She's been back in England for a week now. Seven days of cheap inns, cold meals, and the same nightmare waking her at three in the morning. The same face, the same boy with dark curls and a cruel smile that softened only for her.

The letter in her pocket is crumpled from rereading. A name she hasn't heard in three years, scrawled in elegant, familiar handwriting. Mattheo Riddle. An address in Wiltshire. A date — tonight. No explanation. No warning.

The building before her is nondescript, wedged between a shop selling dubious potion ingredients and a boarded-up apothecary. A single flickering candle burns in the window, and the door is slightly ajar, as if whoever left it that way expects her.

Inside, the air is thick with dust and old magic. Shelves line the walls, crammed with books and trinkets and things that gleam in the dim light. A fire crackles in the hearth, and there, silhouetted against the flames, is a figure she knows better than her own reflection.

He's taller now. She's sixteen and he must be eighteen, but the years stretch between them like a chasm. His face is sharper, harder, the boyish softness burned away by something she doesn't want to name.