Chapter 5

The sun had risen fully by the time Lilith sat before her breakfast tray, her hands unmoving on her lap. The maids moved around her in quiet efficiency, folding linens, tidying the chamber, their faces polite but distant.

She lifted her hand to her cheek, where the sensation of a dream-touch still lingered.
‘Those touches felt familiar but still distant…’
Except it hadn’t been a dream. The maid had confirmed it—he had entered her chamber, only to vanish before dawn.

Her new husband. A man she was forbidden to approach. A man who would not even look at her at the altar.

And yet… he had come.

Why?

Her spoon trembled faintly as she reached for it, her appetite lost beneath the weight of the thought. She had been told she would be invisible to him, unseen, unwanted. But if that were true… then why had his shadow crossed her room in the dead of night?

Lilith pushed her breakfast tray away, the untouched food gleaming under the morning light. She could not eat. She could not think. Not without the memory of last night pressing against her like a weight.

The Duke of Dreadborne.

Her husband in name, a stranger in every other sense.

She had expected distance—had prepared herself for a cold, loveless union that would chain her to his house but never to his heart. She had steeled herself against silence, against being forgotten in a manor already drenched with shadow. But she had not prepared for the contradiction of him—his vow that she was forbidden, yet his presence lingering in her chamber like smoke that would not fade.

Her fingers brushed her cheek again. That fleeting warmth… as though he had touched her to be certain she was real.

A soft knock interrupted her thoughts. The door creaked open, and one of the older maids stepped in, bowing her head.

“My lady, the Duke has left for the barracks. He is not expected to return until dusk.”

Lilith’s breath caught. Relief should have come—relief at being spared of his daunting presence. Instead, a sharp sting of disappointment pierced her chest. She masked it quickly, forcing her voice steady.

“Very well. I want to go for a walk.”

The maid nodded and withdrew, leaving Lilith alone once more.

Her gaze drifted toward the tall windows, beyond which the grounds of Dreadborne stretched wild and unwelcoming.

She had been told she was free to wander so long as she did not cross into the Duke’s wing of the manor. Free. The word tasted bitter. What freedom was there, in a house where even her husband’s eyes would not rest on her?

And yet last night proved one thing—he saw her. Perhaps not in daylight, perhaps not in the eyes of others, but he had sought her in the one moment when no one could know.

Why?

Lilith rose, her chair scraping softly against the floor. Her steps carried her across the chamber, restless, uncertain. Her husband was like the walls of this manor: vast, impenetrable, and cold. But unlike stone, he had a heartbeat—she had felt it in the silence he left behind.

If she were to survive this marriage—this life—she would need to understand the man behind the mask.

Her fists curled against her skirts. She remembered the whispers that had followed her carriage on the way to this place. The mad duke. The cursed warrior. The shadow prince. None of it explained the hand that had lingered against her skin with such forbidden tenderness.

Somewhere deep inside, fear tangled with something else she dared not name.

Resolve.

If Magnus Asher Dreadborne would not let her near in the light of day, then she would search for the pieces of him he could not hide—the ones left scattered in the silence of this manor.

* * *
That very night Lilith entered the west wing, the place she was forbidden to enter.

The west wing was colder than she imagined, hushed like a cathedral, its silence too deliberate to be natural. Lilith’s slippered steps echoed faintly as she moved down the corridor, her heart drumming harder with each one until she stopped before the heavy door she knew must be his.

When it opened, she felt his presence before she saw him. A shadow against the window, tall and broad-shouldered, the faint glint of steel catching the candlelight where the mask cut across his face.

Her breath trembled, but she forced stillness into her body, folding her hands before her like the perfect noblewoman she had been groomed to be.

“My lord,” she began softly. Calm. Measured. “I will only take a moment of your time.”

He didn’t turn.

She drew in a steadying breath. “When I entered this house, your steward laid down the rules. That I was never to address you. That I was never to cross your path, nor enter this wing.” Her gaze lifted to his still figure, her voice gaining strength though it remained calm. “And yet, on our wedding night, you entered my chamber. You touched me.”

The silence thickened.

Her fingers tightened around her skirts, but her voice did not falter. “If I am forbidden to speak to my husband, then why was I spoken to in silence that night? If I am forbidden to cross your path, why did you cross mine?”

Finally, he turned, the shadows pulling away from him as his masked face came into view. His presence filled the room—unbearable, suffocating.

Lilith lowered her head respectfully, but her words carried iron beneath silk.

“Though my father has fallen from favor, though I am no longer promised to the crown prince, I am still the daughter of House Duskbane. I may not deserve a throne, but I do not deserve… a wedding without vows. A groom who refuses to acknowledge me.”

Her chest rose and fell, steady despite the storm inside her.

“Tell me, Your Grace. Have I erred so gravely to warrant such dishonor?”

For a long, dreadful stretch, he said nothing. She thought perhaps he would remain stone forever, an unmovable figure carved into silence.

But then—hoarse, low, unused—his voice broke the stillness.

“No.”

The single word struck harder than a speech.

Her lashes fluttered, but she held her composure. “Then why?” she asked gently.

“Why subject me to rules that cage me away from my own husband? Why break them yourself, if you believe they must be kept?”

He stood utterly still, save for the slow rise of his chest. At last, his voice came again, ragged and weighted.

“Not mine.”

Lilith’s breath caught. “Not your rules?”

His silence was an answer in itself.

She stepped closer, her calm slipping into a quieter, aching plea.

“Then whose? And why must I adhere them if they don’t come from you?”

This time he did not speak. He only moved—closer, each step slow, deliberate, until the space between them collapsed. The heat of his body pressed into her awareness, the edge of his mask tilting down toward her cheek. He didn’t touch her. Not quite. But the air shivered between them, as though he were close enough to brand her.

Lilith’s lips parted, though her voice remained composed.

“You cannot ask me to live in silence, my lord. Not forever. You may cage me in those rules, but you cannot erase my existence.”

The mask lingered above her skin, a ghost of contact. His voice, when it came again, was so faint it felt like a confession dragged from a man who had forgotten how to breathe.

“I know.”

The silence dragged heavy after his last whisper, “I know.”

Lilith stood her ground, her spine straight, her voice calm though her heart thundered.

“Then why did you bind me with silence if you do not mean to dishonor me? Why make me a stranger in my own husband’s house?”

Magnus did not answer. His masked gaze burned into her, unblinking, his hand tightening against the hilt of the knife resting at his hip as though restraining himself from reaching for something else entirely.

Her words lanced deeper than any blade. You cannot erase my existence.

That was what he feared the most—that his hunger for her would not let her breathe, that she would see the violence in him and flee.

The rules… they had been his own command but it was not entirely his, it was his brother’s counsel whispered in his ear. Distance will protect her. Discipline will buy you time. Yet discipline was shattering before her calm defiance, the kind that tempted him far more than fear ever could.

Lilith bowed her head faintly, her tone respectful but firm.

“If I am not to be treated as a wife, then at least treat me as a person. Do not come to me in shadows only to vanish again.”

Magnus’s jaw clenched. His silence stretched long enough to wound, but then, rough as stone ground against stone, he forced two words out.

“My fault.”

Her eyes lifted, wide, but he did not elaborate. He couldn’t. His chest burned with the need to say more, to confess that he had watched her since she stepped into his hall, that he had memorized every flicker of her lashes and the way her fingers curled around her teacup, that the urge to claim her had been tearing at his bones long before their vows.

But he said nothing.

Lilith drew in a breath, gathering herself. She did not lash out—she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her wounded. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and inclined her head.

“Then I shall not trespass again, my lord.”

She turned to leave, and something inside him cracked. His hand twitched forward, almost catching her wrist—almost—but he stopped, his fingers curling tight enough to whiten the knuckles.

He let her walk away.

But as the door closed softly behind her, his whisper bled into the empty chamber.

“Mine.”

Only the walls heard it.