightness to my chest like I’ve been body-checked by a truck. The cuts on my neck and shoulders, which I can’t see but can feel, burn under the sweat and the wrap.
My mouth tastes like iron. My eyes burn from lack of sleep, or maybe from the leftover crying, the evidence of which I’m determined to forget.
I’m propped on my side, one cheek pressed to a pillow that smells like him. My left arm is trapped, heavy, and when I look down I realize why: he’s still here, curled up beside me, his hand flat on my stomach, fingers splayed like he’s trying to keep my guts from spilling out.
His face is inches from mine. Eyes closed, but his breathing is not slow. He’s faking sleep or on the edge of it, waiting for me to twitch.
I lie still. Every nerve is a lit fuse. I focus on the details—his hair is a wreck, the usual careful style gone, chunks sticking up or plastered to his temple with sweat and blood. There’s a bruise along his jaw, a raw split in his lip where my teeth must have landed. His shirt is gone. His chest is all muscle and old scars and fresh marks from my fingernails.
He looks so young like this. Not like a monster, but like the fucked-up boy I always suspected lived under the demonic skin suit.
I want to hate him, but that would mean giving him a power I’m not ready to hand over.
I look at his hand on my stomach, the way he’s curled around me, his body’s tension set not to keep me close, but to be the first to react if I bolt. Like he’s waiting for my next move.
I try to slip his hand off my waist, but the moment my fingers touch his wrist, his eyes open. Green, alive, burning through me with the intensity of someone who’s spent his whole life hunting things and doesn’t know how to stop.
He doesn’t speak at first. Just watches me, letting the silence do the work. I can’t stand it.
“What?” I say, voice rough, maybe a little scared.
“You’re awake.” He says it like a statement, not a question, then lifts his hand off my stomach and lays back, putting it on his own. “How do you feel?”
“Like I went through a wood chipper.” I try to sit up, but my ribs say fuck you.
“Don’t.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me back down. “You need to rest. I’ll run you a bath. I tended the worst of your wounds last night, but I missed a few, clearly.”
“You did a shit job. I feel like death.”
“Would you rather be dead?” he asks, and for a second there’s a softness in it, a real question.
“Is that an option?”
He huffs a laugh. “Not anymore. You’re mine now, Greenwood. Death is the only thing that gets you out and I have no intention of ever letting that happen.”
He rolls out of bed, careful not to jostle me. He’s wearing boxers and nothing else. He stretches, winces, then walks barefoot to the window. He pulls the blackout curtain open a crack, and the room floods with light. He stands there, staring out at the snow-covered quad, back muscles tight, hands braced against the glass.
“Do you always watch people sleep?” I ask.
“Only the ones I’m afraid will kill me in my sleep.”
“Afraid?”
He glances over his shoulder, lips twisted. “You’re unpredictable, Isolde. You gave them quite a show last night and it was rather unexpected. Turned the game right on it’s head.”
I wiggle the fingers on my good hand, pleased. “Good.”
He turns, arms crossed, and looks at me like he’s reading an x-ray. “How do you actually feel?”
I tell the truth, because lies are wasted on him: “My feet are fucked, my hands are worse, and my ribs feel like someone tried to squeeze the secrets out of me. And I’m hungry. Starving.”
