Rain drummed against the windows of the old Victorian on Maple Street, but inside, the silence was heavier.

Aria Vale woke up gasping.

Not the soft, sleepy kind of waking. This was drowning. Her lungs burned, her sheets were twisted around her legs like rope, and for three heartbeats she was sure she could still smell gasoline and burnt rubber.

_Flashback._

Headlights. Two yellow eyes cutting through black.

Her mom laughing at something on the radio, fingers tapping the wheel to a song Aria couldn’t remember now.

Her dad half-asleep in the passenger seat, muttering, “Eyes on the road, Lila.”

Then the truck.

The sickening swerve.

Metal screaming.

The world flipping.

She’d been in the backseat, seventeen and invincible ten minutes before. Then she was upside down, seatbelt carving into her collarbone, glass in her hair, and the world smelled like pennies and smoke.

“Mom?”

No answer. Just the hiss of the engine and the rain starting to fall through the shattered windshield.

Her dad was bleeding. She could see it even in the dark, a wet blackness spreading across his shirt. He turned his head, slow, agonizing. His eyes found hers in the rearview mirror.

Then a shadow moved outside the car.

A man. No — wrong. Men didn’t move like that. Too fast, too quiet, like the rain bent around him instead of hitting him. He was at her dad’s window in one blink, kneeling in the glass.

Aria couldn’t see his face. Only the outline of broad shoulders and hair that dripped, black as the night around them.

Her dad’s lips moved. Blood on his teeth. “Save her,” he rasped. “My daughter. First. Please.”

The man’s head tilted. For a second, Aria swore his eyes caught the lightning and flashed red. Then he was at her door, tearing it off like it was cardboard.

She should have been scared. She was bleeding, trapped, and a stranger was reaching for her with hands that were too cold. But when he touched her, the panic stopped.

It was like falling into deep water and realizing you could breathe.

“Stay with me,” he said. His voice was rough, like he hadn’t used it in years.

That was the last thing she remembered before the black took her.

_Present._

Aria’s feet hit the cold wood floor of her new bedroom. New house. New town. New life she didn’t ask for.

Virginia. Population 8,203. Known for nothing except fall festivals and a cemetery older than the country.

She dragged herself to the kitchen, throat raw. The house smelled like Aunt Diana’s vanilla candles, always trying to cover up the must of old wood.

Aunt Diana was at the stove, her dark hair pulled back, already dressed for her nursing shift at Mystic General. She didn’t look up when Aria walked in. She never did. Grief made people careful, like if they looked too long they’d catch it.

“Water,” Aria croaked.

Diana slid a glass across the counter without a word. Her aunt’s eyes were the same green as Mom’s. That was the worst part.

“Morning,” Aria tried. The word tasted fake.

“Morning,” Diana said back. She finally looked up. “You were screaming again.”

Aria’s fingers tightened around the glass. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Diana’s voice softened a fraction. “Dr. Whitmore said nightmares are normal. After… everything.”

_After everything._ Like their lives were a book and someone had ripped out the middle chapters.

Aria took a sip. The water was cold, but it didn’t wash away the dream. The man. The way he’d moved. The way her dad had begged.

“Did they ever…” She stopped. She’d asked a hundred times. “Did they ever find the guy who pulled me out of the car?”

Diana’s shoulders went stiff. “Aria.”

“I know what Dad said. The police report said there were no other tire tracks. No witnesses. But someone got me out, Aunt D. Someone carried me twenty feet into the ditch before the ambulance—”

“There was no one else,” Diana cut in, too sharp. She exhaled, rubbing her temples. “Honey, trauma does things to memory. Your father was delirious. You hit your head. The firefighters pulled you out.”

Aria wanted to argue. She could still feel those cold hands. Could still hear that voice: _Stay with me._

But Diana had that look — the one that said if Aria pushed, she’d start crying. And Aunt Diana didn’t cry. Not since she took custody of two broken kids and moved them to Virginia “for a fresh start.”

“Where’s Caleb?” Aria asked instead, changing the subject before either of them broke.

“Your brother’s still asleep. Let him. First day of school and he was up till three playing that game.”

Caleb. Fifteen, angry at the world, and the only person Aria had left who remembered Mom’s laugh.

The kitchen clock ticked. 6:47 AM. First day at Virginia High.

Aria dumped the rest of the water in the sink. “I should get ready.”

Diana caught her arm as she passed. Her grip was warm, human, nothing like the memory of cold fingers. “We’re going to be okay here, Aria. I know it doesn’t feel like it. But we are.”

Aria nodded because that was what you did. You nodded and lied and went to school and pretended you didn’t wake up tasting blood and rain.

She didn’t tell Diana about the other part of the dream. The part that came after the man pulled her out.

How she’d been bleeding, a gash on her forehead that should have killed her. How the man had pressed his wrist to her mouth, and his skin had split open like paper.

How the blood had tasted like winter and electricity and _life_.

How she’d stopped dying.

And how, when the sirens got close, he’d looked down at her with those impossible eyes and whispered, “Forget me.”

She hadn’t.

Not for one day of the six months since the crash.

Aria went to her room and locked the door. She pulled her shirt off and stood in front of the mirror.

The scar should have been there. A jagged line from her temple to her jaw. The doctors had called it a miracle. _“Somehow it healed without a trace. You’re very lucky, Miss Vale.”_

Aria traced the smooth skin where it should have been.

She wasn’t lucky.

She was marked.

And somewhere in Virginia, a man with cold hands and red eyes was walking around, thinking she’d forgotten him.

He was wrong.