I glanced at him.
How could he be so sure?
???
Within days, the child made its entrance. The pain crested like a wave, dragging me under. I arched off the bloodied sheets as something slid from me—not with a cry, but with a sigh.
The caretaker's arms outstretched, but it wasn't the caretaker who caught the squirming shadow. Edmund's true form flickered beneath the stolen skin as the newborn drifted toward him, a blur of smoke and moonlight. Tiny fingers grasped at his cravat, the same way they'd clutched my insides.
“At last,” Edmund breathed, and the house shuddered in reply.
Chapter 6
Edmond
The morning of their deaths dawned unnaturally still. I stood at my study window, watching sunlight gild the pond's surface until it resembled molten gold. Clara had always hated it when I stared at it.
“It's just water,” she would say, pressing our son's face to her shoulder as if the mere sight might poison him.
That final day, I rode out to settle the boundary dispute with Radcliffe. My boot heels struck sparks against the gravel as I mounted, the sound making my son clap his tiny hands. Clara laughed—that bright sound I would later wake choking on frozen memories for centuries.
I never heard their sounds again.
They ambushed me where the old oak split the property line.
Radcliffe's men moved with the quiet efficiency of professionals. The first bullet tore through my thigh before I could draw my pistol. The second never came. No, they dragged me home.
“Lead's too good for you,” Radcliffe said as his gamekeeper pressed a boot between my shoulder blades. The pond's bank crumbled beneath me, swallowing my curses whole.
Water flooded my mouth, but the last thing I tasted wasn't peat or algae—it was the coppery tang of my son's blood as they had held him under before me.
Time lost meaning in the pond's embrace.
Seasons passed in the dance of dead leaves across my face. Generations of Radcliffes came to toss coins where they'd weighted our bodies with stones. I learned to savour the ripples of their fear like fine wine.
The house called to me, but its thresholds burned—salt in the mortar, iron in the foundations—every stone cursed against my return. So I took what I could steal through possession and dreams.
Women came, drawn by the manor's grim reputation. I poured myself into their dreams like poison into wine. Their wombs swelled with my vengeance, but always, their bodies rejected my children as clots of dead flesh.
Until the summer, Clara returned.
I recognised her before she passed through the gates.
Not by sight—though her face was one I had memorised in another life—but by the way the pond's surface shivered at her approach. By how my stolen caretaker's hands trembled as he handed her friend the keys.
She carried our son beneath her ribs like a secret. Not some half-formed shade, but him. The child who had kicked his tiny feet against my palms the morning Radcliffe stole him away.
She died as beautifully as she had in my memories.
Water blossomed between her lips like black roses as our son slid into my arms. The caretaker's borrowed flesh sloughed away, but I barely noticed. The pond rose to meet us, its dark waters lifting Clara's hair in a slow, swaying halo.
Her cold fingers found mine.
“Forever yours, my love,” the water sighed through her blue-tinged lips.
I stepped forward without hesitation.
The villagers still whisper about Greywood Manor.
