Chapter 110: Whispers through glass
The villa didn't rest.
Not that night.
Caspian had wanted us to sleep in the same room—locked doors, curtained windows, and phones on full charge. The tension between us no longer vibrated with resentment or perplexity. It had grown into mutual vigilance, the kind that made breathing feel like an held note within a symphony of terror.
I couldn't tell what it slept with me longer: the voice was that breath on the phone, or the lingering fear that we weren't alone anymore.
The time was 2:08 AM when I finally sat up, scanning the window across the room. We'd closed it before—yanked the drapes shut. But something was. off. As if air was leaking in nonetheless. As if something—someone—was there nearby.
I walked cautiously onto the frozen floor, Caspian sleeping behind me, an arm wrapped over the other half of the bed. I approached the window and opened the curtain by an inch.
The garden glared back. Moonlight scattered the hedges with silver. The wind did not move. Nothing moved.
Then I noticed it.
A smudge.
Just there, in the corner of the glass—delicate, greasy, unambiguously human. Fingers' form. Someone had placed their hand against the window. From outside.
I froze.
The breath caught in my throat was cold, stinging. My hand was on the curtain. Half of me wanted to shriek. The other half—the half conditioned by months of terror—knew silence could be wise.
"Lily?" Caspian's drowsy voice, low behind me.
I turned around quickly. "There's a smudge on the glass."
He was up and moving instantly, taking two steps across the room. When he saw the smudge, his jaw clenched. "Wait here."
He disappeared down the corridor before I could protest.
I hovered at the window, watching the garden as if it would blink. The fact that someone had been here—just inches from us, looking in while we slept—left a shiver searing beneath my skin. It was no longer just watching.
It was proximity.
Caspian returned a few minutes later, his breath fogged with the chill of outdoors. "No prints," he growled. "And nothing on the cameras. Whoever this person is, they have some notion of where we can't watch."
My fingers skimmed the window again. "They were here."
His eyes followed mine. "I'm calling in the security crew tonight. No more delaying.".
We barely spoke the rest of the evening. We didn't go back to bed. We stayed by the fireplace, the soft crackle of embers the only sound. Caspian had his phone in his hand. I had my brain racing in circles.
Come morning, the smudge was gone. Like a ghost mark. But I'd witnessed it. He'd witnessed it too.
It was real.
We weren't dreaming the threat anymore.
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I sat during breakfast staring at the toast on my plate, untouched. Caspian sat quietly beside me, punching on his phone. It wasn't until I took a sip of my coffee that I noticed it—an old keychain just beside my napkin. Small. Brass. A worn-out leaf charm hanging from it.
I blinked.
It didn't belong to me.
Not recently.
But it had.
Years ago.
Back when I was still with Nathaniel.
I stood up suddenly, chair scraping back.
Caspian looked up. "What?"
I held up the keychain. "This. This wasn't here last night."
He took it slowly out of my palm, examining it. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," I whispered. "It was mine. I lost it when we were moving. back when I left him."
A silence. Heavy. Dense.
"Lily," he whispered, his voice now soft. "Has he been in the house?"
My mouth was dry. My pulse faltered.
Because the thing that was more frightening than being watched. was being touched.
Touched silently.
Without warning.
From inside.
Sunlight crept into the high villa windows, delicate and otherworldly, as if even the sun was reluctant to disturb the stillness hugging the rooms like a second skin. The keychain still sat on the kitchen counter today—a Innocent object transformed into a bad omen. I hadn't touched it since.
Caspian paced around the living room, phone in hand pressed against his ear, low-voiced to the security company he had employed to make the night visits. Clipped, commanding: but beneath its surface level I could sense tension.
Something was fractured.
Not merely between the walls of the house, but between us.
I stood in the doorway from the hallway and into the open space of the kitchen, cradling a mug of un-drunk coffee. I occupied a borrowed body, and I didn't know who I was in it anymore—Caspian's Lily, or a ghost from Nathaniel's past, getting pulled back into his trap.
Lily," Caspian said quietly after he hung up. "They'll be here in twenty. A full sweep. Cameras, locks, sensors."
I nodded, but my thoughts were already elsewhere.
"What if he's already been here once before?" I asked. "What if this wasn't the first time?"
Caspian stepped to me, his expression darkening. "Then we investigate. And we put a stop to it. He's not going to scare you into hiding.".
"I'm not scared," I said automatically.
"You are," he said. "We both are."
I looked away.
He inched closer, reaching out but stopping short of touching me. "You don't have to lie to me."
It should have comforted me—how serious he looked, how stern his voice. But I couldn't shake the impression that this was getting away too fast, too far. Not just the peril outside the villa, but something inside us, eroding in silence.
"I didn't leave him just to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder," I breathed. "I wanted peace. I wanted to be able to have a future."
"You do," Caspian said.
"Alone with you?" I inquired, and the words contained a flavor of doubt.
He set his teeth. "If that's what you want."
The quiet that sat between us was more intrusive than the metal-on-ceramic clank of the spoon on the mug.
"I don't know if I can go on pretending it isn't influencing me," I continued. "I hear stuff. At nighttime. I have shadows. I jump every time the phone rings."
"Let me guard you then."
I turned away. "I don't need protecting. I want to feel like I'm not prey."
Caspian's voice softened. "You're not prey, Lily."
"Aren't I?" I breathed. "He sent that letter. He sent the picture. And now the keychain. He's not hurting me yet—he's reminding me. Of what he could do."
We both knew she wasn't lying.
He moved to stand beside me, at last permitting his fingers to brush against my wrist. "Then we remind him who we are now. Not who we were."
I ached to believe him. I ached to believe us.
And then my phone rang.
A stinging, abrupt trill that sliced through the quiet.
I took it off the counter and stared at the screen. No caller ID.
Caspian moved closer. "Don't answer—
I did.
"Hello?" My voice shook.
Silence.
I gripped the phone harder. "Who is this?"
Nothing. But I could hear it.
A small exhale.
A presence.
Caspian was looking at me, rigid, preparing to snatch the phone from my hand—but I didn't budge. I was frozen, heart thudding.
"Say something," I breathed.
But the line went dead.
My hand fell to my side.
"It's him," I whispered.
Caspian's gaze turned cold.
We knew by then that this was not simply some temporary risk. Nathaniel was here—not in our minds, not on paper.
Here.
And we could have no idea what he might do next.