Darkness had descended upon the villa, and we stood there in a silence so profound that the darkness appeared to breathe. For days we had sensed unseen eyes monitoring us and heard in our ears a warning breathed softly as the whispered breath of doom. It was not until I started thinking thought about the fact that we would return to some sort of normalcy that the past overwhelmed us in a way neither of us could have expected.
It began with a knock—a heavy, insistent thud against the solid front door that cut through the uneasy quietness of the late night. Caspian and I were both in the sitting room, our senses still recovering from the melodramas of the night before, when it resonated down the corridors. My heart froze in my chest. I glanced cautionarily at Caspian; his watchful, black eyes snapped open with suspicion.
Before either of us could speak, the door swung open to reveal a man I had never seen in my life. He stood on the threshold, a figure both familiar and disconcerting—a ghost from Caspian’s darker days as I would later find out. His tailored suit, slightly rumpled from travel, contrasted with the hard set of his features. His eyes, cold and calculating, met Caspian’s for a long, charged moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.
"Sorry I burst in," the man said, his voice as silky as silk but with a hint of something repulsive. "But I do have something you will want to hear."
Caspian's reaction was instantaneous. His arm shot out at the side of his head, knuckles clenching. "Who the hell are you?" he growled, tightly and low. I could sense the fury straining in the angles of his jaw, the tightness of his throat cords straining as though he was on the verge of striking the intruder down.
The stranger's eyes glanced at me, and in that moment, I shivered as I felt a chill down my spine. A recognition in the manner the sun struck the eyes—a sense of familiarity that made my insides shiver violently, though I did not want to make a fool of myself. "I'm Randy," he stated simply. "We used to work… in a capacity you would rather not recall."
Caspian's expression became shadowed, and I felt the air in the room shift almost palpably. I knew that fire. The same that'd been loosed when torn asunder by memories he'd struggled to conceal, the same cruel ferocity that'd driven him invincible. And now laced with bitter rage and sorrow.
"Randy," Caspian huffed, syllables laden with unuttered history. "Why are you here?"
Randy's eyes roamed the room and came back to my face. "I know some things about your stalker," he said, voice closed down and flatly cold. "I know who is doing this all to you. And I can help you make it all go away.".
I felt my stomach twist. My mind raced—was it possible? Could the terror that had gripped us be linked to Caspian’s past? But the words that followed would shatter any semblance of certainty I’d been clinging to.
I opened my lips to protest when Caspian's face set into a scowl. "I don't want you around her," he growled, and I winced from the poison in his voice. His guard went up, and I saw the war raging in his eyes: the intense want to protect me struggling with wanting to hear what Viktor had to tell him.
"Lily, you wait here," Caspian commanded, his own voice tight with the fury he was only barely holding back as he placed himself between me and Randy. "I'll deal with this."
I'd automatically stepped back with my hand, but his fell over mine, halting me. "No," I found myself saying, surprised at how even my own voice sounded. "I want to know, I don't want to be kept in the dark."
Caspian's own eyes went wide with alarm, a whirligig of surprise and suppressed feeling—fear, maybe, that I would be drawn into his black past if I listened. "Lily, please," he urged, his smoldering eyes begging as he searched for mine.
I stared at him, stared hard at the quilted landscape of hurt and black eyes hollow secrets I'd made quick fleeting readings. "Then tell me," I urged softly. "Tell me why he's here. I have a right to know."
Randy intervened, his expression placid, too placid, as if he bore a benevolent message and not a fatal one. "Caspian, I believe you'd be happier to leave it in the past," he told him, his voice authoritative, "but here's the thing, Lily's stalker isn't this faceless stranger. It's someone you once knew well—a man you believed was dead.".
There was a thick silence between us. I felt the air become charged between us, second after second that lengthened into eternity. Caspian went white, his eyes springing first to Randy and then to mine. I could sense the war raging inside him, the flicker of guilt, regret, and raw fear.
"Who?" I heard myself whisper, my voice shaking, but not sure I really wanted to know.
Randy flubbed and then glanced across at me. "It's Damien," he wheezed. "Your stalker, the man who's been pursuing you… Damien. He belongs in Caspian's past—someone who he really trusted, someone he thought that he was never again going to see again."
My heart hammered in my chest. The ground beneath feet had disappeared. Damien. The name whispered in hushed, fearful moments when Caspian's eyes had clouded over with memories. I had believed it to be a ghost of a life so black that its edges could not be discerned. Now it stood before me, a bitter truth.
Caspian reacted with lightning speed. His gaze blazed angrily, his figure tensed, as if stricken by a lightning bolt. "Damien." he repeated, a loathsome gulp that seemed to shake the space between us. "I have buried him. I believed that he was dead."
Randy's head cocked, slow and remorseful, his mouth twisting into a sick scowl of desperation. "He isn't. He is back. He'd lain in wait in ambush, waiting out the hours until that best possible moment that he might reclaim what he'd determined was his due by right. And I think his eye's on Lily just so he can get back at you."
I stuttered back, receding until I nearly bumped into Caspian. His eyes fixed upon mine—frantic, blaming, tormented—and behind them the war resurfaced. One moment, and he was my fiercely defending man, for whom I have to love; the next, he was an anguished man, plagued by shame and terror.
"Lily," he whispered, his trembling lips tracing over me as he caressed me. "I… I didn't mean for this to happen to you. Damien is… he's from my past—a past I've struggled so hard to forget. It now looks like evey enemy I made back then is springing my all at once" His voice was cracking as he wrapped his arms around me, protecting me from the terror that had returned to haunt me.
I hugged him, my eyes wet. "Caspian, why did you not tell me?" I whispered weakly, trembling with a shake in my voice that was half sad and half angry. "Why did you not tell me?
He nodded his head, his eyes a whirlpool of regret and determination. "I was trying to protect you," he murmured. "I hoped that if I kept it locked away, I would be able to keep you safe. But Damien… he has been a threat . I never thought he'd come after you."