2025-08-26 16:39:26Grey hadn’t been to the west wing in years.
Even as a boy, before the memories blurred and the guardians tightened their grip on what he was allowed to see, that part of the estate had been off-limits. The doors were always locked. The windows sealed. And the halls beyond were said to be unsafe—too fragile, too old. Lies. All of it. Now, walking past the faded portraits and tarnished sconces, he could feel something shift. Not physically. Emotionally. Like the walls themselves were watching. The key in his pocket was cold. Too cold for brass. He pulled it free and studied it under the faint moonlight filtering through a high, dust-covered window. Old. Iron. Hand-cut teeth. Not the kind of key you gave to staff. He paused outside the final door. Carved mahogany. Faded crest at the top—one he hadn’t seen since childhood. Two roses. Twined around a sword. He didn’t remember what it meant. But something in his chest twisted. Grey turned the key. The lock clicked open with a soft, reluctant groan. The air beyond was stale. Undisturbed. He stepped inside and flicked on the wall sconce. Dim yellow light hummed to life. And there it was. A nursery. Not pristine. Not ruined. Just… frozen. Two small beds sat side by side, identical in shape but painted different colors—one pale blue, the other soft rose. A wooden chest sat between them, its lid closed and dusty. A shelf of faded books leaned unevenly along the back wall. And above it all, a mobile still hung from the ceiling, motionless despite the slight draft curling through the open door. Grey’s throat tightened. He stepped further inside and ran a hand over the closest bedpost. It creaked faintly under his fingers. No cobwebs. No animal droppings. The room had been maintained. Preserved. But by who? He moved toward the chest and knelt beside it. Inside were fragments of another life. A doll’s head. A toy plane. A music box with a cracked lid. He picked it up, turned the key, and let it play. A haunting melody danced from its gears. One he’d heard only in dreams. The same song Lana had quoted the night before. Alana Rose and Grey at play… Hide and seek and run away… His hand froze over the music box. So it wasn’t just a dream. It had been real. They’d played here. Laughed here. Before everything changed. A thud behind him made him jolt. He turned—nothing there. Just the door creaking slightly from the draft. He stood and closed the lid on the toy chest. Then he noticed something tucked beneath one of the pillows on the rose-colored bed. A small book. Leather-bound. Worn edges. He picked it up and flipped it open. Handwriting filled the pages—looped, feminine, hurried in places. A diary. Dated entries. The first line: They’ll come for her tomorrow. They promised I’d keep one, but now they want both. His blood chilled. He flipped to the next page. I marked the boy’s file. I switched the tags. If they only take one, let it be him. She deserves a chance to grow free of all this. They won’t check the blood twice. They never do. The ink blurred there, like the page had been touched while wet. Grey sat heavily on the bed. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t his mother’s—or the woman he thought had been his mother. This was someone else. A guardian? A nursemaid? A sister? The diary went on for a few more pages—most of them vague, talking about watching from windows, overhearing arguments behind closed doors, “the twins” being too close, too bound. One line stood out: If they ever remember each other, everything we’ve built will burn. Grey closed the book. He rose, stepping back toward the door—but something caught his eye in the cracked mirror beside the bookshelf. A word. Written in the dust. “Run.” He blinked. It wasn’t there a second ago. A voice echoed behind him—his own, from memory. We have to go now, Alana. Before they come back. But no one was in the room. Just the silence. And the steady pulse rising in his ears. He turned and left the nursery, locking the door behind him, tucking the key and the diary deep into his coat. Whatever this estate was hiding— It had just taken its first breath.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
You may also like
