I didn't sleep that night.
The letter sat on my bedside table, its words burning holes into my thoughts. I must have read it a hundred times.
Tell Valen Rivas to stop digging.
Or the grave won't just be metaphorical next time.
K.M.
Kael Moretti wasn't just a name from the past. He was the kind of man you never truly escaped, charming enough to make you trust him, dangerous enough to make you regret it. And he had been close to Eiran. Too close.
Now he was watching me again.
Why?
What was Valen digging into that Kael didn't want uncovered?
I needed answers, but I needed to survive long enough to find them.
Valen came again the next morning.
I met him in the east garden, where dew still clung to the roses and the scent of fresh jasmine drifted through the air. He wore black again but there was something softer in his face today.
He didn't greet me with a smirk. Not with flirtation. But concern.
"You didn't sleep," he said quietly.
"You're watching me now?"
"Protecting you," he corrected. "It's different."
I hesitated, then handed him the letter.
His eyes scanned it once. Then again, slower.
When he looked up, his entire presence shifted, colder, harder, sharper.
"He's getting bold," Valen said. "Threatening you directly."
"He knows something, doesn't he?" I asked. "About Eiran. About the fire."
Valen folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket like a promise. "I've been following threads. Someone's been paying off investigators. Deleting surveillance. Threatening witnesses."
"Kael?" I whispered.
"Or someone working under him. Maybe both."
My throat tightened. "I thought Kael left the city after everything."
Valen's voice was low. "Kael doesn't leave unless he has a reason to return."
That afternoon, the mansion felt suffocating. Whispers followed me in the halls. My mother tried to distract me with guest lists and wedding arrangements. I smiled, nodded, but barely heard a word she said.
My mind was elsewhere.
On the boy with secrets in his eyes and fire in his blood.
On the letter.
On the truth I was terrified to find, and more terrified to live without.
When night fell, I found myself staring at the necklace again. The crystal shimmered under the candlelight. Valen's gift. Cold, beautiful, like everything about him.
But I wondered, had he always planned this? To wrap me in silk and shadows, to make me question everything I once believed?
Or was he just as tangled in this web as I was?
Later, a knock at my window startled me.
Not the door.
The window.
I rushed to it, expecting wind. A bird. Anything.
Instead, I saw a stone. And beside it, a figure in the shadows of the courtyard.
Black hoodie. Hood up.
Kael.
My blood ran cold.
I didn't think, I just moved.
I met him outside, wrapped in a long shawl and my own trembling resolve.
"You shouldn't be here," I hissed.
Kael pulled back his hood.
His face hadn't changed. Same wicked smirk. Same eyes that saw straight through you, and didn't always like what they saw.
"You look good, Elyra," he said. "Almost like you've forgotten who killed your brother."
I flinched. "You think I've forgotten anything?"
"You're engaged to the man who benefitted most from Eiran's death."
"You know that's not true."
"Don't I?" he stepped closer. "Tell me, did Valen tell you he was the last one seen arguing with your brother before the fire?"
I froze. "That's not, he told me they were investigating something together."
Kael laughed, low and bitter. "Of course he did. Prince Charming always has the right words. But I saw Valen Rivas that night. Covered in soot. With blood on his hands. And no explanation."
My heart raced. "You're lying."
"Am I?"
He stepped so close I could feel the heat off his skin. "There's a reason your memory is foggy, Elyra. There's a reason you collapsed after the fire and couldn't remember how it started. Ask yourself why. And who made sure you never got those memories back."
"You think he did that to me?"
"I think you've been in a gilded cage so long, you forgot how to look for the bars."
Kael's voice dropped to a whisper. "You want to know what really happened? Meet me tomorrow. Warehouse District. Midnight. Come alone."
Then he was gone.
A shadow melting into darker shadows.
And I was left standing in the cold, holding a storm in my chest.
I didn't tell Valen.
Not that night.
I lay awake instead, mind spiraling.
Had he really lied? Could the man who brought me back to the piano the one who looked at me like I was something worth saving really be the same man who...
I couldn't finish the thought.
My heart refused to believe it.
But my soul it remembered the ashes.