The fire was out by morning.
Only the stone bones of the house remained—smoking, skeletal, jagged against the sky.
Evelyn stood barefoot in the garden. Mud caked her ankles. Her clothes still stank of smoke and roses.
Elias knelt nearby, his shirt soaked with blood and ash. His hands trembled, though he tried to hide it.
Neither of them spoke.
There was nothing left to say about what had burned.
But something still lingered in the silence between them.
Not Lenore.
Something deeper.
Evelyn finally broke the silence.
"I thought it would end with the house."
Elias didn't look at her. "It never ends with the house."
She stared at her hands. The blood was gone, but they still shook.
"I feel her. Even now. Not in the mirrors. Not in the walls."
She pressed a hand to her chest.
"She's in me."
Elias nodded.
"Now that the house is gone, you're all that's left of her."
They drove into town that afternoon.
It felt wrong. Too bright. Too loud. Too modern.
She watched families at the diner window, children laughing. A couple holding hands. Everything so normal it was obscene.
"I don't belong here," she muttered.
Elias looked at her from across the booth.
"You were never meant to stay human."
She stared at him.
"What do you mean?"
He looked away. "She chose you. Just like the house chose her. Just like I did."
"I'm not hers," she snapped. "And I'm not yours."
He didn't argue.
But his silence felt like grief.
That night, they took a motel room. Two beds. One lamp. A silence between them that tasted like regret.
Evelyn lay awake, listening to the hum of the highway.
She thought of Lenore.
Of the blood in the cradle.
Of the soft, floral voice that still echoed in her skull:
"You burned my body. But my heart is in yours now."
Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut.
She didn't cry.
Instead, she did what Lenore never did.
She wrote.
She sat at the motel desk, tore out pages from the Bible in the drawer, and wrote in the margins.
I am not your vessel.
I am not your bride.
I am not your second chance.
I am not your ending.
I am my own story.
And it does not end in fire. It ends in choice.
When she looked up—
Elias was watching her.
He crossed the room slowly.
"I don't want to control you," he said. "I never did."
"But you didn't stop this either."
He nodded. "No."
She stood.
They were inches apart.
"You said you loved her," she whispered.
"I did."
"And me?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know where you end and she begins anymore."
That hurt more than fire.
But it was honest.
She leaned in. Close enough to feel his breath.
"Then let's find out."
She kissed him.
It wasn't sweet.
It was possession. Reclamation. Teeth and lips and heat and defiance.
And when he kissed her back, he wasn't gentle.
He kissed her like a man who had loved two ghosts and didn't know which one he was holding.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the motel sheets.
Silent. Bare. Open.
Evelyn ran her fingers over his scars.
He traced the place over her stomach where Lenore once tried to bloom.
They didn't say her name.
But they both felt her there.
Watching.
Evelyn sat up around 3 a.m.
The air was thick again.
Heavy with perfume and mold.
And from the bathroom mirror—
Lenore stepped out.
Naked. Bloody. Beautiful.
But Evelyn didn't scream.
She stood.
Walked to the mirror.
Face-to-face with the ghost.
"Why are you still here?" she asked.
Lenore smiled, a slow, sorrowful curve.
"Because he still loves me."
"I'm not going to give him back."
"You don't have to."
"He's already mine."
Lenore reached out—
And touched Evelyn's face.
A cold bloom of memory spread through her:
Blood on silk sheets.
Screaming in the nursery.
Her reflection wearing Elias's name like a wedding ring.
And then:
Evelyn—walking through the ruins, barefoot and burning.
She gasped.
The ghost was in her now.
A memory.
A seed.
A second skin.
And she wasn't leaving.
[End of Chapter 13]