6:07 AM, Lennox Estate, North Wing
The morning sun crept over the Lennox estate like it wasn't sure it belonged there, gilding the edges of windowpanes in soft, uncertain gold. Light slanted across the marble floors of the north wing, warm but wrong, like it had arrived too late to stop something terrible.
A faint scent clung to the corridors, too heavy to ignore and too strange to explain. Smoke, not the gentle kind from hearth fires, but something acidic and foul, scorched wire tangled with the bitter edge of burned flesh.
The furnace had been shut down the day before for the investigation, but the odor still leaked from the east wing like a memory refusing to fade.
Somewhere nearby, a servant had sprayed perfume, floral and sharp, but it only made things worse, like sweet rot, layered over something spoiled.
Maisie stepped lightly into the hallway leading toward the east wing, her footsteps quiet but deliberate on the polished floor. The air felt dense, the usual crispness of morning softened by an unwelcome, persistent haze.
She kept the broken collar locked away in the quiet corners of her mind, a fragile secret she couldn't bring herself to speak aloud. Yet beneath her calm, a sudden, sharp feeling for Igor stirred, a mix of protectiveness and unease she hadn't expected.
Her eyes traced every shadow, every flicker of movement, alert despite the stillness of her expression, as she silently bore the heavy burden of everything that had unfolded.
The hallways whispered with the soft shuffle of servants attempting to mask the lingering scent of smoke, their hurried motions accompanied by the faint sweetness of floral perfume, an uneasy attempt to erase the dark traces left behind.
Windows creaked open, letting in the cool morning air, but even the breeze seemed hesitant, as if the estate itself held its breath, wary of what secrets still smoldered unseen.
Maisie moved slowly down the east wing, the quiet footsteps of the household fading behind her. Each step felt heavy, as if the walls themselves pressed in, urging her to remember, and to forget, all at once.
She didn't speak, nor did she meet the eyes of the passing servants, her mind tangled with fragmented thoughts of the broken collar and the man who had worn it.
Her expression was distant, hollow, but beneath it flickered a restless alertness. Grief tangled with fear, unspoken and raw, threaded through her like a cold undercurrent.
She carried secrets no one else could touch, the shattered collar hidden deep in her mind, a fragile truth she wasn't ready to share.
The house seemed to pulse with quiet tension, its silence a fragile mask stretched tight over everything that had broken.
The lingering scent of smoke drifted faintly on the stale air, a stubborn reminder of the incinerator's fire now extinguished. It curled around corners and clung to the faded wallpaper, a silent witness to the night's horrors.
Maisie inhaled carefully, fighting the urge to let the bitter memory flood in, but the smell wrapped around her like a shadow she couldn't shake.
Despite the outward calm, the estate felt restless, like a breath held too long, a secret itching beneath the surface.
The servants moved efficiently, their soft footsteps and whispered exchanges trying to stitch normalcy back together. But Maisie knew better. The house remembered. It held onto things people wanted to bury.
She reached a bend in the hallway and paused, fingers brushing lightly against the cool wood of the railing. Her thoughts flickered to her mother, gone, lost in the dark unknown.
The ache settled heavy in her chest, an unyielding void that no amount of time could fill. She swallowed hard, blinking away the sting of tears she refused to shed.
Maisie's gaze drifted to a cracked windowpane, catching the early sunlight, fractured and delicate. In that fractured light, she saw the reflection of a girl caught between worlds, half-shielded, half-exposed, struggling to hold onto hope amid the ruins.
The house might forget nothing, but she was learning how to survive despite it all.
Maisie paused in the hallway, her steps faltering as a quiet memory surfaced unbidden. She saw her father's hands again, large but gentle, teaching her to braid rope on a warm summer afternoon.
His voice was soft and careful, patient with a child's clumsy fingers. The moment was simple, almost tender, a fragment of a time before everything fractured.
Another time, Maisie remembered how he had stayed up all night when she was sick, sitting quietly by her bedside with a worn book in his hands, reading aloud in a voice hushed but steady.
Despite the cold distance that often settled between them, in that small, fragile moment, his presence felt like a shield, a rare kindness that lingered long after the fever broke.
But the memories clashed violently with the man she'd come to know, the man who had bargained away Mara, who had watched Igor suffer and done nothing to stop it. How could the same hands that once guided her now be stained with such cold betrayal?
The question twisted in her mind like a knot she couldn't undo: Can love and betrayal live in the same heart? Was it possible that the man she had loved was also the architect of so much pain?
Despite the storm inside her, Maisie realized something else, quieter but no less real: she had grown to love Harry, in a complicated way, tangled between affection and resentment, loyalty and doubt.
Maisie couldn't pinpoint exactly when the change took hold in her father, when the warmth in his eyes dimmed and was replaced by a shadow she barely recognized.
She sensed it began long before, a slow unraveling beneath the surface, secrets he buried deeper with each passing year, a growing distance that no child could reach through.
Sometimes, Maisie thought, love wasn't simple or pure. It could be tangled with regret, fear, and decisions made in the dark, choices that no one else could understand.
She realized that, despite everything, her feelings for Harry had been real, complicated by a mix of tenderness and betrayal that left her heart bruised but unbroken.