Lilith's POV.
I shut the door to my study and turn the key. The lock clicks with a satisfying finality. No assistants. No wolves. No distractions.
The silence breathes with me.
Outside the storm glass windows, the moon hangs like a watchful eye. I walk past velvet drapes and shelves lined with secrets—tomes bound in leather, papers marked with crimson wax, fragments of lives I destroyed to build mine.
But tonight, the past claws louder than the present.
I stop before the tall mirror. Its frame is wrought iron, thorned and cold to the touch, like the past I keep buried. My reflection greets me, poised and powerful in a silk robe of black. But I don't see her. Not truly.
I see the girl who drowned.
The one who was saved.
The one he left behind.
And just like that, the old world begins to bleed through the cracks of memory.
The mask slips.
