The dusk did not so much fall as it rose, seeping up from the deep troughs of the sea to bleed the vibrant colours from the sky. The fiery oranges and passionate purples of the sunset cooled to a wash of deep indigo and bruised lavender, a perfect, silent backdrop to the room. Jure had not moved for hours. The leather armchair had molded to his form, a testament to his vigil. A single, low-wattage lamp in the corner cast a soft, golden pool of light that lapped at the foot of the bed but left Mirna's face in a realm of shifting shadows and twilight.
He had watched the minute changes in her throughout the afternoon. The subtle shift from a death-like stillness to a more natural repose. A slight twitch of a finger, a soft, sighing exhalation that was different from the shallow, mechanical breaths of before. Lena had come and gone twice, once with a bowl of lukewarm chicken broth that now sat untouched and congealing on the bedside table, and once with a jar of calendula salve, with which she had gently anointed the scratches on Mirna's arms and face. Jure had waved her away on both occasions, his silence a command to leave him to his watch.
His mind had been a whirlpool, circling the same unanswerable questions. Who was she? What cataclysm had deposited her, naked and alone, on his shore? The practicalities of her continued presence began to assert themselves. He would need a story for anyone who asked. A distant, unfortunate relative from a war-torn region, perhaps, traumatized into silence. He had the resources and the influence to forge documents, to create a plausible backstory. Mirna. The name was settling in, becoming real. She was no longer "the woman"; she was Mirna, his creation, his charge.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, studying her in the dim light. The salve had given her skin a slight sheen, making it look like polished marble. The simple white nightdress, so stark and pure, heightened her otherworldliness. She was a figure from a pre-Raphaelite painting, a sleeping beauty under a spell. He felt the strange, tight knot of desire and possession in his gut tighten another degree. It was a feeling more complex than mere lust. It was the awe of a collector who has finally acquired his masterpiece, the terrifying thrill of a scientist on the verge of a world-altering discovery.
It was then that he saw it. A change in the rhythm of her breathing. A slight, almost imperceptible hitch, a deepening intake of breath. Her eyelids, which had been perfectly still for so long, fluttered. Not the random, unconscious twitches of deep sleep, but a deliberate, struggling motion, as if they were weighted down with lead.
Jure froze, his own breath catching in his chest. He straightened up in the chair, his heart beginning a slow, heavy thud against his ribs. This was the moment. The veil was about to be lifted.
Her eyes opened.
It was not a sudden, startled awakening. It was a slow, dawning, like the moon emerging from behind a cloud. First one, then the other. They were unfocused, bleary with the residue of whatever profound oblivion had held her.
And then they focused on him.
Jure felt the air leave his lungs in a silent, involuntary rush. It was a physical sensation, a punch to the solar plexus that had nothing to do with impact and everything to do with revelation. He had thought her beautiful in sleep, but that was a dormant, potential beauty. This was alive. This was conscious.
Her eyes.
They were the most extraordinary things he had ever seen. Large, slightly almond-shaped, and set wide apart, they dominated her pale, delicate face. But it was the colour that stole all reason, that rendered him momentarily mute. They were not blue, not grey, not hazel. They were a clear, startling, and utterly impossible shade of violet. A deep, luminous amethyst, flecked with tiny shards of silver around the pupils that caught the faint light in the room and seemed to give off a light of their own. They were the colour of the twilight sky over the Adriatic, of the rarest, most precious gems locked away in royal vaults. They were ancient eyes, deep and knowing, yet in this moment, they were filled with a raw, primal, and utterly devastating fear.
It was the fear of a wild animal caught in a trap, of a creature waking in a cage. It was a fear so pure and unguarded that it was almost a physical force in the room.
For a long moment, they simply looked at each other. Jure, the powerful, worldly man, rendered speechless by a pair of eyes. Mirna, the ethereal mystery, trapped in a waking nightmare she did not understand.
Her lips, pale and dry, parted. A small, ragged sound escaped, little more than a whisper of air. Then, she found her voice. It was raspy, cracked from disuse and dehydration, a ghost of a sound that was nonetheless perfectly clear in the profound silence of the room.
"Who are you?"
The three words were spoken in Croatian. Flawless, unaccented, native Croatian. The shock of it was almost as profound as the shock of her eyes. He had, without realizing it, prepared himself for a foreigner, for someone who spoke English or Italian or some other language of the tourist-laden sea. But this… this tied her to this land, to his world, in a way he had not anticipated. She was one of his own. The mystery deepened, becoming more intimate, more tangled.
He leaned forward, careful not to make any sudden movements that might shatter the fragile moment. He kept his hands visible, resting on his knees, trying to project an aura of calm authority, of safety.
"You're safe," he said, and was surprised to hear how soft his own voice was, stripped of its usual command and edged with a gentleness he hadn't known he possessed. It was a tone he might use with a skittish horse or a valuable, fragile object. "My name is Jure. Jure Barišić. I found you."
Her violet eyes darted around the room, taking in the high, shadowed ceiling, the vast window with its view of the now-dark sea, the expensive, minimalist furniture. There was no recognition there, only a deepening confusion that fed the fear. This was not a familiar place. This was another layer of the nightmare.
"Where… where am I?" The rasp was still there, but a little stronger now, laced with a rising panic.
"You are in my home," Jure said, his voice a low, steady drone, meant to soothe. "On the coast. Near Dubrovnik. You were… on a beach. You were hurt. I brought you here."
He watched her process this. He saw the struggle in her magnificent eyes, the frantic searching through a void where memory should be. She was trying to access a file that was not there. Her brow, smooth and pale, furrowed slightly. She tried to push herself up on her elbows, but a wave of weakness overcame her, and she sank back into the pillows with a soft gasp of frustration and fear. The movement caused the neck of her nightdress to shift, and he saw the dark, ugly bruise on her shoulder more clearly. Her eyes followed his gaze, and she looked at the bruise as if seeing it for the first time, her confusion deepening.
"I found you," he repeated, anchoring her to the one solid fact he could provide. "Do you remember anything? The sea? A boat? Anything before you woke up here?"
He held his breath. This was the crucial question. The answer would define everything that was to come.
Her eyes, wide and terrified, locked back onto his. She searched his face, as if trying to find the answer written there. He saw the hope flicker, a desperate need to grasp onto something, anything. He saw the internal struggle, the frantic sifting through the empty shelves of her mind. A single, perfect tear welled up in the corner of her left eye, clinging to the thick, dark lashes for a heart-stopping moment before tracing a slow, silvery path down her temple and into her hairline.
It was a tear of pure, unadulterated despair.
Her lips trembled. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then tried again. The word that emerged was a whisper of profound loss, a surrender.
"No."
The single syllable hung in the quiet room, immense and final. It was the sound of a door slamming shut on a past he would never know, and a door opening onto a future he now completely controlled.
No.
No name. No history. No family. No context. She was a blank slate. A perfect, beautiful, empty vessel.
Jure felt a dizzying, almost terrifying surge of power. It was a more potent intoxicant than any rakija, any business triumph. This was not just possession of a body; it was possession of an entire identity. He had not just saved her; he had been present at her creation. The old her was gone, erased by the sea. The new her, Mirna, began in this room, in this bed, with him.
He reached out slowly, giving her every opportunity to flinch away. His fingers, broad and calloused, brushed a stray strand of dark blonde hair from her damp cheek. Her skin was impossibly soft, and at his touch, she went perfectly still, her violet eyes widening even further, the fear in them sharpening to a needle point. But she did not pull away. She was too weak, too disoriented, too utterly dependent to refuse even this small intimacy.
"It's alright," he murmured, his thumb stroking her cheekbone once, twice, a gesture of claimed comfort. "You don't need to remember right now. You need to rest. To get strong. You are safe here with me. No one will harm you."
He was making a promise he knew was a lie. The greatest harm to her, in that moment, was sitting right beside her, his hand on her face, his obsession coiling around her like a vine.
The tears came in earnest then, silent and relentless, streaming down her face. They were not the tears of someone in physical pain, but of a soul utterly lost, adrift in a void with no landmarks. She didn't sob or make a sound. She just lay there, her amethyst eyes fixed on him, as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world, and she wept.
Jure continued to stroke her hair, his mind racing ahead, plotting, planning. The doctor was now entirely out of the question. A doctor would ask questions she couldn't answer, questions that would lead to authorities, to databases, to a world that would take her from him. He could not allow that. She was his responsibility. His secret. His Mirna.
"Hush now," he whispered, his voice a low, possessive murmur. "Just sleep. I am here. I will take care of everything."
He was not just her rescuer anymore. He was her keeper. Her warden. Her god.
And as she finally closed those incredible, terrified violet eyes, surrendering once again to an exhaustion that was as much emotional as it was physical, Jure Barišić knew, with a certainty that felt as deep and cold as the sea outside, that he would never let her go.