His Narcissus Bride

She forgot him. He built an entire empire to make her remember.

When Cora-Lynn Wood was nine years old, her mother rescued her from a past she can't recall.
For so long she's lived inside that silence- new name, new city, no memories before the rescue. But when her childhood best friend attacks her in the woods during a party on Halloween, her carefully walled world begins to crack. Everywhere she goes narcissus flowers appear- on her doorstep, at her work, even on her pillow- pink petals whispering of things she can't remember tinged with blood.

Cora thinks she's going crazy, but what the girl doesn't know is that someone has been watching her. A myth hiding in the dark waiting for the moment he can claim the promise she made him. He never touches her. Never speaks her name. But he's there- in the reflection on her TV, in the news stories that twist her truth, in the eyes of strangers who always seem to know her face. He's the shadow that turns up wherever she runs, the one who plants the flowers that make her remember without remembering why.

And when her attacker is released from prison three years later, the danger moves closer. He tells himself he's protecting her. That he's keeping her safe from the world that once took her away. That she needs to be punished for forgetting her promise. To him, she isn't just his woman to be protected- she's a memory that betrayed him, a Bride who turned her back on eternity. He tells himself he's guarding her from the dangers she can't see, but his protection is like its own kind of punishment. Every flower he leaves, every whisper he bends the world to deliver, is both a warning and a reminder: she was his once, and she will be again. Because in his eyes, vows don't fade. And no matter how many lives she lives, a Bride of the underworld never truly escapes her fate- or her groom.