Veylan Laurence had always been good at leaving things behind.

Homes, titles, people—he abandoned them with the same ease one sheds a coat. And yet, no matter how many times he ran, the past always found its way back, a bitter perfume clinging to his collar.

When he returned to Everlight’s city after all those years, he hadn’t planned to stay. A few meetings, a few faces, maybe a few drinks with an old friend. That was all. But Oddfellow had greeted him like a memory that never learned to die, all silk robes and champagne laughter, and suddenly Veylan wasn’t packing a bag—he was unpacking wounds.

They called it peace. This new life of council rooms and quiet evenings by the fire. But peace was just another lie told by people too tired to keep fighting. Veylan wore it well—on the outside. Inside, the rot still lingered.

He still wrote letters home.
None were returned.

And maybe that was fine. Maybe it was safer that way. He didn’t have to think about what his father was drinking, what his brother was doing in locked rooms, or what his mother refused to see. He didn’t have to remember her.

But ghosts don’t wait for permission.

And when Selene walked back into his life like a blade wrapped in velvet, every scar he’d buried split open. She smiled like nothing had ever happened, like she hadn’t left him standing in the ruins of who he used to be.

Funny, how a man can outrun a kingdom, but not the people who knew him before he became a stranger.

Now, seated among strangers who called themselves friends, Veylan wondered if he truly belonged here—or if this was just another illusion he’d built to keep the screaming quiet.

But illusions only last so long.

And some ghosts?
They come back alive.

Dedicated to enemies to lovers baddies, to the booktok girlies who thrive on Stalker romances and fantasy courts buried beneath mountains of history and war.

Trigger Warning List

• Stalking 
• Knife-Play
• Stockholm syndrome
• Depictions and mentions of rape
• Physical and mental abuse
• Masochism and Sadism
• Depictions and Mentions of Suicide
• Sexual & Verbal Harassment
• Mentions of drug abuse
• Bondage
• Dacryphilia
• Hematolagnia 
• Murder & Gore
• Menophilia
• Degrading
• Necrophilia
• Somnophilia
  
• Voyeurism