I did not miss him.
Not when I brewed the bitterroot wrong. Not when I forgot to unlock the shutters for the light I normally shun. Not when my hands shook so slightly no one else could see it—but I did. Not when I turned at the sound of a knock that never came.
Dorian Vale had gone silent.
A silence louder than most men's fury. Two days. Long enough for the tea to sour. Long enough for the rumors to find shape, and curl like mold against my windows.
I held his name on the underside of my tongue, bitter and familiar. I did not miss him. But I did notice the quiet he left behind.
The dream returned that night.
The same blood moon above a garden of snow. The ritual circle drawn in ash. And me—small, trembling, and smiling.
This time, I saw his hand. Cassian's. Slim fingers threaded with mine. His face a boy's. A boy I think I once trusted. But it was the figure behind him that stopped my breath.
Someone else stood outside the circle. Not robed. Not chanting. Just… watching. A veil of ivory lace covered their face, and their clothes were white. A mourning dress. Mouthless mask. A body still as graveyard marble.
When I woke, the scent of lilies lingered on my pillow.
By dusk, word had already begun to spread. A child. A girl, no more than three.
No bruises. No break in the locks. No scream heard in the night.
Just a single chalk ritual circle around her bed. Spider lilies crushed under her pillow. And above the sheets, the words scrawled in blood:
"Heartbinder, come home."
The phrase bled through my skull before I saw it.
I knew Dorian would be there. Knew it the way I knew which street would smell most like ash. He stood in the nursery doorway when I arrived, arms folded, eyes hollow. The smell of old grief clung to him like cologne.
He didn't look at me when I stepped inside.
"You came," he said.
"You called," I replied.
That was the closest we came to apologies.
The house was wrong.
It was too quiet for grief. Too clean for death. As though someone had scrubbed away the screaming before I arrived, replaced it with lilac soap and church candles. But grief clings to walls. It festers. And here, it stank of denial.
"She was tucked in," said the officer standing by the doorway, voice brittle as the winter outside. "No signs of trauma. Just—just that."
He gestured to the phrase, now flaking on the wall in brown-black crust:
Heartbinder, come home.
"I never told anyone," I said softly, stepping over the chalk.
Dorian turned toward me, his face unreadable. "Told anyone what?"
I didn't answer. Instead, I stepped closer to the small body on the bed. She looked like she was sleeping. Arms crossed gently over her chest. Thread still looped through her small fingers. Her mouth sewn shut with it—red, knotted at the corners like a seamstress's signature.
I didn't need to touch her.
The residue hit me like a cathedral collapsing.
Overwhelming, crushing, pure—love. Too much of it. Not maternal, not familial. Something deeper. Sacred and self-erasing. She died praying. Not for herself. For someone else. For me?
I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat.
Dorian caught my arm. "Lenora—"
"Don't." I pulled away too fast. He let me.
But his hand lingered in the air between us for a moment too long.
"There's something else," he said. "The ritual—it's precise. Not random. Every death follows a pattern, and it's leading somewhere."
I shook my head, dizzy. "It's not leading somewhere. It's circling. Around me."
We didn't speak much on the walk back. The fog had thickened. Each streetlamp looked like an eye, watching through gauze. I felt them—the glances from window cracks, from behind doors. The weight of rumor.
She's cursed. She's a witch. She's the one killing them, can't you see?
I'd heard them before. But never like this. Never loud enough to shiver down my spine.
I opened the apothecary door. The bell didn't ring.
"Something's wrong," I whispered.
And then I saw it.
There—resting gently on the center counter—a bouquet of spider lilies, trembling ever so slightly though the air was still. And beside them, a single white ribbon, tied in a mourning knot.
No one was inside. No door had opened. But the petals glistened, freshly plucked.
Outside, I turned and scanned the square—and froze.
At the edge of the fog, near the base of the ruined bell tower, stood a figure.
Tall. Dressed in white. Veil down to the collarbone. Mask with no mouth. Still as bone.
The moment I met its gaze—if it even had one—it vanished.
That night, the burning began.
It started at my wrist, where the smallest of the glyphs lay—no bigger than a coin. A soft pulse, like a heartbeat under my skin. Then heat. Pressure. Until the pain spiked like a dagger, sharp and singing.
I bit down on a cloth to keep from screaming.
The markings on my arms glowed faintly beneath my gloves. Not with light, but something deeper—like an echo of memory. Old magic. Forgotten rites clawing back to the surface.
I sank to the floor beside my bed, sweat dripping from my neck. And still I said nothing.
If Dorian came tomorrow, I'd pretend to be fine. I always did.
Morning Came Without Light
The fire had subsided, but the ache remained—like something ancient had stirred beneath my skin and found the world colder than it remembered.
I washed my arms in silence. The glyphs didn't vanish. They never did. But today they looked darker, raised, as if trying to surface after years of sleep. I didn't bother hiding the tremble in my fingers as I laced my gloves.
Let them see it, I thought. Let them wonder what it means when the witch starts shaking.
The bell over the door rang around noon. A familiar chime. A sound I hated for how deeply it mattered.
He didn't knock. He never knocked.
"Do you always leave your door unlocked," Dorian said, stepping into the low light of the apothecary, "or am I just your favorite intruder?"
I didn't look up. "You're not my favorite anything."
His boots scuffed the stone. I could feel his eyes on me. Not judgmental—just... too knowing.
"I heard about the flowers," he said quietly. "And the figure."
My hands paused mid-grind over the pestle.
He stepped closer. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you disappeared." I turned, slow and sharp. "Because you walked away after I gave you something sacred. Something no one else has ever touched."
His jaw tensed. "You used my brother's name like a weapon."
"I didn't mean to," I said, voice low. "But I saw it. I couldn't unsee it. And you—of all people—should understand what it means to carry something unbearable."
There was silence between us then. The kind that feels like thunder waiting.
"You think this thing—this killer—is circling you," he said. "What does it want?"
"I don't know."
"I think you do."
I turned back to the table, hands tight over the counter. "You want to hear it, don't you? The story no one dares ask? You think if I bleed it out for you, you'll be able to fix it. Solve it. File it away in whatever dark little box you keep for ghosts."
"No," he said, stepping beside me. "I want to know what kind of hell I'm walking into."
I hesitated. Then: "There was a boy. Cassian. My only friend. We were raised in an estate wrapped in rituals and silence. The Heartbinder rite... it was meant to bind me to something sacred. Or monstrous. Maybe both. I don't know. It was interrupted. There was fire. Screaming. Someone in white."
Dorian's brows furrowed. "The Mourner?"
"I don't know." My voice cracked. "Maybe. Maybe they were always watching."
He reached out instinctively, and I stepped back. Not out of fear—but habit. It was always habit.
"I need you to let me in," he said.
"And I need you to stop thinking you can fix me." I took a breath, steadying. "You want the truth? You're too soft, Dorian. You pretend not to care, but you bleed too easy."
"That's rich, coming from someone who flinches when I breathe too close."
We stood there, two wolves pretending not to be wounded.
Then, softly, he said, "What does 'Heartbinder, come home' mean?"
I couldn't answer.
Because deep down, I was starting to remember.
And it terrified me.
The Place Where Names Went to Die...
The edges of Vullum thinned into wilderness the way dreams thin into memory—slow, indistinct, aching. Trees stood like sentinels, black-limbed and brittle, their bark peeling in long curls like they were trying to whisper something they'd forgotten how to say.
I hadn't returned here in years. The path was overgrown, the iron gates choked in rust and moss. But the estate still stood.
Graythorn House.
The name was carved into a slab of rotted wood above the archway, barely visible through the ivy. I stepped through the gate, heart hollowing with each breath.
Dorian didn't ask questions. He followed in silence, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. Every step we took was a descent.
The house welcomed us with the sound of groaning wood and dead vines dragging across the floor like old hands. Dust clung to the air like it feared being forgotten. Moonlight leaked through a shattered window and spilled onto the stones in pale puddles.
"This place looks like it was abandoned mid-breath," Dorian said, voice low.
"It was." I didn't explain further.
We crossed the broken foyer. The scent of burnt lilies still lingered, hidden beneath mildew and rot. In the hallway, a mirror leaned crooked on the wall. I paused before it.
"You okay?" he asked, hesitating behind me.
"Depends on your definition."
In the reflection, my crimson eyes stared back at me like warnings from another life. My mask, my scars, my silence. I saw her—the girl I used to be. The one who let someone draw sigils into her skin with a ceremonial blade. The one who let herself believe in love wrapped in ritual.
And behind that girl, I saw the Mourner.
"Dorian," I whispered.
He turned—and froze.
The figure stood at the edge of the tree line beyond the shattered window. Dressed in mourning white, veil hanging like a shroud, mouthless mask gleaming in the dusk. Hands clasped in front like a prayer unanswered.
Neither of us moved.
"She's not gone," I murmured. "She's never been gone."
We bolted for the door. By the time we reached the threshold, the figure had vanished—leaving behind nothing but crushed spider lilies where her feet had stood.
Dorian knelt, running a hand near them but not touching. "They're fresh. She was just here."
"She was waiting," I said, voice like broken glass. "And she'll come again."
He looked up at me. "What does she want?"
I swallowed. "To finish what was started."
That night, I stood in my apothecary, mask discarded, candlelight flickering against the stone walls. I unbuttoned the high collar of my blouse and rolled back one sleeve. The glyphs on my arms pulsed faintly, dim red beneath pale skin.
They didn't ache.
They hummed.
Outside, on the windowsill, a single spider lily bloomed in a cracked clay pot. I hadn't planted it.
I pressed my palm against the glass. Cold. Unyielding.
"Heartbinder, come home," I whispered to no one.
And somewhere in the dark, something stirred in answer.