The kitchen was silent but for the groan of the beams overhead. Dust sifted down like pale snow, coating the bread dough, the kettle, Agnes's apron.
The words still rang in Elara's ears, though no mouth had spoken them. You will choose.
Her own voice, yet not her own.
Elara pressed her hands to her ears as if she could push the sound back into silence. But the echo lived inside her head. You will choose. You will choose.
She looked at Agnes.
The housekeeper's face was ashen, her body rigid, eyes darting between Elara and the ceiling as though weighing which danger to face first.
"You knew," Elara whispered, her throat raw. "You knew it would come to this."
Agnes did not deny it.
The scratching in the beams grew louder, heavier, until a crack split across the ceiling. Plaster rained down. Elara staggered back, shielding her head.
"Elara!" Agnes shouted, lunging forward. Her flour-streaked hands gripped her shoulders with a strength that startled her. "You must not answer it."
"I didn't!" Elara cried. "I didn't say anything!"
"You thought it," Agnes hissed, voice sharp with fear. "That is enough. The house listens. The pact listens."
The words struck Elara harder than the falling plaster. The curse wasn't only in blood it was in thought, in fear, in the smallest flicker of will. Her very mind was not her own.
The groaning eased. Dust settled. The house quieted, though the silence that followed was worse, like a beast crouched in shadow, biding.
Agnes released her, hands shaking now. "You must not choose. Do you understand? To choose is to bind it further. That is how it continues."
Elara's chest heaved, her blood racing. "Then how do I end it?"
Agnes shook her head, misery written deep in her face. "There is no ending. The curse demands inheritance. It will not dissolve. Only transfer."
The words dug into Elara's bones.
She thought of her mother's journals, of the scorched pages where other women's names had been written. Each daughter had borne the curse, then passed it on. Not broken handed down.
It was not a chain to shatter. It was a torch to carry.
And now it was hers.
Elara backed away, her mind racing. "No. I won't I won't give this to another."
"You say that now," Agnes murmured, her voice brittle as glass. "But when it begins to hollow you out, when the nights grow longer and the whispers louder… you will crave escape. And it will offer you only one door."
Elara's hands trembled. She wanted to scream, to strike, to run. But the house seemed to lean closer around them, the walls heavy with listening.
Her voice broke into a whisper. "Is that why you stayed? To make sure I… carried it?"
Agnes's eyes glistened. For the first time, she looked old, her strength brittle. "It was never my choice either. I was bound to serve the Veynes until the pact claimed the next. That is my inheritance."
Elara reeled. She had seen Agnes as complicit, perhaps even loyal to the curse. But what if she, too, was trapped bound to tend the very thing that devoured each generation?
Pity warred with fury.
"You still lied to me," Elara said, her voice sharp.
"Yes." Agnes did not flinch. "Because knowledge awakens it faster. And now " she gestured toward the ceiling, to the silence that thrummed with menace "it is awake."
A sudden noise split the air glass shattering upstairs. Both women froze.
Elara's mind flashed to her room, to the raven's corpse lying lifeless on her floor.
She ran.
Up the stairs, through the yawning corridor, until she burst into her chamber. The window was shattered inward. Cold air rushed through, feathers swirling in a storm. The raven's body was gone. Only a black stain remained where it had lain, slick as tar, and on the wall above it...
New words, clawed deep into the plaster:
"You will not keep it."
Elara's knees buckled. Her stomach twisted. The words weren't just a threat they were a promise.
Behind her, Agnes appeared in the doorway, breathless. Her eyes lingered on the stain. "It's begun," she whispered.
Elara turned to her, shaking. "What does that mean?"
Agnes's voice cracked. "It means the curse will not wait. If you refuse to choose… it will choose for you."
The words fell like a noose tightening around her throat.
Elara backed against the wall, the plaster cold against her skin. Her heart raced. For the first time, she understood this wasn't only about survival. It was about control. About resisting the pull to push the burden onto someone else.
But the curse had already spoken in her voice. It knew her. It could mimic her. Perhaps, in time, it could decide for her.
Agnes's whisper cut through her spiraling thoughts: "Child… the next Veyne has already been marked."
Elara froze.
"What do you mean?"
Agnes swallowed, pale as bone. "There is another."
The house groaned above them, and somewhere outside, a raven screamed.