A breath caught in Elara’s throat, sharp and cold as a winter wind through ancient stones. She stumbled back from the heavy oak door, pressing a hand over her mouth, a silent gasp fighting to escape. He hadn't left. He was still there. “Where do you scurry, little bird?” Kaelen’s voice, a low rumble, seeped through the thick wood, making the very air vibrate. “Come closer. I cannot see your shadow.” Elara’s gaze darted to the sliver of space beneath the door. A shifting darkness, the distinct shape of a man’s boots, confirmed her terror. He had been there all along. The faint creak she’d dismissed as the settling of the old manor, the rasp she’d hoped was a draft – it had been him. Waiting. Watching. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic captive in her chest. A chill snaked up her spine, tightening every muscle. “Closer, Elara. To the wood. I cannot discern your scent.” “My… my scent?” Her whisper was barely audible, a fragile thing that seemed to break against the silence. “Did you not know? You carry the fragrance of bloodwort and graveyard blooms. Potent. Distinct.” **Thump!** The door shuddered in its frame. Elara flinched, reeling back as if struck. The dim glow of the gas lamp in the corridor outside flickered, casting grotesque, dancing shadows across her chamber walls. Her palms grew slick with a sudden, cold sweat. “I don’t even know who I am, Elara, without your gaze upon me.” Kaelen’s voice was softer now, muffled, as if his forehead rested against the oak. “My limbs are affixed, my heart beats, yet I cannot truly feel the pulse of life within my veins.” A rasping sound began, an unnerving, deliberate scrape. Elara’s eyes widened, fixating on the door’s surface. *Fingernails*. Rough, unkempt edges dragging across the polished wood, tearing at the varnish, leaving faint, pale lines like scars. Her bedroom felt like a cage, the walls pressing in. The man outside, a predator, seemed intent on unraveling her sanity, playing a cruel game of terror and distorted affection. “Tell me I’m not lost within a dream.” His voice was laced with a chilling plea, a raw edge of desperation that belied his earlier menace. **Thump!** His head hit the door again, a dull, sickening sound. The scraping ceased for a moment, only to resume with renewed, frantic energy. “Tell me I haven’t fractured my mind.” “Speak of my past. Any fragment. Just convince me that Lord Kaelen, the man I once was, existed beyond this fog.” **Thump!** His breathing grew ragged, heavy, audible even through the thick barrier. Elara’s mind screamed, a momentary, paralyzing thought: *He could break it. He could splinter this ancient wood like kindling.* She stood petrified, rooted to the spot. But he didn’t breach the door. He merely scraped, and thumped, and scraped again, a rhythmic torment. Cold sweat trickled down the hollow of her back. *Kind. Gentle. Polite.* Those carefully chosen lies, whispered days ago to soothe the beast, to buy herself time. She had spoken them to Kaelen, hoping to conjure a version of him that might spare her. The evidence of his present self now clawed at her door, mocking her desperate fabrication. She had only her cunning to thank that it had worked, however temporarily. “Lord Kaelen,” Elara said, her voice a brittle thread, trying to imbue it with a feigned composure. The metallic knob of her door rattled in response, a faint tremor. She laced her trembling hands together, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. “I am… I am not properly dressed,” she lied, her mind racing. “I was attending to a particularly volatile distillation. Its fumes sting my eyes, and my garments are quite soiled.” She wondered if the fabrication would hold, if her botanist's craft would serve as a convincing shield. “Perhaps we could converse at a more appropriate hour? This is hardly a suitable time.” Complete silence. The wild, violent assault on the door ceased abruptly, as if a switch had been flipped. The rapid, desperate breathing vanished. Kaelen had shifted, changed, in the blink of an eye. The abruptness was more unsettling than the rage. “Very well.” The word was a low murmur, calm, devoid of the earlier torment. It was precisely what she had longed to hear, yet it filled her with a profound, gnawing dread. Elara rubbed her cold hands together, her nerves strung taut as lute strings. “Remember to keep the door locked, Elara.” His instruction hung in the air, a chilling counterpoint to his sudden acquiescence. It felt less like a concern for her safety and more like a possessive command. Elara’s fingers reflexively scratched at the skin of her forearm, a nervous habit. A faint creak. The sound of shifting weight, the slow drag of heavy boots. Finally, Kaelen was moving away. Elara watched his shadow recede from beneath her door, a slow, agonizing crawl towards the distant end of the corridor. She tried to ease the rigid tension in her shoulders, but relief remained a distant stranger. “I should inform you, just in case,” his voice drifted back, carrying a strange, unsettling cheer. “Please, do not venture to the second floor for the next few days.” “Why ever not?” The question escaped her lips before she could catch it. “I am considering some… personal landscaping. Tend to my inner garden, so to speak. It requires undisturbed focus.” Elara blinked, a knot tightening in her stomach. A beatific smile, she knew somehow, stretched across his face, hidden behind the heavy oak. His words, delivered with such eerie pleasantness, painted a picture of something deeply disturbing, tied to his 'true self' and his torment. “Then, Elara, until we meet again.” He spoke like one who knew their reunion was not merely inevitable, but already predestined. The soft echo of his footsteps faded down the manor’s deserted corridor, leaving Elara in a silence that shrieked louder than any storm. She leaned against the cold wood of her door, unable to sleep. The next week passed in a blur of anxious nights and half-waking horrors. Kaelen did not stir from his chambers. --- Nightmares clung to Elara like grave dust, weaving through her sleep until she woke drenched in a cold sweat. Her eyes felt gritty, out of focus, weighted with a week of fragmented rest. Only when the grey light of dawn began to paint the gothic window with somber hues did the full, terrible weight of the day descend upon her. *Ah, it’s ‘that’ day…* All energy seemed to drain from her limbs even before she swung them from the ornate, frigid bed. A familiar weariness settled in her bones, a prescient ache. “Mistress Vance!” Agnes, the eldest of the manor’s few remaining servants, bustled into the room. Her face, a network of kind wrinkles, creased with immediate concern. “It’s well past your usual hour. Are you unwell?” Agnes hurried to Elara’s side, a sturdy presence. Elara’s vision swam as she tried to stand too quickly, a dizzying lurch. Agnes’s cool, calloused hand pressed against Elara’s forehead. “You have a touch of fever, child,” Agnes murmured, her brow furrowed with worry. “Why does every day bring such a burden to your shoulders? Rest today. The manor’s work can wait. There’s little enough to do with… with things as they are.” Her gaze flickered towards the closed door to Kaelen’s wing, unspoken fears hanging in the air. Elara frowned, gently pushing Agnes’s hand away. She steadied herself, clenching her hands to relieve the tingling numbness in her fingers. “Precisely, Agnes. *Little enough* means there is all the more *true* work that cannot wait.” She turned towards the small basin in the corner, her mind already cataloging the plants in her conservatory, the vials in her lab. “Nonsense!” Agnes placed her hands on her wide hips, her sternness softened by affection. “You are stubborn to a fault, Mistress. Take the day. Go to your sunroom. Just tend to your verdant children up there for today!” Elara made for the washbasin, the chill of the water a stark contrast to the burning behind her eyes. In the polished silver mirror, her reflection stared back: a slender woman with deep-set eyes, shadows etched beneath them. The wild-haired child who’d once been forced to write endless lines, her fingers cramped and ink-stained, seemed a phantom of another life. *I was born wrong.* The phrase, etched into her memory, echoed through the quiet room. She had written it, again and again, with tiny, trembling hands. Stacks of paper, proclaiming her inherent flaw, had once towered higher than her young head. Her reflection letter, a relentless penance, had consumed every spare moment until the day she’d finally escaped the cold halls of her upbringing at seventeen. “But Mistress Vance, something I forgot to ask,” Agnes said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Our… our master has been dormant for so long now. This week, and before. Does the curse truly hold him suspended, or… how does he sustain himself? Do his cells consume the very darkness of the room?” Elara paused, her hands still in the basin, water dripping from her fingers. The question, so practical and unsettling, hung between them, a grim reminder of the strange magic that bound them all to Thornbound Oath.

Chapter 17: The Scent of Bloodwort