Chapter 15: The Girl in the Bed

Chapter 15: The Girl in the Bed

The first thing Liam noticed was the light. It was a warm, golden spear, lancing through a gap in the curtains and painting a bright stripe across the polished hardwood floor. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, waking up did not feel like surfacing into a cold, grey fog of anxiety. A fragile, tentative hope had taken root in his chest, planted by the perfect, sun-drenched yesterday. He felt the warmth of the sun on his face and allowed himself a small, private smile. It felt like a new beginning.

He turned his head, careful not to wake her. He just wanted to look at her, to see if the peace of yesterday had survived the night. What he saw made his heart give a quiet, joyful leap.

Elara was sleeping deeply, her face turned towards him on the pillow. The tormented, hunted look that had become her default expression was gone, smoothed away as if by a gentle hand. The deep, bruised-looking hollows under her eyes seemed fainter, the frantic tension that always tightened her jaw, even in sleep, had vanished. Her breathing was a slow, even rhythm, the sound of true, untroubled rest. He hadn’t seen her sleep like this in years, not since the very beginning of their life together.

Relief, potent and intoxicating, washed over him. The trip to the coast had worked. The change of scenery, her emotional release as they watched the sunset, their tender, reconnecting lovemaking afterward—it had been a breakthrough. He had gotten his wife back. They had weathered the storm, and this quiet, peaceful morning was their reward. He felt a foolish, giddy urge to weep with gratitude.

As if sensing his gaze, she stirred. Her eyelashes, dark against her pale skin, fluttered for a moment before lifting. She blinked once, twice, adjusting to the morning light. Then, her eyes found his.

She smiled.

It was a beautiful smile, wide and effortless, completely unburdened by the exhaustion and fear that had shadowed every expression she’d worn for months. It was the smile he had fallen in love with, bright and clear and aimed directly at him. His own lips mirrored it, his heart swelling with a love so profound it was a physical ache.

“Good morning,” she murmured, her voice a little husky with sleep.

“Good morning,” he whispered back, his voice thick with emotion.

He leaned in to kiss her, but she was faster. She rose up on one elbow with a fluid grace he hadn’t seen in her for a long time, her dark hair falling across her shoulder. As she moved, the light from the window fell fully on her face, and for a half-second, Liam’s brain registered something impossibly wrong.

Her eyes.

They were Elara’s eyes in shape and color, a deep, familiar brown. But the morning sun that was illuminating the room, that was catching the dust motes dancing in the air and highlighting the threads in the pillowcase, was not touching them. There was no reflection on their surface, no glint of light off the curve of her cornea. It was as if her pupils had expanded to swallow the irises whole, creating two perfect, dark pools that absorbed the light and gave nothing back. It was a physical impossibility, a trick of the shadow, a flaw in his own sleep-addled vision. It had to be.

Before his rational mind could fully process the disquieting image, her lips were on his.

The kiss was a concussive shock.

Cold.

It was not the simple coolness of someone who had just woken up. It was a deep, penetrating, and utterly unnatural cold. It was the chill of a marble statue, the shocking cold of a metal pole in the dead of winter. It was a refrigerated, mortuary cold that leeched the warmth from his own lips, a stark and horrifying contrast to the sun-warmed skin of his face. His entire body recoiled on a primal, instinctive level, even as his mind scrambled for an explanation.

He pulled back, a gasp of shock caught in his throat. The smile on her face didn't falter, but her head tilted slightly, a gesture of mild, curious inquiry.

And then he smelled it.

It was faint, an undertone on her breath beneath the normal, sleepy scent of the morning. But it was unmistakable. He had smelled it before, clinging to her hair and her clothes after her nocturnal terrors, the scent he’d found on the muddy footprint on the floor. It was the smell of a deep, damp forest, of wet, decaying leaves and rich, dark earth. It was the smell of the grave, and it was coming from inside her.

The pieces slammed together in his mind with the force of a physical blow. The impossible, lightless eyes. The shocking, deathly cold of her touch. The faint, foul scent of rot on her breath.

He stared at the woman in his bed. She looked like his wife. She wore his wife’s skin, possessed his wife’s smile, and was looking at him with an expression of perfect, placid love. But the thing behind the eyes, the presence animating the flesh, was something else entirely. It was ancient and patient and utterly, terrifyingly alien.

The last, desperate vestiges of his hope died, replaced by a cold, spreading horror that was more absolute than any fear he had ever known. He thought of her terror, her frantic warnings that he couldn't help, that no one could. He thought of her whisper from months ago: She’s back. He had thought it was a return to madness. He now knew it had been a prophecy.

The war was over. He had just woken up to find himself a prisoner in occupied territory.

The woman who was not his wife reached out a hand, her fingers cold as ice as they gently brushed his cheek, a gesture of intimate, possessive ownership.

“Is something wrong, my love?” she asked, her voice a perfect, flawless imitation of Elara’s.

Liam couldn't answer. He could only stare into the two dark voids that had replaced his wife’s eyes, his heart turning to a stone in his chest. The sun was streaming into the bedroom, promising a beautiful new day, but for Liam Vance, the world had just gone completely and irrevocably dark.