Chapter 3

The sun had begun its slow, bleeding descent behind the jagged horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the stone floor of the lighthouse. It was still early evening, the kind of hour where the light turns gold and thick, clinging to the skin like a second layer. The event was still in full swing around us, a cacophony of polite laughter, clinking glass, and the low hum of a string quartet that seemed to drift up from the lower decks, muffled by the heavy oak doors and the thick stone walls. But up here, in the keeper’s quarters of the old light, the air was still. Heavy. Charged with something I couldn’t quite name, though my body knew it intimately. I had been trying to lose myself in the crowd, in the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns, but every time I turned, he was there. Watching. Waiting. A predator in a bespoke suit, and I, his unwilling prize. He hadn’t said much since we’d ascended the spiral staircase, but his presence was a physical weight, pressing against my back, guiding my steps without ever actually touching me. Until now. We had wandered into a small alcove off the main