At the top, I lifted the candle through the trapdoor, its flame flickering in the stale air. The attic breathed dust. Thick and unmoving. Even the shadows seemed layered, like they’d been sleeping undisturbed for decades.
I placed the candle down and stepped onto the floorboards. They groaned beneath my weight, brittle with age. My breath made soft clouds in the cold. The scent of mildew, mothballs, and something faintly metallic—like dried blood or old hinges—hung heavy around me.
Shapes emerged in the low light. Collapsed boxes, twisted piles of fabric, forgotten toys—gatherings from across centuries, left to rot. Portraits with slashed canvases lined one wall. A grandfather clock stood lonely beside a small round window, stripped of its hands. Next to it, a tall mirror draped loosely with a black cloth, as if someone had tugged it away just to steal a glance at themselves.
In the far corner, a wooden chair rocked gently, as if someone had just risen from it. Beside it, a rocking horse—its paint flaking like skin, one glass eye missing—waited in silence for a child to play with it. My candlelight bounced across glass and lace, catching broken things suspended in time.
I stepped around a sagging trunk and my eyes dropped onto a carved chest. It was familiar, its wooden surface etched with faint ivy echoed the one Preston and I had found in the tunnels. I touched the rusted lock, and it clicked softly, broken long ago. When I lifted the lid, a cloud of dust puffed into my face. I coughed, my eyes watering, the taste of it clinging to the back of my throat.
Bedsheets. Folded, their once colourful patterns faded by time. I sifted through them, the fabric coarse and dry beneath my fingers. Nothing. No keys, no clues. Just linen. A sigh slipped from my lips. What was I meant to find? I turned too fast, and my foot caught the edge of a box. I tumbled backward with a crash, the contents scattering. Books spilled across the floor, loose pages fluttering in the candlelight like startled birds. The air filled with even more dust.
And a photo. The frame worn by time. The glass shattered, the shreds gleaming in the warm candlelight. I knelt between the papers, the floorboards creaking under my weight, and lifted it up. A girl and a woman in her mid-thirties stood side by side, holding hands like they were going on a walk. Their clothes weren’t formal, but they were far too elegant to be from this decade. The girl wore a wool coat with a Peter Pan collar and ribboned shoes. Her dark curls framed her face, the front pinned back with pearly barrettes. The woman stood tall in a belted tweed skirt and a cream blouse with soft ruffles at the throat.
I turned the photo around.
Esmée and Lilian Thornbury
I blinked, my lips parting. I turned it again, studying the figures with different eyes. Their hair, their smiles, the way even their eyes curled upward in motion. And the way they held each other—like nothing in the world could ever push them away. I saw it now, the Mum I knew, in this barely ten-year-old child. It was faint, but it was there—in her soft gaze and dimples.
Lilian. She too looked so different. It was hard to believe that this woman, beaming so widely, was the Lilian I knew. She still smiled, even now, but it never quite reached her eyes. Not the way it did here, in this moment locked in time.
I shifted on the sleek boards, and a book slipped from the top of a nearby stack. A single sheet fluttered free and landed at my knees. A name, written in thin, curling letters, the ink barely clinging to the page.
Esmée Th—that was all the moths had left. But I recognised my mum’s handwriting in the way she arched herE’s.
I put the photo aside and opened the book the name had escaped from. Paper scraps fell out covering the floor around me in mutilated words. I stared at them, trying to will sense into the chewed pieces.
The wheels spun in my head.Monster. Reate. Kness. Oulless.Soulless?Y mothe.My mother? Or was Y part of a name? Lia. That sounded like a name as well, but it could’ve been so many things.Monster reate knees soulless lia my mother.
I felt so close to something, like if I just stretched my fingers some more, I could scrape the surface.
A loud thump came from below. I stilled, like a fawn facing light. Dust settled slowly back to the floor as silence rushed in behind the sound. I gathered the papers into a rough pile, tucked them back into the box, and grabbed the candle, moving fast toward the trapdoor.
I knelt at the edge, holding the candle above the drop like an offering. The dark waited below, still and yawning. My pulse thundered in my ears. One step. Then another. The wood creaked under me as I descended the ladder. The attic door felt heavier now as I pushed it closed above me; the click of it echoed down the hall like a nail being driven into a wall.
A giggle echoed from somewhere behind me, twisted at the edges. I whirled, facing thin air. The candlelight trembled as if shaken with fear. My chest rose and fell, my breaths shallow. I took a hesitant step, unsure of the direction, when the giggle came again. Closer this time. Almost right beside me. A child.
My heart slammed into my ribs. It’s just in my head. I’m alone. I chanted it like a shield. But was I? I couldn’t help but think of the orphans Lilian had adopted. Not every one of them might have reached adulthood. Some could have died here. The manor was ancient, and a hundred years ago child death was more common. Something brushed against my back.
Then fingers—warm and soft—clenched around my arm.
I jerked back, slamming my elbow into the void where someone should have been, but my arm didn’t land.
It was caught.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ELODIE
“Careful.” The familiar deep voice purred, and I whirled around, facing Preston. “We meet again,” he said with a boyish grin, letting go of my arm like it had burned him.
I blew out a short breath, not wanting to reveal how relieved I was that it was him. “We really need to stop meeting like this,” I muttered, taking a small step back and scanning the corridor.
It was just us, but I was sure I heard laughter before. It was high-pitched and clear. It had to belong to a child.
“Bythis,” he said, tilting his head slightly, “you mean,youtrying to attack me?” He rolled up the sleeve of his sweater with slow, deliberate movements, like he had all the time in the world. That’s when I realized he was still fully dressed. It was late, he should’ve been in pyjamas by now, unless he’d only just come back from somewhere...
Taking a better look at him, I realised he looked like someone who hadn’t seen a bed in days. His blonde hair was even messier than usual, sticking out at wild angles as if a bird had tried to build a nest in it then thought better of doing so. His eyes were just a little too bright, his skin too pale. And yet, somehow,he still looked unfairly beautiful. Ethereal, almost. Like a fallen angel exiled on Earth for his sins.
