She turned and took a step to run, but instead, she stood her ground.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Her voice was low, but clear.
“You’re alive,” he said as air gushed from his lungs.
She didn’t answer.
“Everyone thinks you are dead.”
“I am,” she whispered. “And that is how it must remain.”
He took another step closer. “Why? What happened?”
“I don’t owe you answers.”
“No,” Elias said gently. “But perhaps you oweyourselfthe truth.”
She gasped, then turned and moved swiftly down a path he hadn’t noticed before, leading behind a thick wall of yew trees. He followed her past a rusted gate, through tangled brambles, until they reached a crumbling cottage pressed against the outer cemetery wall. She slipped inside.
He hesitated… then knocked, holding his breath during the silence.
“You should have left me buried, Captain Blackwood. Please don’t come back.”
Suddenly, the bolt on the door clicked into place. And Elias, heart thudding, stood alone in the dark, with far more questions than answers.
Chapter Two
The next daybrought no answers, only rain.
A gray drizzle clung to the city like a shroud as Elias stood once again at the wrought-iron gates of Highgate Cemetery. The mist seemed to rise from the earth itself, curling through trees and gravestones like restless spirits. The world was muffled, cloaked in silence broken only by the caws of distant crows and the occasional creak of wet branches.
He had not slept. Not truly. His mind had been too full of her voice, her eyes, the way she’d said his name without saying it at all.“You should have left me buried.”
But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Elias moved through the cemetery with practiced ease, nodding to the few workers out in the rain—diggers, stonemasons, a young boy delivering florals. None paid him much attention. He made his way to the overgrown wall where she’d disappeared the night before.
He found it again—a rusted gate half swallowed by ivy. Beyond it lay the same path, twisting behind headstones and ancient trees, leading to the small, vine-draped cottage pressed into the stone wall.
It looked abandoned now. The shutters closed. No smoke from the chimney. No sign of life.
He knocked once, then again. Nothing.
He tried the latch. Locked.
“Isobel!” he called, not caring who heard. “I know you’re there.”
A long silence. Then came a creak behind him and he spun around.
She stood in the shadows, a short distance away, under the drooping branches of a cypress tree. Her veil was pulled back just enough to reveal her face—pale, drawn, and infinitely more real than any ghost.
“I told you not to return,” she said softly.
“I don’t follow orders well.”
Her lips twitched, almost a smile, but not quite. “No. You never did.”
He stepped toward her. “Why are you here?”
