I hate these nighttime visitings more than any of my other hellish visions. I think it’s because I never see him. I never have to look at him. I only ever feel him and hear him, and those tactile, auditory memories are the ones I can’t burn out. If he appeared as some misshapen creature, I think I could handle it. But the strange rot that’s lurking inside me knows nothing scares me more than the fact that I miss this. I miss him.

Kit’s hair brushes across my cheek as he — or his nightmare doppelganger — leans in to whisper in my ear. I know the words that are coming, the same words he’s always said, the only thing he ever says to me when I dream of him.

“We’re going to drown,” he whispers, his warm breath ghosting across my neck, his words weighed down by his heavy accent, and then I snap awake into the morning light.

I breathe through my nose and close my eyes against the strip of sun coming in through my window and turn my head to face it more fully. I love the sun. I love the warmth of it on my skin, and I love that in the bright light, there are never shadows crawling around the corners of my vision.

I don’t want to go back to Mab. It doesn’t have this kind of sun. The island is cold and damp and the wind sinks into your bones and the sky is always grey and blown out. I was happy there, once, but all the things that made me happy can’t be recreated. My carefree childhood has passed; my old tutor is dead. I’ve not been back in four years, not even for Cormac’s funeral, and Kit….

I’m terrified to face him.

But Isla said he knows what’s wrong with me.

Like usual, I don’t know what to believe.

With a groan I pull myself out of bed and stumble to my bathroom. Thinking myself in circles doesn’t accomplish anything. My thoughts always feel scattered and stretched and sticky, and I just wind up confused.

The shower water is freezing when I get in, like usual, but I never have the patience to wait for it to heat up, so the first few moments are always hell. But I don’t mind it so much; sometimes the only place I feel safe is the shower. Even when it’s cold, the steady pressure of the water beats back my migraines.

I shift back from foot to foot, waiting for the water to warm, pushing my head back into the spray and letting the cold trickle down my scalp, slowly changing from freezing to warm, and I relax.

There’s movement at the corner of my vision.

“Get the fuck out of my bathroom,” I call to Isla. Jesus fucking Christ, I know there’s not a door, but this is insane. She can’t just barge into my fucking shower.