She stared at the vial. “You’ve been… trapped?”
Valerica didn’t move. “You died.”
The letter arrived in a pale blue envelope, the kind people used for wedding invitations or sympathy cards. No return address. Inside, a single photograph: a man standing in front of a lighthouse, fog curling around his boots like something alive. On the back, in handwriting she hadn’t seen in fifteen years: “He’s waiting for you, Val. Come home.” valerica steele dad
And then one night, he’d left his research scattered across the kitchen table, kissed her forehead, and walked toward the Atlantic with a lantern in his hand.
“You left .”
Elias Steele looked older—gray threading his auburn hair, new lines carved around his eyes—but it was him. Same crooked smile. Same calloused hands. He stood slowly, as if afraid she might shatter.
She’d spent fifteen years proving nothing was out there. She stared at the vial
He’d spent fifteen years proving everything was.