The next morning, Evelyn woke to sunlight that didn't feel right.
It poured through the curtains like liquid gold, but the warmth never touched her skin. It lit up the dust in the air, revealing motes that moved too deliberately, like insects. Like watchers.
The sheets beside her were rumpled.
She wasn't alone in the night.
But she was now.
She sat up slowly, her body sore in ways that didn't come from sleep. Her lips were bruised. Her thighs ached with memory.
Pleasure. Pain. Confusion.
She remembered Elias.
And him.
Not the same.
Not anymore.
Downstairs, the silence was too loud. Every step on the floorboards echoed like footsteps following her.
She brewed tea with trembling hands and sat at the window, watching the roses sway in the windless garden.
They were blooming black today.
She opened another of Lenore's journals. The spine cracked open like a coffin lid.
This entry was dated.
October 13, 1897.
"I have made a mistake. I thought love could root itself in grief and still bloom. I thought Elias was mine. I was wrong. The house wants him too. It's jealous. It steals his voice when he says he loves me. It turns our touch to frost. I woke this morning with a mouth on my skin and hands that were not his. I think I'm losing myself. Or being replaced. Slowly. Like ink on wet paper."
Evelyn read it twice. Three times.
It wasn't just a warning.
It was a mirror.
Later, she found Elias in the library.
He was reading, but not really. His eyes were vacant. The fire beside him didn't burn hot enough.
She stood in the doorway, afraid to step closer.
"I need to know something," she said.
He looked up. "Anything."
She swallowed. "Have I... changed?"
He watched her a moment, then rose to his feet.
"You've begun to carry her in your walk. Your voice. Your scent. You sleep the way she did—one hand curled under the pillow, the other over your heart."
Evelyn's stomach turned. "Then it's happening."
He nodded slowly. "Yes."
She crossed to him. "Can you stop it?"
"I don't know."
"But you said you wanted me. Me, not her."
"I did. I do. But this place—it remembers love like a wound. And you're bleeding into her outline."
He touched her cheek, his thumb brushing a tear she hadn't felt.
"I won't let it take you completely."
Her voice cracked. "Then do something before it's too late."
He pulled her into his arms.
And for a moment, Evelyn felt safe.
That night, the mirror in the bedroom had returned. Unbroken.
She approached it with a candle.
Her reflection blinked.
Then smiled.
And said, clearly:
"You'll understand after the first death."
Evelyn dropped the candle.
It hissed as it landed on the floor, extinguished in melted wax.
The mirror darkened. But something flickered inside it.
A memory.
No—a scene.
A man. A woman. An argument.
She saw Elias grab Lenore's wrist. Heard the pleading. The breaking. The scream.
And then—
Blood.
So much blood.
She fell to her knees.
It hadn't been the house that killed Lenore.
It had been him.
Evelyn barely remembered running. She ended up at the cliff's edge, the wind screaming louder than the ocean below.
And then he was there.
Elias.
"Don't," he said softly.
"You killed her."
"Yes."
She turned to face him. "Then why did the house keep you?"
His eyes filled with something worse than regret.
"Because it loved me for it."
Silence. Then her whisper:
"Do you want to do it again?"
His voice cracked. "No."
"Could you stop yourself?"
He stepped closer, trembling.
"I don't know."
She let him kiss her again.
Not because she trusted him.
But because she needed to taste the danger.
And when he touched her—hands shaking, mouth desperate—it felt like a man mourning a sin he would commit again, just to feel something real.
That night, Evelyn didn't sleep.
She sat at her vanity, staring at her reflection, waiting for Lenore.
She came.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same voice.
"The first death was mine," she said.
"The second… will be yours."
[End of Chapter 8]