Rain pressed its fingers against the high windows of Château de Caliller, tracing silver veins through the dust. The air smelled of old paper, extinguished candles, and the faint metallic tang of the river below. Soren sat alone in the library, a single lamp burning on the desk. The light caught on his cufflinks and on the rim of the glass beside him, turning both into small, private stars. He was reading a century-old ledger—family accounts, names of tenants long dead. He pretended it mattered, though his eyes drifted to the margins where his father's notes bled through the page. Every figure was precise, every comment cruel. Armand de Caliller had believed perfection could hold chaos at bay. It hadn't. Outside, Saint-Cyprien crouched beneath the fog. The villagers no longer came up the hill to deliver milk or bread; they left crates at the gate and hurried away, crossing themselves. In the tavern, they said the château was cursed. Some claimed that the Devil himself slept in its cellars. Others whispered that the de Calillers had invited him in generations ago—and he had never left. Soren closed the ledger and listened to the house breathe. It was never silent. The pipes whispered like voices behind walls, the fire snapped like laughter. Even alone, he felt watched. The door opened without ceremony. A gust of rain followed the man who stepped in. "Still communing with the ghosts, frère?" Bastien's voice carried a smile that never reached his eyes. He dropped his wet coat onto a chair, ignoring the puddle it made on the Persian rug. Soren didn't look up. "They're better company than most of the living.""Always the poet." Bastien moved closer, smelling of tobacco and cold air. "Lucien said you'd be here, pretending to work. Do you ever leave this mausoleum?""Do you ever arrive sober?" Soren asked mildly. Bastien laughed—a low, dangerous sound. "Touché." He poured himself a drink from the decanter on the table without asking. "But I didn't come for a sermon." He set his glass down and leaned against the desk, studying his brother. "I came to deliver news." Soren waited. "The Marenne estate—across the valley, the one with the orchard and the crumbling dovecote—it's been inherited." Soren's brow twitched. "I thought no one wanted that ruin.""Oh, they want it now." Bastien took a slow sip. "Because it's hers.""Hers?" The word slipped out before Soren could stop it. Bastien smiled. "She has returned to Saint-Cyprien. The papers were signed last month, apparently. She arrived this morning." The room seemed to tilt. The fire, the rain, Bastien's voice—all receded into a dull hum. For a moment, Soren saw only her face as it had been: summer light on her hair, a laugh that never quite hid its fear of him. "Impossible," he said finally. "Quite possible. I saw the carriage myself." Bastien set the glass down with a soft click. "I thought you'd like to know. Or perhaps hate to. Hard to tell with you." Soren stood, moving to the window. The valley lay drowned in mist, but he could imagine the old Marenne estate hidden among the trees, its windows dark. Her windows now. "She was a child when she left," he said quietly. Bastien shrugged. "We were all children once. Some of us learned to survive it." Soren didn't answer. He remembered the garden behind the chapel, the scent of wet roses, her hands trembling when he told her to go. He'd ended it not out of cruelty, though she'd believed that. He'd ended it because Lucien had warned him what the family curse would do—how anyone who loved a de Caliller was destined for ruin. So he had played his part: cold, dismissive, slicing her heart cleanly so she might heal somewhere far away. She hadn't been far enough, it seemed. Bastien was watching him with amusement and faint pity. "Careful, brother. The dead don't like competition." Before Soren could reply, footsteps echoed in the corridor. Lucien appeared in the doorway—immaculate, dry, expression unreadable. He took in Bastien's dripping coat, the spilled drink, Soren's rigid stance. "Still making a mess wherever you go," Lucien said to Bastien. "What was the commotion this time?""Just a ghost returning home," Bastien replied. Lucien's gaze flicked to Soren. "Ah. So you've heard.""I've heard," Soren said. "Then I'll leave you to your... reflections." Lucien's voice carried the calm of a man who controlled everything except emotion. "Try not to make them public." He turned and left as quietly as he'd come. Bastien drained the last of his drink and followed, pausing at the door. "If she's wise, she'll stay away from you. If not—well. Curses need company." When the door shut, the silence grew vast again. The fire had died to embers; the room was thick with shadows. Soren moved back to his chair but didn't sit. He stared at the ledger, at his father's handwriting, at the name de Caliller scrawled across generations like a wound that refused to close. Outside, the rain eased into mist. In the distance, a single light flared on the opposite hill—small, golden, unmistakably human. He knew it was the window of the Marenne estate. Her light. He imagined her standing there, looking out across the valley, unaware—or perhaps perfectly aware—that the house watching her from the other side was awake again. Soren pressed his hand against the cold glass. The reflection stared back: pale face, dark eyes, a man who looked too much like his father. He whispered her name once, to see if the house would echo it. It did.