I didn't tell Valen about the dream.
I didn't tell anyone.
Dreams like that had a way of sticking to your skin, haunting your shadow. Eiran had been gone for nearly a year, and still, his ghost lingered in my thoughts, in my guilt, and now in my sleep.
And Kael
Kael Moretti was not someone I'd thought about in months.
But there he was, hiding behind the branches of my memory, eyes full of anger, lips pressed into that dangerous smirk I once trusted too much.
The next few days passed in a strange rhythm. Valen didn't summon me again, not immediately. I returned to the mansion, resumed the motions of my carefully constructed life walks in the garden, tea with my mother, long silences that spoke louder than words.
Every moment felt suspended, like the calm before a storm. And I knew storms, didn't I?
I had lived in them.
The day I heard Eiran was dead, the world had shifted beneath me. Nothing felt real after that. My brother had been my anchor. My twin flame. The only person who knew the full weight of what it meant to be me.
And then he was gone. Burned away in an "accident" that smelled too much like betrayal.
I never bought the story.
Neither did Valen.
Maybe that's what made this arrangement feel so dangerous, we were both chasing shadows.
Three days later, Valen appeared again. This time, he didn't wait for permission.
He entered through the front doors of my father's estate like he owned it and perhaps, now, he did. His presence sent a ripple through the hall, making maids scatter and my mother rise in stiff surprise.
"I came to see my fiancée," he said simply, eyes fixed on me.
My mother, ever polite, offered him tea. He refused.
He walked toward me like a storm walks toward the shore, slow, deliberate, inevitable.
"I want to show you something," he said.
"Where?"
"You'll see."
And like a fool or perhaps something braver I followed him again.
This time, we drove to the city outskirts, where glass towers pierced the sky and the world moved too fast.
We stopped at a tall building with black tinted windows and no name.
"What is this place?" I asked, stepping into the dim lit lobby.
Valen said nothing.
We entered a private elevator. Up. Up. Up. My ears popped, and when the doors opened I froze.
The rooftop.
A garden of steel and smoke.
And beyond it the skyline. Endless.
But what stunned me wasn't the view.
It was the piano.
There, in the center of the roof, stood a sleek black grand piano, untouched by dust, surrounded by nothing but wind and silence.
"I had it brought here," Valen said. "You once mentioned you used to play."
I blinked. "That was years ago."
"You stopped after Eiran died."
I turned slowly toward him. "You remember that?"
"I remember everything you say," he replied.
It was too much. Too intimate.
"Why bring me here?"
Valen stepped beside me. "Because music is the only place you don't hide. I want to see you without your armor."
I stared at the keys. My fingers ached to touch them, but fear laced itself around my spine.
"I haven't played in so long. I'm not the girl I used to be."
"I know," he said gently. "But maybe you're something more now."
I sat.
The bench felt cold, unfamiliar. My hands trembled. I placed them on the keys and waited.
Then a note.
Then two.
Then the beginning of a melody I hadn't touched since the day they lowered Eiran's casket into the ground.
The pain came first.
Then the release.
I played like my soul was on fire. Like every tear I hadn't cried was begging to bleed out through the music.
Valen didn't speak.
He didn't move.
He just watched me like I was art. Or maybe, like I was a weapon finally being unsheathed.
When the final note died, I was breathless. My hands were shaking. But my chest it felt lighter.
"You remembered every note," Valen said quietly.
"No," I whispered. "The notes remembered me."
We didn't speak much after that.
He drove me home, his hand brushing mine once on the seat. It wasn't an accident. But it wasn't rushed either.
He was waiting.
And I didn't know what I was waiting for anymore.
That night, I returned to my room to find a small black box on my pillow.
Inside was a necklace. A single teardrop crystal suspended on a spiderweb thin silver chain. Elegant. Cold. Delicate.
Like me.
There was no note, but I knew who it was from.
And for the first time since my engagement was announced, I smiled.
But of course, happiness never lasts long in stories like mine.
Because the very next morning, I received a letter.
One that smelled like smoke and memory.
"Tell Valen Rivas to stop digging. Or the grave won't just be metaphorical next time.
K.M.
Kael Moretti.
The ghost I hadn't seen in months was no longer in my dreams.
He was watching us now.