Page 123 of Dark Night of the Soul

The morning came, and I still felt as though I would never be the same.

I lay in the bed alone, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I would ever be able to go home. And the irony was, I hadn’t even started thinking of the manor as home until recently. Until everything had gone to hell and I’d been resurrected from the dead.

Walker Manor was a place of stability for me. A place where I never had to question my safety. Even when demons breached its walls.

Now that illusion was gone.

I thought of everyone there and tried to fit the pieces together. Piers, the old butler, was the only full-time staff I’d kept after my uncle died. I’d dismissed the rest. The cleaning service came twice a week. Gardeners maintained the grounds because the estate was too large for me alone.

Grace. Ophelia. My mother.

Darius came and went. Sariel hadn’t appeared in months. Killian and Astrid stayed to the forest, never crossing the boundary.

I knew it wasn’t any of them. They had nothing to gain. They lived with me, after all. They knew me, my habits, my life.

That was what unsettled me most.

Not the idea of surveillance but the idea of access.

Someone had been inside my home. Taking pictures. Watching. Mapping my life. And part of me didn’t want to know what else they’d done.

I heard movement in the small kitchen. He was awake and likely hadn’t slept all night. Vigilance was his middle name. He’d push himself to the brink of exhaustion if he thought it would keep me alive and breathing.

I shoved the blankets aside and stood, aware of how foreign the room felt—sterile, borrowed, temporary. I’d left my clothes in a pile on the floor the night before, changed into knit shorts and a tank without remembering.

When I reached the balcony doors, I paused.

They were still open.

The morning breeze fluttered, filling the room with that salty air. In the distance, Istanbul was coming alive as dawn broke across the sky. I closed my eyes to inhale the scent of the city but could only smell him.

I sensed him before I heard him. Moving in stealth mode. He was so good at that. Then a mug of my favorite caffeine addiction appeared in front of me. I took it from him as his arm wrapped around my waist and then he dropped a kiss on my neck.

Was this our life now? Safe houses. Borrowed rooms. Cities we didn’t belong to. Waiting for the world to let us breathe again.

I wasn’t sure I liked it.

“You didn’t sleep,” I said.

He didn’t answer at first.

After a moment, “You did. That’s all that matters.”

I wanted to argue. The old me would have. This version of me understood why I shouldn’t.

We stood like that, not moving. My eyes fixed on the city beyond the balcony. His hand on the flat plane of my abdomen. Me leaning back against him. His heartbeat steady against my back. My hands curled around the warm mug. The steam rising from the taupe liquid. As if this was a normal morning.

But it wasn’t.

Yesterday, I killed a man.

Yesterday, I learned the violation went deeper than I ever imagined.

They—the Knights, the Brotherhood—had taken so much from me. My choice, my dream walking, my home and—for a heartbeat—him. But I’d found a way to overcome that.

Perhaps there was a way to overcome my sense of loss for the manor.

I didn’t know yet.