Told from Elias Blackwood's point of view, a year ago.
Chapter 2: The Iron Gates
I stood at the iron gates, convincing myself this was the beginning of everything good. The social worker's car idled behind me, engine ticking in the autumn cold. Mrs. Chen had already delivered her goodbyes—brief and professional—the kind that followed twelve years of processing orphans like paperwork. She waited now with her window cracked, undoubtedly checking her phone, ready to drive away the moment I stepped through.I didn't look back.
The gates loomed taller than I remembered. Black iron twisted into indecipherable patterns, crowned with the Blackwood family crest: a tree consumed by flames, rising from ash. I traced the design with my eyes and felt something stir in my chest—recognition, perhaps. Or the ghost of a five-year-old's memory.Fire. I remembered fire.
The rest existed only in fragments. A woman's scream. Smoke burning my lungs. Strong hands lifting me, carrying me away from heat and light into darkness. Then the orphanage. Cold walls. Thin blankets. Twelve years of waiting.But the waiting was over.
I pressed the intercom button, my finger trembling. I hated that it trembled.
A Button click followed by electronic static which crackled about.
Then a voice, clipped and formal: "State your business.""I'm," my voice cracked. I cleared my throat, tried again. "I'm Elias Blackwood. I'm expected."Silence stretched long enough that I wondered if they'd forgotten. If this was all a mistake. If I'd imagined the letter, the phone calls, the promises of home.
Then the gates groaned open. The driveway curved through manicured grounds that looked like they'd been painted rather than grown. Perfect hedges. Perfect lawn. Perfect flower beds arranged in geometric precision. Everything the orphanage wasn't. Everything I'd dreamed of during those nights when the heating failed and I'd huddled under two thin blankets, imagining warmth.The mansion rose at the end of the drive like something from a movie. Three stories of gray stone and tall windows, wings spreading left and right from a central entrance. Ivy climbed the walls in controlled patterns. Even the plants here knew their place.I walked slowly, dragging my single duffel bag. Everything I owned fit in one bag. Donated clothes, a few books, a photo of myself at age five, the only picture from before the fire. I looked happy in it. I didn't remember feeling happy.The front doors opened before I reached them. A woman stood in the entrance, backlit by the warm glow of the interior. For a moment, one stupid, childish moment, I thought she would run to me. Throw her arms around me. Cry and say she'd missed me, that she'd searched for me every day, that she'd never stopped loving me.Catherine Blackwood did none of those things. She descended the steps with careful precision, her heels clicking against stone. She wore a cream-colored suit that probably cost more than the orphanage's monthly food budget. Her dark hair was pulled back so tightly it looked painful. Her face was beautiful in the way of expensive things, polished, perfect, cold.She stopped three feet away and looked at me. I looked back, trying to find something familiar in her features. Trying to see my own face reflected in hers. I had her eyes, maybe. The same dark brown. But hers held no warmth."Elias," she said my name like she was testing it, seeing if it fit in her mouth."Mother." The word felt foreign. I'd practiced it in the car, whispering it to myself. It still sounded wrong.Her expression flickered, something that might have been distaste, quickly smoothed away. "Let me see your hands."I blinked. "What?""Your hands. Show me."Confused, I held out my hands, palms up. She leaned closer, examining them like a jeweler inspecting a stone for flaws. Her nose wrinkled slightly."You'll need to scrub under the nails. Properly. We have standards here," she straightened, already turning away. "Come inside. Your father is waiting."She didn't touch me. Didn't take my bag. Didn't ask about my journey or if I was hungry or tired or scared. She just walked back into the house, expecting me to follow.I stood there for three seconds, long enough to feel the last bit of warmth drain from my chest, then picked up my bag and followed her inside.The entrance hall stole my breath. Marble floors stretched in black and white checkerboard patterns. A chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, dripping crystal like frozen tears. A grand staircase curved upward, carpeted in deep burgundy. Paintings lined the walls, portraits of stern-faced Blackwoods, all of them looking down with the same cold eyes.It was beautiful. It was everything I'd imagined. It felt like a museum. Like I should pay admission and speak in whispers."Don't track dirt," Catherine said without looking back.I looked down at my worn sneakers, the ones Mrs. Chen had bought me last year from the donation bin.
They were clean. I'd scrubbed them that morning until my fingers cramped. But next to the spotless marble, they looked like they belonged to someone who didn't belong here.I wiped them on the mat again anyway.A man emerged from a room to the right, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a suit that probably cost more than a car.
Arthur Blackwood. I recognized him from the single meeting we'd had three months ago, when the lawyers had finalized everything. When we'd confirmed through DNA tests and paperwork that yes, I was their son. Yes, they would take me back.Arthur had smiled during that meeting. Shaken my hand. Said he was glad to have me home.He wasn't smiling now."So," Arthur looked me up and down, the same assessing gaze Catherine had used.
"You made it.""Yes, sir," my voice came out smaller than I wanted."You'll call me Father, not sir. We're not running a military operation," Arthur's tone suggested he wished they were. "How was the orphanage?""It was fine.""Fine," Arthur repeated the word like it tasted bad. "Well. You're a Blackwood now. You'll need to learn what that means. Excellence. Discipline. Legacy." He paused. "We have a reputation to maintain. I trust you understand that."I nodded, even though I didn't understand. Didn't understand why my father was talking to me like a business associate instead of a son he hadn't seen in twelve years."Good," Arthur glanced at Catherine.
"Show him to his room. I have calls to make."He turned and walked away. No hug. No welcome. Just calls to make.Catherine sighed, a delicate sound of inconvenience. "This way."She led me through the entrance hall, past rooms that opened onto impossible luxury, a library with floor-to-ceiling books, a sitting room with furniture that looked like art, a dining room with a table long enough to seat twenty. I glimpsed them all in flashes, trying to memorize everything, trying to believe this was real.We climbed the grand staircase. My hand slid along the polished bannister, and I wondered how many Blackwoods had touched this same wood. If my five-year-old self had run up these stairs, laughing, before the fire took everything away.The second floor hallway stretched in both directions, lined with doors. Catherine turned right, walking past room after room. I caught glimpses through open doorways, bedrooms decorated in rich colors, four-poster beds, private bathrooms gleaming with marble and gold fixtures.We kept walking.Past the bedrooms. Past what looked like a study. Past a sitting area with plush couches.The hallway narrowed. The carpet thinned. The lighting dimmed.Catherine stopped at a door near the end of the hall. It looked different from the others, plain wood, no decorative molding, a simple brass knob instead of the crystal ones I'd seen elsewhere.
A small placard on the door read: STORAGE.Something cold settled in my stomach."This is yours," Catherine said. She opened the door.The room was small. Maybe ten feet by twelve. A narrow bed sat against one wall, the mattress thin and sagging. Boxes were stacked in the corners, old things covered in dust. A single window, grimy with age, let in gray light. In the center of the room, on a small table, sat an oil lamp.An oil lamp.In a mansion that probably had smart home technology and heated floors and lights that responded to voice commands.An oil lamp."It's temporary," Catherine said, though her tone suggested otherwise. "Until you prove yourself. Until you earn your place here."I stared at the room. At the dust. At the boxes. At the oil lamp that belonged in a museum or a horror movie, not in my new home."There are fresh sheets in the closet. Bathroom is down the hall, third door on the left. You'll share it with the staff," Catherine checked her watch, a delicate gold thing that probably cost more than the orphanage's annual budget. "Dinner is at seven. You'll eat in the kitchen."
"Not with the family?"Her smile was thin and sharp. "Let's take things slowly. You need time to adjust. We need time to," she paused, choosing her word carefully, "evaluate."She left before I could respond. Her heels clicked down the hallway, growing fainter, then disappearing entirely.I stood in the doorway of the storage room, my room, and felt something crack inside my chest.This wasn't what I'd imagined. Not in twelve years of dreaming.
Not in the thousands of nights I'd lain awake in the orphanage, telling myself that somewhere out there, my real family was looking for me. That when they found me, everything would be perfect. Warm. Safe. Home.This wasn't home.This was a storage room with an oil lamp and dust and boxes of things the family didn't want anymore.I stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind me. The sound echoed in the small space like a cell door closing.I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. The springs groaned. The mattress dipped unevenly.
I could smell mildew and old cardboard and something else, something that smelled like abandonment.Through the grimy window, I could see the grounds. The perfect hedges. The perfect lawn. The perfect world I'd entered and somehow still remained outside of.My stomach growled. I'd been too nervous to eat breakfast.
The social worker had offered me a sandwich during the drive, but I'd refused, too anxious to keep anything down. Now I was starving, and dinner wasn't for three more hours.I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Water stains bloomed in the corners. The paint was peeling.Twelve years. I'd survived twelve years of the orphanage by holding onto hope.
By believing that this, coming home, would fix everything.But as I lay there in the storage room with the oil lamp and the dust and the smell of things forgotten, I felt that hope begin to crack.Not break. Not yet.But crack.I closed my eyes and told myself the same thing I'd told myself every night in the orphanage: Tomorrow will be better.
I almost believed it.Almost.Outside my door, somewhere in the mansion's perfect halls, I heard voices. Laughter. The sound of a family living their lives.Without me.I pulled my thin jacket tighter around myself and waited for seven o'clock. Waited for dinner in the kitchen.
Waited to earn my place.Waited to become a Blackwood.The oil lamp sat on the table, unlit, casting no light at all.