To heal a Rogue

BONNIE

I woke up in a bed that wasn’t the one I remembered falling asleep in.

The space looked small and cozy. The bed was much harder on my back than I was used to.

”Lysander?” I called as I sat up, my voice carrying small in a room that felt too bright and too soft to belong to anywhere I’d actually been.

No answer came.

I looked around, and nothing about the space matched my memory of his mother’s chambers. The walls were pale, washed in warm morning light, and a window stood open to a meadow rolling out toward some horizon that felt too perfect to be real.

I could see wildflowers from where I sat as a breeze that smelled like nothing I could name brushed over me.

”Where am I?” I muttered.

The second those words left my mouth, the door behind me opened.

A woman stood there, and something in my chest lurched before my mind even caught up to why.

”Honey,” she said. ”You’re awake.”

Her voice hit something deep and old in me, and for one suspended second I let myself believe it. Then I actually looked at her face.

It wasn’t complete. If I focused too long, her nose simply wasn’t there anymore, and there would be a smooth stretch of skin where it should have sat. When I tilted my head, one of her eyes vanished entirely, swallowed into blankness before reappearing a moment later as nothing had happened.

I knew what this was.

I didn’t remember what my mother’s face actually looked like anymore. Not the real shape of it, not after all these years. My mind had built something close enough to fool me for half a second, and it simply couldn’t hold the details steady.

”This isn’t real,” I said as I realized what the heck was going on. ”This is a dream.”

She crossed the room and pinched my arm, sharp and sudden, and I winced as a small red mark bloomed against my skin.

”Maybe it’s real,” she said. ”Maybe it isn’t. Do you care?”

”I watched you bleed out,” I said. ”I watched your throat open.”

”And where’s the body?”

”I don’t know what happened to you.” My voice cracked. ”I raised my hand, and that thing... that sickly light took you away. Along with them. Sometimes I wonder if your body is rotting somewhere out there and if those monsters I sent along are with you too. Desecrating you.”

She pulled me into a hug, warm and soft, exactly the way I remembered hugs feeling as a child, and something in me wanted so badly to just stay there.

”Let’s wash the blood off your hands,” she said.

That confused me.

”What blood?”

She pointed and that pushed me to look down.

When I did, it was right there. Dark and wet, coating my fingers, my palms, with streaks of it running up my forearms.

”Oh,” I swallowed in shock. ”That wasn’t there before.”

She took my hand and led me toward a bathroom I hadn’t noticed a moment ago, helping me strip out of clothes that hadn’t been on me the second before either.

I still remembered what I was wearing before my entire world went dark. Red thin linen to shame me and, of course, shackles.

I argued weakly that I could just wash my hands in the sink, but she shook her head.

”Your whole body is covered in it,” she said.

I looked down again, and she was right. It had spread everywhere now, soaked into skin that had been clean a breath ago.

”It’s not mine,” I said.

”Let’s just get you clean,” she said, and I let her guide me into the tub, some part of me fully aware this wasn’t real and choosing to enjoy the fantasy anyway. I sank into the warm water and let her start on my hair, her fingers working shampoo through it with the exact same rhythm I remembered from childhood.

”I miss this so much,” I said.

”I know.”

I looked up at her, and her face did the trick again, her features sliding, vanishing and reforming. It only made me look away fast, as hot tears started building behind my eyes.

”I’m all grown now,” I said. ”I shouldn’t be this sentimental.”

”You’ll always be my baby.”

I buried my face against my knees. ”I know.”

”I pretended to be a male retainer,” I said, my voice muffled. I did not even know why I was doing it. I knew deep down this shit wasn’t real. But it was nice. The fantasy. It was something I would have told her if she were still alive. ”...Just to earn money. It didn’t last long. I got discovered.” I let out a shaky breath. ”I’m even mated to a Lily of the Valley Alpha now, can you believe that? Coupled with that, everyone now knows what I am. What I can do? I’m so scared, Mom.”

”It’s alright, baby,” she said. ”Lean your head back a little.”

I did, and water ran over my scalp, warm at first, gentle too. It was like standing under rain.

Then her voice changed.

”You could have let the bastard rot, though,” she said. ”Given what his family did to us. But your whore self saved him anyway.”

I froze, certain I’d misheard.

”W...hat did you just say?” I nearly stammered as I lifted my head.

The face in front of me wasn’t hers anymore. But before I could make out who I was now looking at. A man’s hands closed around my skull instead, rough and enormous, and he shoved my head down into the water before I could scream.

I fought. My arms flailed, my legs kicked against the porcelain, while water rushed into my nose and mouth in violent gulps.

I willed myself to wake up with everything I had left.

It didn’t work.

My lungs filled instead, burning, my eyes stinging worse than anything I’d felt in real life, and the world started going soft and grey at the edges as I slipped further under.

Then I was jerked upward, hard, water streaming off my face, and through the haze of choking and blurred vision, I heard a voice, low and certain, right against my ear.

”The royals are your enemies,” it said. ”Remember that.”

I woke up coughing.

Water poured out of my mouth in violent, wracking spasms, my whole body seizing with the force of it, and a girl near the bed rushed toward me, alarm written across her face.

”What’s wrong?” she said, reaching for me.

I kicked her.

Hard and straight into her stomach as my body reacted before my mind had caught up to where I actually was.

There was no mercy behind the attack. She flew backward with a cry of pain, crashing into something near the wall.

I kept coughing, my whole chest heaving, my eyes streaming, and I looked around wildly, taking in the room properly for the first time.

This was... Lysander’s mother’s chambers. The lilac curtains. The covered photo frame on the wall.

I touched the bed and thought I could not be entirely sure. It felt and looked real.

The door burst open fully right then, and several sentinels flooded in alongside a man in royal retainer uniform, all of them alert and tense, with weapons half raised before they registered what they were looking at or up against.

A man I recognized as the High Gamma stepped forward through them.

”Are you alright?” he asked.

I looked down at my hand.

There, faint but unmistakable, sat a small red mark. A pinch. Exactly where she’d pinched me in the dream.

I coughed again, and more water came up, thin and real and undeniable against my palm.

Had I actually been dreaming?