The voice came harsher this time, coiling through my mind with such force that I actually winced.
I stilled, pressing my fingers against my breastbone as I fought for air.
“Stop that,” I hissed under my breath.
I turned away with considerable effort and began the walk home—my mind filled with amber eyes, an unusual servant who barely seemed human, and an uncomfortable certainty that I had been in that house many times before.
The loneliness followed, as it always did. A hollow absence pressed against my ribs with each step, and beneath it, quieter but no less persistent, my little companion whispered that I was walking away from something I desperately neededto remember.
Chapter 3
Iarrived at Ambrose House the following afternoon with a single trunk containing everything I owned that mattered, which amounted to very little.
A few dresses, all in muted shades of gray and navy, chosen less for beauty than for their ability to conceal soil and stains. My father’s journals, the ones I could still bear to read without feeling the crushing weight of his absence. A tintype photograph of him in his prime, standing proudly beside an orchid he had spent five years cultivating, and a leather-bound book of pressed flowers we had assembled together when I was small, each fragile specimen flattened between the pages, preserved long after its life had been extinguished.
Preserved.
A prettier word for decay delayed. The rot had been postponed, not prevented. Given enough time, even the most gently kept things surrendered.
The thought lodged too easily, making itself comfortable amongst the rest of the darkness that lived in my mind now.
I tightened my grip around the handle of my trunk and continued on.
The rain had stopped overnight, leaving the world crystalline, every surface slick with puddles that glittered beneath weak sunlight. My boots squelched against the rain-beaten path as I approached the familiar iron gates, and found myself pausing again to study the curling vines worked into the metal. Recognition moved through me in a slow, disorienting wave, blurring my vision for a breath before retreating.
I inhaled deeply and forced the feeling down before it could take hold, continuing up the path as I dragged my trunk behind me. Its weight caught and resisted with each step.
The discoloration in my fingers had receded overnight, leaving only an obscure shadow beneath my nails. I was grateful for small mercies, even unreliable ones. The unpredictability gnawed at me more than the affliction itself. I was unable to anticipate when it would appear, nor control its progression or retreat. My body seemed suspended in some indecisive state, unwilling to commit fully to life or death, and so it lingered uneasily between the two.
It was an inefficient compromise, I thought wryly. Death should at least have the courtesy to be decisive.
I flexed my fingers inside my gloves, willing blood back into them before lifting my hand to knock on the door.
It opened at once.
Hawthorne stood before me once more, tall and strange, and motionless, his depthless eyes unblinking.
If I watched him long enough, would he ever blink?
The thought formed automatically, but my companion offered no commentary. Perhaps even it found Hawthorne beyond interpretation.
In the daylight filtering through the open door, I could see him more clearly than I had the day before, and the clarity was not reassuring. Beneath his pale skin, thin lines ran along the surface—too symmetrical to be capillaries, branching in patterns that reminded me of root systems mapped in my father’s botanical texts.
I shook my head, almost smiling at the absurdity of the comparison.
“Hello, Hawthorne,” I said, projecting my voice clearly in case he was simply hard of hearing.
He did not respond. There was not even the slightest indication he understood my greeting, but he moved aside to allow me entrance.
I stepped inside, dragging my trunk over the threshold with more effort than dignity, and Hawthorne maneuvered around me to close the door.
“Oh, you poor dear!”
The voice came before the woman herself, warm and bright, incongruous with the house’s shadowed quiet. She emerged from deeper within, wiping flour from her hands onto her apron as she approached. She was perhaps in her fifties, with graying curls pinned neatly at the nape of her neck and cerulean eyes that seemed soft despite the quickness with which they took in every detail of my wind-swept appearance.
“You should have sent word,” she scolded with motherly concern. “Hawthorne would have fetched your trunk. Look at you. You're absolutely winded!”
“Oh no, I am fine, truly,” I assured her, though my lungs still struggled to find a steady cadence. “I did not wish to be any trouble.”
