Your bridegroom is six feet under in the frozen timber, Clara, and crying won't buy your fare back to Missouri.
My triumph, a brief spark in the cold darkness, was extinguished by the sound of heavy footsteps. They weren’t coming from upstairs. They were outside the study door.
Elijah.
I froze, the rolled covenant clutched in my hand. There was no time to hide it, no time to replace the brick.
The door swung open, revealing Elijah. He held an oil lamp, its flame casting long, dancing shadows that stretched and shrank with every gust of wind rattling the windows.
He took in the study, the disturbed brickwork, my white knuckles gripping the parchment. His eyes narrowed, but his expression remained eerily calm.
“Clara,” he said, his voice soft, almost conversational. “Up rather late, aren’t we?”
He didn’t rush me. He didn’t shout. He simply walked past me, a chillingly deliberate pace, towards the hearth. My breath caught in my throat. He knew.
He reached into a hidden compartment on the side of the fireplace, a different one than where I had found the covenant. He pulled out another rolled parchment, bound with a similar faded ribbon.
“I keep a spare, you see,” he murmured, his back to me. “For… unforeseen circumstances.”
He turned, the lamp raising the shadow of his arm over his head. The parchment in his hand was clearly a duplicate, a copy of the land deed.
Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed it into the roaring flames of the hearth.
The paper curled, blackened, and vanished into a wisp of ash in seconds.
My eyes widened in disbelief. He hadn’t lunged for my document. He had simply destroyed his own duplicate, as if to show me its worthlessness.
He turned to face me fully, his eyes glinting with a cold, triumphant malice.
“You think a piece of paper can stop me, Clara?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You have always been so terribly, terribly stubborn. Just like your mother.”
He took a step closer. “Do you remember how she died, Clara? Penniless. Broken. Institutionalized. They called it ‘melancholia.’ I called it ‘weakness.’”
My jaw tightened. “Don’t you dare speak of my mother.”
“Oh, but I will,” he purred, a cruel smile playing on his lips. “She had a chance, you know. A chance to find a good husband, a chance at stability. But she kept clinging to foolish notions, to… ‘justice.’”
His gaze flickered to the covenant still in my hand. “She made poor choices. Stubborn choices. And look where it got her. And where it got you. Locked in a barren, freezing house in the middle of nowhere, clinging to a worthless scrap of paper.”
He took another step, invading my personal space. The scent of his pipe tobacco and something metallic, like old blood, clung to him.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Finding this.” He gestured to the covenant. “But all you’ve done is repeat her mistakes. You’ll end up just like her. Alone. Mad. And with nothing.”
He reached out slowly, his fingers extending towards the parchment in my hand. “Give it to me, Clara. Before you make another one of your mother’s stubborn, fatal errors.”
His words, meant to shatter my resolve, to make me doubt my own sanity and strength, instead ignited a furious spark. My mother had not been weak. She had been trapped. And I would not be.
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