I was twenty-two the first time the night learned my name.
Before that, I was only "Mira Vale, the quiet girl from the bookshop," the one people passed without remembering. I lived above my aunt's store, watered her wilting roses, and pretended I didn't feel the walls of my life closing in like patient hands.
Nothing extraordinary ever happened to girls like me.
At least, that's what I believed.
The summer it began was unbearably hot. The kind of heat that made the town lazy and reckless, that loosened tongues and unbuttoned collars. Even the sea smelled different—heavier, sweeter, as if it were breathing secrets into the streets.
That was when the dreams returned.
I had them as a child, then lost them during the sensible years when school and work and reality drowned out magic. But that July they came back sharper than before, cutting through my sleep like silver blades.
In the dreams I stood inside a house I had never seen.
Tall windows. Dark curtains. A staircase that curved like the spine of some elegant beast. And always, at the top step, a man waited for me.
He never spoke at first. He only watched, as if learning the shape of me, the way one studies a painting they intend to steal. I felt his attention like warm breath along my throat.
I began to wake up aching for a stranger.
The morning after the third dream, I found a key on my pillow.
Old iron. Too heavy to be decorative. Warm to the touch as though someone had just pressed it into my palm.
I asked Aunt Clara if she'd left it there while I slept. She only frowned and said I needed more fresh air and less imagination. Customers came and went, buying postcards and secondhand novels, and life pretended to stay ordinary.
But ordinary things don't leave keys where dreams have been.
---
The man appeared in daylight a week later.
It was near closing time. The bell over the bookshop door gave its tired little ring, and I looked up from stacking a tower of romance paperbacks with shirtless dukes on their covers.
He stepped inside like he already owned the air.
Dark coat despite the heat. Hair the color of wet ink. His face was not beautiful in the gentle way poets describe; it was sharp, deliberate, as if carved by someone who disliked softness.
And his eyes—
God, his eyes.
They were the exact shade from my dreams.
"Good evening, Mira Vale," he said, and my name sounded intimate on his tongue, as though he had practiced it in private.
I should have asked how he knew me. I should have felt fear. Instead a foolish warmth spread through my ribs.
"Do I know you?" I managed.
"Not yet."
He walked between the shelves, fingertips brushing the spines like he was greeting old friends. The air seemed to follow him, cooler, scented faintly of rain.
"I'm Adrian Blackthorne," he added. "I've recently returned to town."
Blackthorne.
The name belonged to the abandoned manor beyond the cliffs, the one teenagers dared each other to visit after midnight. My grandmother used to say the house had moods the way women did.
"You're from that family?" I asked before I could stop myself.
A smile touched his mouth. "Guilty."
He bought nothing, only asked about me—what I liked to read, whether I believed in fate, if I had ever wanted to leave this place and never look back. The questions were too personal for a first meeting, yet they felt natural, as though we were continuing a conversation started long ago.
When he left, the shop seemed emptier than it had before he entered.
On the counter lay a single white rose.
I didn't remember him holding one.
---
That night the dream changed.
This time he spoke.
"You found the key," he said as I reached the top of the staircase. His voice wrapped around me, velvet over steel.
"Yes."
"Then you know you were meant to come."
He offered his hand. I noticed the faint scar along his thumb, the kind left by broken glass or a desperate grip. I took it without hesitation.
The house unfolded around us—rooms blooming one after another like dark flowers. Music drifted from somewhere unseen, an old waltz that made my body remember steps I had never learned.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
"Someone who has waited a very long time for a woman brave enough to open a door."
He touched my cheek then, and the dream became unbearably real. I felt the warmth of his skin, the calluses, the slow way his thumb traced my lower lip as if asking permission.
When I woke, the taste of him lingered on my mouth.
---
Adrian began visiting the shop every few days.
He brought excuses: a book he wanted, a map of the coast, once even a broken music box he claimed needed a temporary home among stories. Aunt Clara adored him instantly. Customers straightened their backs when he entered, as though the room demanded better manners.
With me he was different—softer, amused, attentive in a way that made my pulse misbehave.
We spoke about ordinary things at first. Then about the pieces of ourselves we usually kept hidden. I told him how I felt like a life half-lived, how I feared I would wake one morning already old without ever having been wild.
He listened like my words mattered more than breath.
"You're not meant for small days, Mira," he said once. "Some women are storms wearing skin."
No one had ever looked at me and seen weather.
The attraction between us grew teeth.
I felt it whenever his fingers brushed mine while exchanging coins, whenever he leaned too close to read a title over my shoulder. The space between us became a living thing, warm and restless.
Still, he never crossed a line.
Not until the night of the festival.
---
The town celebrated the sea every August with ridiculous enthusiasm—lanterns strung like captured stars, stalls selling fried dough, couples pretending not to search for places to kiss.
Lila convinced me to go, stuffing me into a red dress that clung more than I was used to. "You have a body, Mira. Let it breathe," she scolded.
Adrian found me near the pier.
For a moment he simply stared, and the crowd blurred around us. I felt beautiful under that gaze, dangerously so.
"Dance with me," he said.
"I don't know how."
"Then we'll invent it."
His hand settled at my waist, confident and respectful at once. The music was loud, but all I heard was the rhythm of him. We moved slowly, as if we had all the time in the world while the rest of the town hurried toward tomorrow.
"You haunt my sleep," I confessed before courage deserted me.
His expression darkened—not with anger, but with something deeper. "And you haunt mine."
Fireworks cracked over the water. The sky turned brief daylight. He drew me closer, and I understood that some choices happen long before we recognize them.
"Kiss me," I whispered.
He did.
The world narrowed to the press of his mouth, the careful way he tasted me as though afraid I might vanish. It was not gentle, yet it was not rough; it was honest, and honesty can be fierce.
When we parted, I was shaking.
"Come home with me," he said quietly.
I knew he meant the manor. The place of stories and rumors. The house from my dreams.
Every sensible voice inside me screamed to refuse.
I went anyway.
---
Blackthorne Manor was awake.
Lanterns burned along the drive though no servant greeted us. The door opened before Adrian touched it, and warm air spilled out scented with cedar and something sweeter I couldn't name.
Inside, the staircase waited exactly as in my dreams.
"You've been here before," I breathed.
"In a manner of speaking."
He led me through rooms filled with sleeping dust and elegant furniture, until we reached a chamber overlooking the cliffs. The sea roared below like a jealous god.
"This house has been lonely," he said. "So have I."
He removed his coat and hung it with careful hands. I suddenly felt shy, aware of the thin straps of my dress, the quick beat of my heart.
"We don't have to—" he began.
"I want to," I interrupted, surprising us both.
Desire is a strange teacher; it makes brave students.
He approached slowly, giving me time to change my mind. I didn't. His fingers brushed my shoulders, tracing the path of the straps as if learning a map.
"You're certain?"
"Yes."
The word opened something in him. He kissed me again, deeper now, unhurried. The room seemed to tilt, the ocean applauding far below. I felt cherished, not claimed—invited rather than captured.
Clothes became unnecessary things, shed with laughter and trembling hands. He treated my body like a language he intended to study all night, and I answered in sighs I didn't recognize as my own.
Outside, the waves kept their ancient rhythm.
Inside, two lonely people discovered they fit together in ways the world had never bothered to teach them.
Later, as I lay against his chest listening to his heartbeat, a thought drifted through me: Nothing this perfect comes without a price.
I should have been afraid.
Instead I felt chosen.
---
Just before sleep took me, I noticed the mark.
A faint ring of silver along my wrist, delicate as moonlight, shaped like a crown of thorns.
Adrian saw me staring.
"It's only a promise," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the place.
"A promise of what?"
His eyes held shadows the lamps couldn't reach.
"Of becoming my bride."
The house sighed around us, pleased.
And somewhere in the dark corridors, a door I had never noticed slowly closed.