2025-08-26 16:42:10The cold from the cellar floor had crept up Lana’s spine, curling around her ribs like frost.
She sat with her back against the damp stone wall, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. The broken mirror lay shattered across the chamber, its shards glittering in the beam of her fallen flashlight like bits of a memory she couldn’t piece back together. Somewhere above her, the house groaned. Then — footsteps. She stiffened. A faint click. The sound of something mechanical shifting in the wall. The door creaked open. Light flooded the chamber, blinding after so much darkness. A figure appeared at the top of the stairs, haloed in dim gold. Grey. His eyes locked onto her — wide, searching, then narrowing with a sharp, familiar blend of concern and frustration. “Lana,” he said, voice low and tight. “Why would you come down here alone?” She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. He moved down the steps, two at a time, crouching beside her without hesitation. “Are you hurt?” His hand reached toward her face, hesitated, then touched her cheek carefully, brushing away a smear of dust. “You’re freezing.” “I was locked in,” she said, her voice trembling. “Someone was here. I heard them.” Grey’s hand tensed against her jaw. “Who?” “I don’t know. I saw… I saw something in the mirror. A girl. Me. Or someone who looked like me. She said things. Things I shouldn’t remember.” She expected him to dismiss it. To say she was imagining things. But he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his hand, let it slide down to her arm — warm against her skin. “I believe you,” he said quietly. She looked up sharply. “You do?” “I’ve seen too much in this house not to.” They stared at each other, the air between them no longer cold. No longer neutral. “I thought I was losing my mind,” she whispered. “You’re not,” he said. “They want you to think that. Whoever’s pulling the strings here — they’ve made an art out of erasing people.” Lana looked down at the glass scattered across the floor. “She said there’s a second birth record.” Grey went still. Then he slowly sat beside her, letting his back rest against the stone wall, their shoulders nearly touching. “I always wondered,” he said after a long moment. “Why I felt drawn to you. From the first time I saw your face… something clicked. Like hearing a song you forgot you loved.” She smiled faintly. “You were distant. Cold.” “I had to be,” he said, glancing over at her. “If I let myself feel anything, I might have remembered too much.” She turned her head toward him. “And now?” “I’m remembering.” The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was weighted. His fingers brushed hers — not by accident. She didn’t pull away. Neither did he. “You’re not like I thought you’d be,” she said softly. “You’re everything I didn’t expect,” he replied. Lana swallowed. “If the truth is as bad as it feels… if we’re connected somehow, by blood or fate or something else entirely…” Grey leaned toward her, his voice dropping. “Then I’ll find out. I’ll fix it. I don’t care what they buried. I care about you.” The words hit harder than anything she’d expected. Not sweet. Not romantic in the traditional sense. But real. Raw. And terrifying. Because she wanted to believe him. He turned toward her slowly, his face only inches from hers now. Her breath hitched. And for a moment, they weren’t heirs. Or ghosts. Or suspects. Just two people caught in the same storm. His hand lifted to her cheek again, thumb brushing just beneath her eye. She didn’t stop him. Their lips almost met— —but he paused, eyes flicking to hers, waiting for something unspoken. She hesitated. Then whispered, “I’m scared.” His voice broke around the edges. “So am I.” And that was the closest they came to a kiss. Not because of fear. Because it mattered too much. Grey rose first, helping her to her feet. His hand lingered around hers longer than necessary. “You said there’s a second birth record,” he said, slipping back into himself. “I know where it might be. But we can’t go in daylight. My uncle monitors the library wing.” “You mean the wing with the sealed filing room?” He gave her a look. “You’ve really been busy.” “I don’t like being lied to,” she replied. A faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth — something almost fond. “Then we’re on the same side.” As they left the cellar together, Lana didn’t look back at the mirror. But she felt it watching. And for the first time since arriving at the estate, she realized she no longer wanted to run. She wanted answers. And him. Maybe both would destroy her. But she’d never felt more alive.
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Chapter Eighty — What Remains of Us
By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist that clung to the trees like breath. The world outside the cabin was a blur of gray and green, silent except for the dripping of water through leaves. Grey hadn’t slept. Lana could tell by the way he stood at the window, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed on the fog. The torn page from Seraphine’s letter lay on the table between them — five words that had rearranged everything they thought they knew. You’re looking in the wrong fire. Lana rose quietly, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “You’ve been standing there for hours,” she said. Grey didn’t look away. “I keep thinking about the timeline. If Seraphine’s right — if there was another fire — then the one that killed my mother might’ve been staged. Everything since might’ve been built on that lie.” “She’s baiting you,” Lana said softly. “Or warning you. I can’t tell which.” He finally turned, eyes shadowed but alert. “There’s an old Thompson site north of here — a textile property. It b
Chapter Seventy Nine – The Warning
By morning, the storm had drained itself into a gray, exhausted drizzle. Grey was already dressed when Lana opened her eyes. The ledger lay closed on the table, wrapped once more in its oilcloth, as if putting it away could undo what it had revealed. “I need to go back,” he said simply. “There’s someone who might know more. My uncle’s assistant — Harlan. He handled Foundation correspondence.” Lana sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You think he’ll tell you the truth?” “I think he’ll slip up trying not to.” He left before she could argue, leaving only the faint smell of rain on his coat and the soft creak of the door. For hours, the cabin held its silence. Lana made tea that went cold before she ever tasted it. The ledger tempted her like a wound — impossible not to reopen. She turned the pages again, tracing the names. Some entries were marked lost in incident. Others had no endings at all. One entry, written in rushed ink, simply read: Subject relocated – location
Chapter Seventy Eight - The Ledger
The lamp had gone out sometime after midnight, leaving the hut soaked in blue-black quiet. Lana lay awake, eyes open to the faint glow leaking through the window slats. Every creak of timber felt amplified, every breath heavy with thought. Grey hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. But she knew he wasn’t asleep. He never was, not when his mind was circling the past like a wolf around a wound. She turned her head toward him. “Do you ever think,” she murmured, “that some things survive just to haunt us?” Grey’s answer was low, rasped, almost lost to the dark. “Every day.” It wasn’t a confession. It was a truth scraped raw. Silence stretched — long, heavy, pulsing with the echo of the stranger’s warning still alive in her skull: Don’t trust him fully. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have sounded so believable. Finally, Grey pushed himself upright. His outline cut against the faint glow of the dying embers. “There’s something you should see,” he said quietly. He rose, cross
Chapter Seventy-Seven — The Night Watch
The sound of Lana’s breathing steadied before it softened. Grey waited a while longer to be sure.The lamp had gone out completely now, leaving only the dim light of the moon spilling through the window — a thin, colorless wash across the floorboards. He sat where he was, on the low chair near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, listening to the quiet.Outside, the wind had eased. A faint drip of melting snow ticked against the eaves. The kind of silence that came after long violence — too still to be trusted.He should have slept. He knew that. But his body had long forgotten how.He turned his gaze toward her — the narrow rise and fall of her shoulders under the blanket, the faint line of her jaw in the half-dark. Even in sleep, she looked tense, her fingers curled into the fabric as though bracing for something.He exhaled slowly.Don’t trust him fully.The words had hit her hard. He’d seen it in her eyes — the flash of fear, the betrayal she tried to hide. He c
Chapter Seventy-Six – Ash Between Us
The wind had died down by the time Grey shut the door, but the cold clung to the seams of the little hut. The paper bag he’d brought—bread, two tins, and a thermos—sat forgotten on the table between them.Lana hadn’t moved since he came in. The card still lay near her, charred around the edges, the faint trace of smoke curling from it as though reluctant to leave.Grey crouched beside her, studying the floorboards, the shadows, the corners. He didn’t touch her. “Whoever it was,” he said quietly, “they knew how to get this close without leaving a sound.”Lana nodded numbly. Her hands were stiff, her knuckles white against her knees. “He didn’t break in. He just… stood there. Like he knew I’d wake.”Grey’s gaze flicked to her. “He?”She hesitated. “I think so. His voice was low, soft. He said…” Her throat closed. The words still felt too heavy, too strange. Don’t trust him fully.Grey didn’t push. He stood slowly, arms folded, his profile sharp against the flicker of lamplight. “And the
Chapter Seventy-Five: Shadows Don’t Burn
The silence after the storm had its own kind of violence.Grey set the paper bag down on the counter — a simple, ordinary thing, the smell of coffee and bread spilling into the cold air. But nothing about the moment felt ordinary anymore.Lana was still standing by the table, the edges of the burned card singeing her palm. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I didn’t see his face,” she said softly. “He was gone before I could—”Grey was already moving toward the window, scanning the treeline beyond the frost-glazed glass. “How long ago?”“Minutes,” she murmured. “Maybe less.”He turned back to her, his expression sharpening into that unreadable calm he wore when danger brushed too close. It wasn’t fear she saw in him — it was calculation.“He left this?” Grey asked, nodding toward the card in her hand.Lana hesitated before holding it out. The words were nearly gone, the ink burned at the edges. Grey’s fingers brushed hers as he took it — a small contact that sent her nerves sting
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