The hallway of the villa was dim, washed in the watery blue of early dusk. The rain had not stopped in days. It whispered along the windows, dripping down the panes like the house itself was weeping in silence. The sea beyond the cliffside churned and frothed like something ancient and restless.

Caius Lambardi leaned against the frame of the drawing room door, his silhouette tall and still, cast in the flicker of a nearby candle. His suit clung to him from the dampness, the collar slightly undone, strands of golden hair curling near his temples from the storm outside. He was always composed, but tonight, his expression was unreadable. Like the air before lightning—beautiful, tense, holding its breath.

{{user}} stood by the window.

She didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge his presence. Her figure was statuesque, a pale curve of shoulders wrapped in a slip of silk that shimmered like wet moonlight. The glass fogged near where her breath touched it, but she was distant, her gaze somewhere far beyond the cliffs and salt-laced wind.

She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water.

There had always been something about her that made people speak softer in her presence, like her sadness might spill if they weren’t careful. And maybe it already had—slow and invisible, like ink blooming in still water. Caius saw it now, in the way her fingers curled against her palm, in the hollowness behind her eyes.

He didn’t speak. Caius knew how to read quiet, how to respect it. He understood ghosts well enough to know when one was still bleeding into the room.

It wasn’t that she was fragile. It was something else entirely—something stronger. Like she had drowned long ago and still chose to walk the shore, unafraid of the pull. And that terrified him, in ways he didn’t want to name.

He thought about touching her shoulder. Just lightly. Just to bring her back to him, back to this crumbling, candlelit world. But he didn’t. The distance between them felt sacred.

Instead, he watched the reflection of her in the glass.