Morning came softly.It filtered through the curtains of Elias’s friend’s Hampstead flat in bands of gentle gold, warming the wooden floorboards and painting stripes across the faint dust in the air. For the first time in what felt like years, Isobel woke to quiet. Not dread. Not silence that pressed like a weight on her chest.
But quiet. Restful. Human.
She turned beneath the quilt and watched the light creep across the windowsill, illuminating a single vase of fresh wildflowers, placed there, she suspected, by Elias. Her muscles ached pleasantly from tension long held, now finally beginning to release. The chill of the night at Highgate still clung to her skin, but in its place was something else. A pulse. A hum. The strange and surreal awareness that she had not only survived her own death but stood at the edge of something more terrifying and miraculous.
Life.
For years, she had hidden beneath a veil of ash and survival. But last night, dressed as a ghost among the tombs, she had found her voice. She had haunted the man who’d once owned her fate, and watched him run.
Isobel let out a slow breath. And then a soft knock stirred the quiet. She sat up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. “Come in.”
Elias stepped into the room, his sleeves rolled up, his shirt open at the throat, curls still damp from a basin shave. He carried a tray of tea, toast, honey, and what looked like two perfectly poached eggs.
“I brought breakfast,” he said, giving her a tired but unmistakably smug smile.
“You cooked?” she teased.
He placed the tray at the foot of the bed. “I bribed a baker with charm and an out-of-date war medal.”
Isobel chuckled and took the cup from the tray, cradling it between her hands. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know,” he said, sinking into the chair near her bed. “But I wanted to.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them was quiet, warm. Something had shifted. Something permanent.
She sipped her tea, then looked at him. “Do you think it worked?”
“Oh, it worked,” Elias said. “By the time I returned to the flat last night, Norton had already sent a messenger to his lawyer. The man’s in a panic. He thinks the vault is real.”
Her lips twitched. “Itisreal.”
“Which is why we’re going to find it.”
The humor drained slightly from her expression. “Elias, it’s been five years. The estate was boarded up. What if the vault has been destroyed?”
“Then we’ll see for ourselves,” he said. “But if there’s even a chance that what your father left still exists—and that we can use it to destroy Norton’s claims once and for all—we owe it to you. And to him.”
Isobel set her tea aside. “Then give me time to dress and we will leave to find it.”
After an hour, they entered the grounds of Fairfax Hall. It hadn’t changed in five years. Not truly. But it felt smallernow. Grayer. Like it had shriveled in her absence. Weeds had overtaken the front gates, their tendrils crawling up the iron bars like desperate hands. The gravel drive was choked with moss, and the windows, once gleaming with candlelight, were now smeared with dust and the faint outlines of birds. Her chest tightened as she stepped from the carriage.
She remembered everything. The echo of her heels across the foyer floor. The shouts in the corridors. The firelight glowing behind Norton’s silhouette, tall and cold. She remembered the weight of the ring he’d tried to force on her hand. The scream of the maid who died in her place. And then running into the trees. Into smoke and silence.
Now she walked forward. Elias stood beside her, not touching, but close enough that the air between them buzzed.
“You don’t have to go inside,” he said.
“I do.”
The key still worked. The door groaned open like a beast reluctantly waking. Dust exploded into the air with their first steps. The smell of old wood, ash, and time was overwhelming. Sheet-draped furniture loomed like ghosts. The grandfather clock in the foyer was stuck at three forty-seven… when the fire began.
Her feet moved of their own accord, it seemed. Up the staircase. Down the east corridor. Past the scorched tapestry where flames had licked the wall but not destroyed it. And then to her father’s study.
The door stuck, warped from heat and age. Elias braced his shoulder against it and pushed. It gave way with a reluctant shudder.
The room was almost exactly as she remembered. Bookshelves lined the walls, their spines faded but intact. A thick layer of dust blanketed everything—the desk, the armchairs, thedecanter tray. One window had cracked during the fire and never been repaired. Wind moaned through it softly, like a sigh.
Isobel crossed to the far shelf. “It’s here,” she whispered, running her fingers along the third row.
