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August stood at the gates, his hand on the iron. The weight of this place pressed down on him and into me. Every memory, every scar, every time his father's hand had fallen or his voice had cut. The house that had made him. The house that had broken him.

The others waited behind us. Garrick with his hand on his blade. Mira beside him, their bodies touching. Beatrice and Marigold, the older Bonder's arm around the younger. Ruth at the back, her pale face unreadable, her eyes fixed on me with that terrible knowing gaze.

I couldn't look at Ruth. If I looked at her, I would think about what she had shown me. And if I thought about it, I might lose my nerve.

Instead, I looked at August.

"Wait," I said.

He turned, and the moonlight found him, catching the sharp line of his jaw, the gold buried in hazel eyes that had looked at me across ballrooms and battlefields and the wreckage of everything we'd survived. The tension in every line of him, strung taut as a bowstring, as if his body already knew what his mind had not yet been told.

Beautiful. Haunted. Mine.

I crossed the distance between us in three steps and pulled his face down to mine.

The kiss landed hard. My teeth caught his lip, his hands fisted in my hair, and I pressed into him until the cold iron of the gate bit into my back through my dress. I kissed him with my eyes open because I needed to see him, needed the shape of his face against the stars burned into my memory. His mouth was warm and tasted of the bread Diana had pressed on us before we left, ordinary and devastating, and through the bond I poured everything I couldn't say aloud until he shuddered against me.

When I pulled back, his forehead dropped to mine. His breath came ragged. His confusion bled into me. His longing. His desperate need to understand what I wasn't telling him.

"Lily—"

"I love you," I whispered. "Whatever happens in there. Whatever comes next. I need you to know that I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my life."

His hands cupped my face. His thumbs brushed the tears I hadn't realized were falling.

"You're frightening me," he said quietly.

"I know." I pressed my palm against his chest, over his heart. It beat against my palm. Strong, steady, alive. "I know. But I needed to say it before we go in there."

He was quiet for a moment. Through the bond, he brushed against the closed door, the secret I was keeping, the future Ruth had shown me. He didn't push. He had promised he wouldn't.

"I love you too," he said finally. "And whatever you're carrying, whatever she showed you, we will face it together. Do you understand? Together."

I nodded. If I did anything more I would tell him everything, and then he would try to stop me.

He kissed my forehead, gentle this time. A benediction. Then he took my hand, and we walked through the gates together.

The Hawthorne estate smelled like dust and dead flowers. We moved through the entrance hall in silence, our footsteps echoing off marble floors that hadn't been polished in months. Cobwebs laced the chandelier overhead, catching the moonlight that spilled through tall windows and turning it to silver threads. It was a house in mourning.

August led us through the shadows, his shoulders tight, his jaw set. His memories pressed against me with every step. Childhood terrors seeped from every doorway, every corridor, every stone. He had grown up here. Been unmade here. The house remembered, even if he wished it wouldn't.

Ahead, a set of double doors stood slightly ajar. Warm light spilled through the gap, the first light we had seen in this dead house. Candlelight, flickering and golden.

August stopped walking.

"The drawing room," he said. His voice was barely a whisper. "My mother's drawing room."

The weight of this place hit me before I crossed the threshold. The room where Elowen had been lost. Where she had tried to save her people and instead had created the corruption that would destroy them. Years of grief and rage and guilt, all concentrated in the space beyond those doors.

The doors swung open.

And Elias Hawthorne stepped into the hall.

He looked like August.

That was the first thing I noticed, the terrible, undeniable resemblance. The same sharp jaw. The same broad shoulders. Though Elias's held none of his son's warmth. Where August's gaze could soften into tenderness, Elias's remained winter-cold. Calculating and empty of everything except hunger.

"My son," he said. His voice was silk over broken glass. "You've brought guests."