Chapter 5: Whispers in the Walls

Chapter 5: Whispers in the Walls

Sleep, when it finally came, was a shallow, restless thing. Elara woke in the opulent guest chamber to the unfamiliar sensation of warmth from the embers in the hearth and the suffocating softness of the bed. For a moment, she forgot where she was, reaching for the threadbare blanket of her garret room. Her fingers met smooth, cool silk instead. The memory of the previous night crashed down on her: the dagger, the vision, the cold finality of the locked door. The faint, melancholic echo she’d felt from the bed still clung to the air, a sad whisper of a previous, lonely occupant.

The lock clicked. Mrs. Thorne entered bearing a tray, her face set in its usual mask of sour disapproval. She placed the breakfast—poached eggs, warm bread, fresh fruit—on the table with a quiet thud that conveyed all her contempt.

“Lord Vance will expect you in the main hall in thirty minutes,” she announced, not looking at Elara but at a point on the wall just past her head. “Do not be late.”

Elara ate with a hunger that was now fueled by defiance rather than desperation. The food was exquisite, but it tasted like ashes in her mouth. Every bite was a reminder of her gilded cage, of the price she was paying for this comfort. Dressed again in the drab but clean linen shift, she was escorted to Lyren Vance’s chambers.

Kaelen was waiting for her outside a heavy oak door, guarded by two of his household sentinels. The hallway was silent, the air thick with a funereal stillness.

“This wing has been sealed since his death,” Kaelen said, his voice low and strained. He looked as if he hadn't slept. The grief he held so tightly in check was a raw, living thing in his eyes. “No one has entered. Nothing has been touched.”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open, revealing a room shrouded in dust sheets, looking like a landscape of pale ghosts. The air inside was stale, heavy with the scent of old books, dried ink, and a profound, lingering absence. Kaelen strode in and pulled a sheet off a large mahogany desk, sending a cloud of dust motes dancing in the single beam of sunlight piercing the heavy curtains.

“I need to know what happened in here,” he commanded, his voice tight. “I need to know what he was doing, thinking… feeling. Before he died.” He gestured to the room, to the silent, shrouded objects. “Start.”

Elara’s stomach twisted. This was a violation. This room was a tomb, and Kaelen was forcing her to be his grave robber, to plunder the last private moments of his brother’s life. But his gaze was relentless, a mixture of command and desperate pleading. She had no choice.

Her eyes scanned the room, looking for a place to begin. She avoided the large, dark stain on the rug near the fireplace, the epicenter of the tragedy. Instead, her gaze fell upon the desk. It was covered in seemingly mundane objects: a silver letter opener, an inkwell, a stack of books. She reached for the topmost book, a heavy volume of classical poetry bound in worn leather.

“This is pointless,” Kaelen said, his voice rough with impatience. “It’s just a book.”

“Everything has a story,” Elara murmured, more to herself than to him. She placed her fingertips on the leather cover.

The echo was immediate, but murky, not a sharp vision like the dagger's. It was a chaotic jumble of emotions. Anxiety, sharp and biting. The heavy, cloying smell of cheap, spiced ale and the thick smoke of a pipe blend she recognized from the taverns in the Shadow-Quarter. A flash of a face—a man with a scarred lip and greedy eyes, his hand held out expectantly. And a single, overwhelming feeling: the cold dread of a debt coming due.

Elara pulled her hand back, a frown creasing her brow. “Your brother was afraid,” she said, her voice quiet. “He was under pressure. He owed someone money.”

Kaelen scoffed, a harsh, ugly sound in the silent room. “Impossible. Lyren had a generous allowance. He managed the family’s shipping interests. He had no need for money, and he certainly didn’t consort with… tavern scum.” He spat the last words with disgust.

“The book says otherwise,” Elara insisted, meeting his angry glare. “It remembers his hand turning the pages, not to read, but because he was nervous. Waiting. He met someone from the lower city. The debt was not small.”

Kaelen’s jaw worked, his denial warring with the seed of doubt she had just planted. He turned away from her, unable to look at her, and stalked towards the fireplace. His eyes fell on the mantelpiece, where a silver box sat. Inside, nestled on a bed of velvet, was the Vance family signet ring—a hawk of gold on a field of black onyx.

“This,” he said, his voice a low command. “He never took this off. Tell me what it holds.”

Elara felt a fresh wave of exhaustion. Each reading was like giving a pint of blood. But she crossed the room and hesitantly reached into the box. Her fingers brushed against the cold onyx.

This echo was entirely different. It was a surge of pure, powerful emotion that made her gasp. It wasn't fear or violence. It was love—a secret, desperate, overwhelming love. She felt the ghost of another hand closing over the one wearing the ring, a hand that was smaller, calloused, not the soft, manicured hand of a noblewoman. She smelled the scent of rain on dry earth, of wild lavender. A whispered name brushed against her consciousness, a simple, common name: Seraphine. The love was tangled with a terrible, aching fear—the fear of being discovered, the sorrow of a love that could never exist in the light.

She stumbled back, pressing a hand to her chest as if to calm a heart that was beating with a dead man’s passion. “He was in love,” she whispered, her voice thick with the borrowed emotion.

“Of course he was,” Kaelen snapped, misunderstanding. “He was betrothed to Lady Annelise of House Thorne. An advantageous match.”

“No,” Elara shook her head, looking him directly in the eye. “Not her. Someone else. Someone… forbidden. Her name was Seraphine. He loved her, but he was afraid. Their love was a secret that could have destroyed him.”

Kaelen stared at her, his face pale, his aristocratic composure completely shattered. First a secret debt, now a secret lover. The brother he knew—dutiful, honorable, transparent—was dissolving before his very eyes, replaced by a stranger. The perfect portrait of Lyren Vance was cracking, revealing a complex, hidden life beneath.

Elara felt a dizzy spell wash over her, and she leaned against the desk for support. Her gaze fell upon a small object half-hidden behind a stack of papers, something so out of place in the opulent room that it drew her eye. It was a small, crudely carved wooden bird, no bigger than her thumb. It was the work of an amateur, whittled with care but little skill. It didn’t belong here. On a desperate impulse, driven by a need to understand the man, not the lord, she reached out and picked it up.

The final echo was the quietest, and the most devastating. It held no other people, only Lyren himself. She felt the rough wood under his own fingers, the slide of his knife shaping the tiny wings. She felt his quiet focus, the small, sad smile on his face as he finished it. And then, a powerful memory: him