Maisie heard the scream before she saw anything, a sharp, cracking sound that sliced through the early morning hush like a whip. It was young, male, unmistakably panicked, and it ricocheted across the eastern grounds, echoing off the stone walls and glass corridors of the estate
The cry didn't just break the silence, it shattered it, slamming into the stillness of the house like a stone hurled through stained glass, sending invisible shards through every hallway, every waking soul.
She froze mid-step, her hand tightening against the cool paneled wall just past the corridor that led from the east wing. The morning light slanted through the tall windows in pale, angled beams, catching dust motes in the air like tiny ghosts.
But there was no warmth in it, only stillness. A silence too perfect. The kind that made the hair on her arms rise. It felt like something was watching her. Not someone. Something. The weight of unseen eyes, crawling just beneath the skin, old as the house itself.
The shout echoed again, louder now, closer, cutting through the air with a jagged, panicked pitch. It carried that unmistakable edge of hysteria, the kind that only followed real horror, not imagined. Somewhere outside, shoes pounded against wet grass.
The slam of a door. Another voice rising. She didn't need to ask what they'd found. Her body already knew. Her stomach had twisted the answer into a knot, tight and trembling. It wasn't just fear; it was certainty. The kind that settled in your bones before your mind could catch up. The fire. The blood. The empty chair.
The ashes. The body they never recovered. Each one was a fragment of a puzzle she didn't want to solve, because she already knew the picture it would form. The incinerator hadn't burned away everything. The scent still clung to the soil.
The trail of blood had ended at Harry's armchair, but no corpse had been found. Just absence. Just silence. And now, they'd found what was left.
Her father.
Maisie stumbled back a step, hitting the wall harder than she meant to. The impact jarred her shoulder, but she barely felt it. Her breath caught mid-throat, sharp and uneven, and for a moment she couldn't seem to inhale at all.
A roaring filled her ears, not sound exactly, more like the body's alarm, blood rushing too fast, too loud. Her vision pinched at the edges.
She pressed a trembling palm to her chest, as if she could steady the frantic beat of her heart, as if she could press the horror back down where it wouldn't rise and drown her
Behind her, the estate stirred, the calm veneer unraveling by the second. Doors screeched open one by one as servants leaned out, murmuring confused questions to one another.
Footsteps hurried across the tiled halls, too many at once to follow. Somewhere deeper in the kitchen wing, a tray crashed to the floor with a sharp metallic clatter, the sound slicing through the air like a scream that no one voiced.
The sharp scent of coffee and citrus cleaner seemed suddenly sour, out of place against the rising tide of fear. Panic didn't arrive all at once; it spread like blood through linen, blooming slowly, unmistakably.
Beyond the large window, heavy boots pounded across the lawn, muffled slightly by dew-slick grass but unmistakable in urgency. The rhythm was uneven, too many feet, moving too fast, a cluster of responders drawn like vultures to the site.
They were headed toward the edge of the property, past the shed, toward the old runoff trench behind the incinerator.
The place no one ever thought to look. Until now. The thud of each step seemed to drum against Maisie's spine, a countdown she couldn't stop.
Maisie turned sharply, her shoes slipping just on the polished floor as she pivoted. She walked fast, too fast, shoulders tight, arms rigid at her sides. The drone of voices behind her rose in pitch, questions beginning to form, but she didn't wait to hear them.
Her pulse pounded like a war drum in her throat. Almost running now, she fled down the corridor, away from the windows, away from the truth clawing its way into the light like something feral and starved.
She didn't want to see their faces. Didn't want to hear confirmation. Didn't want to be the girl who watched the end begin.
She didn't look back.
She already knew what they'd found.
And it was too late to unburn a body.
──✦──
7:42 AM – Outer Fence, Shadowed Grove
Igor crouched in the dirt, wings tucked tight against his back, not from stealth, but necessity. The torn skin beneath the joints still burned with every movement, bare and crusted at the seams where the nerve restraints had once pierced through.
Each breath tugged at the ruined flesh, sending shivers of pain down his spine.
The wounds hadn't clotted properly. Infection was setting in; he could feel the fever heat blooming low and slow in his muscles. Still, he kept them folded close, hunched low like a wounded animal watching the world from the edge of the woods, unwilling to be seen, yet unable to leave.
The greenhouse stood just beyond the grove, its shape half-obscured by mist and the wavering morning light. Through the streaked and fogged glass panes, he saw her, Gene, moving slowly between the rows. She was a ghost in motion, her outline blurred by condensation and shadow, but unmistakable.
Every so often, she would pause, head bowed, hands moving with uncertain purpose, like she was searching for something lost. The vines clinging to the walls framed her like a painting faded by time.
She didn't know she was being watched. Or maybe she did. Igor wasn't sure which would be worse.
He didn't approach.
His body ached from the nerve-severing, a deep, biting throb that pulsed beneath his skin like coals under flesh. His wings shuddered with each breath, the wounds still open, still slick with something that felt too warm to be healing. Disease lurked at the edges. He could feel it, crawling like static under his skin. And still, he crouched low, unmoving.
His head was louder than it had ever been. The conditioning, the commands, the triggers, the silence that had once numbed him had fractured. Now it screamed. A thousand thoughts, a thousand contradictions, clashed behind his eyes. He no longer knew which voice belonged to him.
He wanted to run. To vanish into the trees, to bury himself in shadow and be forgotten. But he also wanted to protect. To return. To fight. To find her. He didn't know which was more dangerous: retreat or return.
Either one could kill him. Either one could make him something he feared becoming. Something less. Or something monstrous.
Igor reached into his coat with shaking fingers and pulled out the frayed edge of the ribbon.
Maisie's.
Soft, faded red, threadbare at the corners where it had once been knotted and re-knotted. She wore it to bed most nights, replacing it every so often when the fabric wore thin or snapped. It wasn't valuable.
Not in the way the Lennox family measured worth. But it carried her scent, lavender soap, something faintly citrus, and the clean linen softness that clung to her blankets. It smelled like comfort. Like memory.
He didn't remember taking it. Maybe it had come loose in the washroom, or slipped from her pillow when he was nearby, unseen. But he carried it now, clutched in his hand like a lifeline. A tether to something real. Something that hadn't tried to control him. Not entirely.
He didn't know why he still had it. Only that letting it go felt like letting go of her, of what little part of himself he still trusted.
The message he'd carved into the greenhouse bench, which one of you remembers?, still echoed in his mind, sharp and uneven like the tool he'd used to scratch it into the wood. The letters weren't perfect.
One of them had splintered the grain too deeply, and he remembered wincing at the sound it made. Almost like a cry.
It hadn't been meant as a threat. Not entirely. He wasn't even sure who it was for. Maisie. Gene. Dash. Someone. Anyone.
It was the only thing he could think to write that wouldn't give him away to the voice still snarling commands in the back of his mind.
The only way to reach them was without betraying the pieces of himself he was barely holding together.
Because the voice was still there. Still inside him. He could feel it crouching behind his thoughts, whispering contingencies. Directives. Kill-switches.
But carving those words had been his choice.
His breath hitched, caught in his throat, then forced its way out.
One shallow, broken breath.
But his.
It wasn't meant as a threat. Not entirely. It was the only way he could ask for help without betraying the voice still screaming inside him.
He breathed once.
Then vanished back into the trees.
──✦──
Maisie sat on the edge of her bed, the drawer pulled open before her like something too fresh to close. The broken collar rested inside, its matte black surface still marked. The seam where it had snapped lay uneven and sharp, the break recent enough to look angry.
Her fingers hovered for a beat before she reached in, lightly brushing the edge. The faint smear of dirt along the inner rim hadn't dried completely, proof, she thought, that he had placed it there himself. That he had touched her pillow. Gently. Deliberately. Like he didn't want to wake her.
Her throat tightened.
She whispered his name, barely audible, as though the walls might listen better if she kept her voice small. "Igor." She did not realize, after all this time, that she had developed some feelings towards him, but this major event in her life had made it very complicated.
The syllables slipped from her mouth like something sacred, and as they did, she felt it, a shift in the air.
A pressure behind the walls. A sound. It wasn't loud. Just the softest scuff, like a breath catching in the old bones of the house. But it was enough.
She froze.
Didn't scream. Didn't call for her brothers or Gene or the servants downstairs, still buzzing over the discovery at the trench.
She just listened.
And then she said it, her voice a tremor swallowed by shadow:
"He's not gone," Maisie murmured, more certain with every word. "He's waiting."