The words fell from Agnes's lips like stone dropping into a well.
"There is another."
Elara stood rigid, her pulse hammering in her throat. For a moment she couldn't even breathe, couldn't even think. The shadows seemed to lean closer, heavy with listening, waiting for her reaction.
"Another what?" Her voice cracked, fragile as porcelain.
Agnes's eyes darted toward the shattered window, as though afraid the ravens perched outside might carry her answer. "Another Veyne," she whispered. "A blood kin. The pact will not end with you, Elara. If you resist, if you refuse to choose it will leap. To them."
The silence that followed was heavier than thunder.
Elara's mouth went dry. "There are no others. I'm the last."
Agnes's face tightened. "No, child. You are not."
Elara shook her head violently, denial clawing through her chest. "My mother was an only child. My grandmother too. I've seen the records. The Veynes are alone. We are all that's left."
Agnes's lips pressed thin. "Do you think curses keep clean records? Do you think pacts honor neat lines?" She wiped flour from her palms, though they were not in the kitchen anymore just in the dim corridor outside Elara's ruined chamber, the wind whistling through the shattered glass. "There was another branch. Cut off. Forgotten. But not gone."
Elara felt her stomach twist. She wanted to laugh, to deny, but she remembered the journal pages scorched at their edges, names half-erased. Was it fire that had destroyed them or intention?
"Who?" Her voice came out raw.
Agnes hesitated, then whispered, "Your mother's cousin. She had a child."
The floor seemed to tilt beneath Elara. She had grown her whole life believing herself the last, the end of a withered tree. The idea that there was another alive, somewhere unraveled everything she thought she knew.
"Where?" she demanded.
Agnes shook her head. "Far. Too far. And yet close enough for the blood to reach."
The house groaned then, as though to punctuate her words. The walls seemed to stretch, boards yawning with that low, guttural sound Elara had heard during her ritual.
She clutched the windowsill, nails digging into the cold wood. "If I don't choose… it goes to them?"
Agnes's face was pale, eyes dark with something like pity. "The pact will not end with you. Blood calls to blood. The ravens will find the kin, whether you wish it or not."
Elara pressed her fists to her temples. The thought of some unknown relative blameless, unknowing being dragged into this nightmare twisted her insides.
"No," she whispered. "That's worse. That's worse than it taking me."
Agnes did not answer.
That night, the whispers returned.
She lay in bed, refusing to close her eyes, though exhaustion weighted her bones. The broken window had been nailed with boards, but the cold still seeped through, carrying feathers that had wedged themselves between the cracks.
The candlelight fluttered, and in the flicker of the flame, she saw a shape at the foot of her bed.
A girl.
Younger than her, with pale eyes and a nightgown stitched from another age. The girl tilted her head, her expression empty, mouth opening as though to speak. But no words came. Only a raven's croak escaped her throat.
Elara bolted upright, clutching her blanket. "Who are you?"
The girl only stared.
Then her form fractured like glass, splintering into a thousand shards, each shard filled with another face faces Elara did not recognize. A chain of girls, women, blood kin bound across time.
The shards fell inward, collapsing into darkness, leaving only the sound of wings beating inside her skull.
By dawn, Elara stormed into the kitchen where Agnes stood kneading bread as though the world had not shifted overnight.
"There's someone else," Elara spat. "I saw her."
Agnes froze, dough clinging to her wrists. "What did she look like?"
"Like me," Elara snapped. "Younger. And she didn't speak she croaked, like the ravens."
Agnes lowered her gaze, her voice low. "Then the kin has already been touched."
Elara's stomach lurched. "You knew."
"I suspected," Agnes admitted. "The pact does not wait patiently. If it sees hesitation, it plants its mark where it wills."
"So what do I do?" Elara's voice broke. "Do I track her down? Warn her? Protect her?"
Agnes's face hardened. "You do nothing. You cannot shield her, Elara. To seek her out is to draw the pact tighter."
"That's not your choice!" Elara shouted.
The kitchen door slammed open on its own, wood cracking against the wall. A gust of cold swept through, rattling the pots.
Both women fell silent. The house was listening.
That evening, unable to bear Agnes's silence, Elara descended into the cellar where old trunks were stored. She tore through records, letters, anything that might prove or disprove Agnes's claim.
Most were brittle, eaten by damp. But one envelope, sealed in wax and tucked deep into a cracked chest, had survived.
She cracked it open. Inside: a letter in her mother's hand.
Dearest Clara, it read. I write knowing we cannot see each other again. You must not bring your child here. The house is hungry, and I have given it enough. Keep her far. Keep her safe. Forget the Veyne name.
The paper trembled in Elara's hands. Clara. The name burned into her memory. Her mother's cousin. The kin Agnes spoke of.
So it was true.
And worse the curse had already reached.
That night, the dreams came harder.
Elara stood in a barren field, the same one she had seen in her vision of her mother. Smoke coiled across the ground.
A child stood at the far end of the field. She had hair the color of ravens' wings, eyes wide and unknowing. She could not have been more than ten.
The girl lifted her arms, and black feathers spilled from her sleeves like falling snow.
Elara tried to run to her, but her feet sank into the soil as though the earth itself held her fast. The girl's mouth opened and this time, words came.
"Elara," she whispered. "It is not mine."
The sky split with wings. Ravens poured down like a storm, blotting the sun, and the girl vanished beneath them.
Elara screamed herself awake.
Morning light streamed weak through the boarded window. Her throat burned raw from shouting in her sleep.
Agnes was there, sitting in the chair by her bed, eyes rimmed with sleeplessness. "You saw her again," she said softly.
Elara gripped the sheets. "She's just a child."
Agnes's voice was hoarse. "So were you, when it began."
Elara's vision swam with rage and despair. "Then I'll stop it. I don't care what it takes. I'll find her. I'll warn her."
Agnes's hand shot out, gripping her wrist. "If you drag her into this house, Elara, you will not save her. You will deliver her."
The words cut deep. Elara stared at the woman who had raised her, torn between hate and the faintest flicker of pity. Agnes was a jailer, yes but also a prisoner of the pact in her own way.
The air thickened suddenly, pressing down on them both.
From the walls, a new message scratched itself into the plaster, loud as claws on bone:
"Choose, or she is ours."
Elara's chest tightened, breath caught in her throat. The words glowed dark, then faded, leaving the silence of the house deeper than before.
Agnes whispered, trembling now: "The pact has shown you mercy long enough. If you do not bind it here, Elara it will go to her."
Elara closed her eyes, horror spiraling through her chest.
She could damn herself. Or she could damn a child she had never met.
And for the first time, she understood the true cruelty of the curse:
There was no breaking it. Only inheritance.