Chapter 113: Echoes in the dark
I was there on the floor, with a start, my heart pounding as though it wasn't mine, like I borrowed it from someone else and my body was rejecting it with every passing secondI had a fleeting moment of hoping it was one of those dreadful dreams that cling to you like perspiration. Then, all over again, I heard it: glass. Breaking. Breaking, actually. Suddenly, with a sharp cracking, cutting through the villa like a shot across the bow.
I leaped out with my breath stuck in my throat.
Caspian rushed to my side. "What's the matter?"
"I do not know." My voice was hardly recognizable as mine. I reached out for my robe, already rolling on the bed toward me. I didn't slow down. My body caught up with my head, like my stomach leading the way.
"Lily, wait—"
Caspian was behind me, already risen from his chair, grabbing his phone. But I was halfway down the hall ahead of him.
And I saw it.
The mirror.
The final one in the hall, the one that was furthest away from me—the one I'd always thought extended the hall to be longer and more beautiful—was destroyed. Pieces of it were scattered across the floor like teeth. Like something had swallowed the air and vomited it back up in pieces.
But it wasn't what froze my blood.
It was the thoughts.
Or the lack of them.
The glass intercepted everything—lamp, stairs, wall painting—but not me. Not my face. Black. Nothing.
I did not move. My breath lodged in my throat, frozen like a scream I could not release.
"The security system did not go off," Caspian said behind me, voice glacial and whipped. "Nothing triggered it to."
I turned on him. "So what broke it like this Caspian?
He said nothing. He just stood there looking at the broken things that lay around him on the ground. His jaw was clamped, the sort of tension that made muscles in the back of his neck tense, always when he was withholding something from me.
And then—God, then—I was with him.
Not here. Not with Caspian.
With him.
Nathaniel.
I could smell the wine on his breath, feel the cold press of his hand against the back of my neck as he leaned in, too close, always too close. The silk of his words. The steel beneath them.
"You will always come back to me."
I had laughed at him when he had spoken. Laughed like it was ridiculous, laughed like I wasn't already locked behind walls and bars. But some way deep inside of me, some secret, hidden place, had asked if he was real.
"Lily." Caspian interrupted my concentration. I blinked, and I was here—in this hallway, with smashed glass and dying lights and smoke twisting in my chest.
He inched closer to me. "Are you alright?"
I shivered, then nodded. I did not know. I was like the mirror—broken and shattered and standing still.
Caspian's hand came down on mine, his fingers heavy and warm. I let him pull me towards him, let myself tilt into the strength of him, the solidity. His heart pounded against my chin, unflinching and unmovable.
"He's watching us," I whispered. "He wants me to break."
"Then we get away," Caspian said, moving back far enough to catch my eye. "Tonight. Drive into the city, and hide out somewhere. Where he can't find us."
I pulled out of there before I could stop myself. "No."
"Lily—"
"No." I knew the fierceness of my own voice, bold and sharp. "That's what he's doing, though. Making me run. Afraid. I won't do that for him."
Caspian's lips closed in a line. "This is not about pride."
"It's all about power," I spat out. "And I am not giving it to him. Not this time."
His eyes caught mine, and for a moment the air between us was charged—pulmonary, with all that had not been said. He leaned towards me again, but more slowly, more cautiously.
"You're infuriating," he gasped, his mouth scarcely smiling. "But so goddamn brave."
I didn't mean to move closer to him, but I did.
Or maybe he moved closer to me.
Either way, our lips collided.
There was no coyness to it. No sweetness to it. There was flame. Urgency. His arms wrapped tight around my waist, my arms wrapped around his shirt, holding tight, wanting to touch him, wanting to touch the realness of him. The kiss was not a promise—it was a battle. A battle against the past. Against fear. Against what lurked outside, in shadows.
When finally we shattered, we clung. His forehead pressed into my face, both of us panting.
"We will stay," he managed to whisper hardly at all.
"Subject only to the one condition that you don't treat me like precious glass," I ordered him.
"I won't," he swore, his thumb grazing the underside of my jaw. "I still fear."
I fought to remove the tremble from my fingers. "Then we'll fear together."
We walked the glass in silence, shoulder to shoulder. We never said it, but we knew it—that something had changed. That we were not alone in this house.
Not exactly.
Later, at last we turned over onto bed, sleep did not come. I lay awake an eternity, waiting for expect footsteps, expect breathing that wasn't ours. For expect anything.
Because now I knew:
The past was not pursuing me alone.
It was here.
Behind the walls.
In the darkness.
Watching.
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for me to lose my step then overcome me in it’a sharp claws.
And it was all my fault because I was the one that let it back in, I was the one that did not fully let go. A moment of weakness has come back to bite me painfully and I could do was wait patiently to see who this whole thing plays out. It made me feel powerless like I was not in control of my own fate.