The letters had stopped.
Two weeks without a sound. Two weeks of staring at the tree line, jumping at every creak of the house, waiting for the next taunt to slip under the door.
But nothing came.
And that silence was worse than the threats.
Adrian tried to pretend he wasn’t unraveling, but I could see it in the way his jaw clenched every time he looked out the window, the way he checked the locks three times before bed, the way he gripped my hand in the dark, as if he could keep me tethered to him through sheer force of will.
We were alive, yes. But we weren’t living.
Daniel had taken that from us.
The night it happened was cold, the air biting even inside the cabin. I sat near the fire, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, staring into the flames as if they could give me answers
