A cool breeze swept through the Thorne estate's sprawling gardens. Elara walked slowly, her footsteps hushed on the gravel path. She pretended to admire a particularly vibrant rose bush, her eyes scanning for a familiar figure. Today, her assigned task of gathering intel on Lyra Corporation felt distant, secondary.
Finding her target wasn’t difficult. An old man, his back bent with years of labor, carefully pruned a climbing vine near the ancient stone wall. His movements were slow, deliberate, each snip precise.
'Good morning,' Elara offered, pitching her voice to sound casual, interested. 'These gardens are truly magnificent. You must be the one responsible for their beauty.'
He grunted, not bothering to look up immediately. 'Just doing my job, lass.' His voice was raspy, like dry leaves crunching underfoot.
Approaching him, Elara feigned curiosity. 'I'm Elara. I'm new here, helping Mr. Thorne with… organizational matters.' She chose her words carefully, avoiding any mention of her actual role as his assistant.
Finally, the old gardener straightened, wiping a calloused hand across his brow. His eyes, the color of faded denim, regarded her with a mixture of weariness and mild curiosity. 'Old Thomas,' he introduced himself. 'Been here longer than most of the trees.'
'Old Thomas,' Elara repeated, a small smile playing on her lips. 'You must have seen a lot of changes over the years. The Thorne family history must be quite something.'
Thomas chuckled, a dry sound. 'History? Aye, plenty of it. Not all of it pretty.' He went back to his pruning, a subtle signal for her to either leave or persist.
She leaned against a nearby stone bench, feigning a moment of rest. 'It must be fascinating to watch generations pass through these halls. Mr. Caspian, for instance. He seems… very protective of the estate.'
'He is,' Thomas murmured, his shears snipping. 'Always has been. Even as a wee lad, he had that intensity. After… well, after everything, it only got worse.'
Elara's heart gave a little thump. 'After what?' she asked, her tone light, as if making polite conversation.
Pausing, Thomas looked out over the meticulously kept lawn, his gaze distant. 'His sister, Lyra. Beautiful girl she was. A wild spirit. Full of laughter. Unlike Caspian, who was always so serious.'
Lyra. The name echoed in Elara's mind, a ghost from the past. 'He had a sister?' she managed, surprised by the raw emotion lacing Thomas's voice.
'Aye. Lyra Thorne,' he confirmed, a faint melancholy shadowing his features. 'She was younger than him by a few years. His shadow, his joy. He adored her. They were inseparable, those two.'
He sighed, a deep, rattling breath. 'Then the accident happened. A riding accident. Out near the old oak grove, beyond the eastern fields. She was a fearless rider, but that day…' His voice trailed off, thick with unspoken sorrow.
Elara felt a chill, despite the warm sun. 'An accident? Was she… hurt badly?' She pushed, gently, needing more. This was the first time she'd heard anything about a sister.
'Hurt?' Thomas scoffed, a bitter edge to his tone. 'She was gone. Just like that. Vanished without a trace. They found her horse, riderless, but Lyra… never a body. Nothing.'
His words hung in the air, heavy and dark. A missing sister. Not dead, but gone. This explained so much about Caspian's guarded nature, his underlying pain. It explained the name of the corporation.
'Vanished?' Elara whispered, the implication chilling her. 'Not… not a body? How could that be?'
'No one knew,' Thomas said, shaking his head slowly. 'The whole estate was turned upside down. Guards searched for weeks, months. But she was gone. The official story… it was a tragic accident. Fell off her horse, carried away by the river, perhaps.'
He looked at Elara, his eyes narrowed slightly. 'But some of us, we knew better. It didn't feel right. The river was low that season. And Lyra knew those woods like the back of her hand.'
'You think… it wasn't an accident?' Elara asked, her voice barely audible. Her stomach churned. This was far more complicated than she'd imagined. A missing sister, not a deceased one.
Thomas’s lips pressed into a thin line. 'All I know is, after that day, the laughter left these halls. Caspian changed. Became harder. Colder. He blamed himself, you see. For not being with her.'
'And the Thorne family?' Elara pressed. 'Did they ever recover?'
'Never truly,' Thomas confirmed, his gaze fixed on something unseen in the distance. 'Mrs. Thorne, she… faded away. Died of a broken heart a few years later, some said. And Mr. Thorne… he became a ghost in his own house.'
He paused, his hands still on the shears, but his attention was elsewhere. 'But the strangest thing…' He began, his voice dropping to a near whisper. 'Just before Lyra disappeared, there were rumors. Whispers of a connection, a secret, between the Thorne family and the…'
Suddenly, Thomas cut himself off. His eyes darted around, scanning the hedges, the windows of the manor, the distant tree line. A flicker of fear, stark and undeniable, crossed his face. He gripped his shears tightly, his knuckles white.
'Best I get back to work, lass,' he mumbled, his voice now strained, devoid of its earlier storytelling warmth. He turned his back to her, his shoulders hunched. His movements became frenzied, snipping at branches with unnecessary force. He cast one last, nervous glance over his shoulder, as if an unseen presence lurked just beyond the garden wall, listening to their every word.