84

“ H ey, Blossom.” I pushed through the door to find her sitting in one of the chairs, curled up in front of the fire with her body tucked beneath a heavy blanket.

I set the tray of food on the table and rounded it to kneel before her. "Are you alright?”

“I’ve been better,” she mumbled but forced a tiny smile.

Her cheeks had started to hollow and the bruises that she’d sustained stained her skin. From the base of her neck, they spread over her arms and chest and, like tattoos, they showed no signs of fading at all; but she was out of bed for the first time in days and that’s all that mattered.

Wes sat on the unmade bed, watching us carefully as he cleaned his gun with an old towel. His eyes flickered back and forth between Florence and me, his hands working absentmindedly as he cleaned the barrel.

“You’re beautiful,” I hummed, kissing her fingertips as she pressed her hand to my face.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she laughed.

“I don’t lie.” I smiled up at her, keeping her hand close. “How’s this today?” I tapped a finger to my temple .

“Messy,” she blinked slowly. The word was forced out of her like it hurt to say but she got it out. “It’s getting even harder to sort out what’s real and what the house wants me to believe.”

“We’re here to help.” I kissed her hand again. “Remember? That’s all you need.”

“You’re too sweet for your own good. It’s going to destroy you,” she said quietly. Wes’s eyes met mine as I looked over at him.

I could tell he wanted to say something but he kept all the dark comments about his brother to himself. It wasn’t the time and it didn’t matter what he said now. I wasn’t going to waver from Florence’s side.

“Movie date ruined. I couldn’t find my laptop. I think the Manor hid it… but I managed not to forget dinner. Maybe you can eat something?”

I could tell her stomach was still upset. After not needing food to survive for so long, eating it to sustain her energy was difficult for her body to readjust to.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” She scooted over in the chair and made room for me to slide in underneath her, tucking her close to my body. It felt almost mundane; Florence curled into my lap with my palm in the air as she slowly made her way through a pile of Ritz crackers.

“These are delicious,” she sighed, warming my heart. “What’s in the center?”

“Fake cheese,” I laughed. “But it’s salty and hits the spot.”

“Indeed,” she agreed, popping another one between her lips. “Thank you for your patience, Koen,” she said, leaning into me.

“You can repay me when we get you out of here in one piece.” I flashed her a soft smile and kissed the delicate skin of her jaw.

“If,” she corrected me but I wasn’t having it. Not today. Everyone had been too doom and gloom lately and I wouldn’t let the fear of the future tarnish the hope I had.

“ When ,” I argued. “I’m not leaving here without you, Blossom.”

“Koen, remember your dreams,” she said to me quietly, making me think of the night we danced beneath the chandelier. I shuddered involuntarily, the memory now tainted with the vision of her small broken body beneath it.

“Your dreams are my dreams.” I cupped her face in my hands.

“Koen—” She stuttered and looked away from me.

“I figured it out!” Clay burst into the room cutting off whatever she might have said and I flinched from the sound while Florence’s solemn gaze trained itself on the roaring fire.

I waited a moment before I rubbed my hand over her knee and she turned to look at me. I thought the light might have been back in her eyes for a second but it was a trick of the fire that danced there. I’ll hold onto the hope for the both of us, Blossom, I thought.

“There’s a second fucking cellar!” Clay lifted his stupid hand-drawn map in the air. “It’s been there the whole time but the house rotates it differently from the rest!”

“So what does that mean?” Wes asked him.

“It means the door appears four minutes earlier on the east side of the house.” Clay stared at all of us like we should know what was rambling on about. His shirt half-buttoned, and a pair of trousers that were dirty with charcoal. “And it shifts westward by one degree every single night.”

“I’ve seen that door!” I said, following closely .

“The door moves?” Wes tilted his head to the side, and the dirty blond waves fell with him.

“The door moves,” Clay whispered. “Although I’m not sure why that’s a surprise to you, everything in this god forsaken Manor moves.”

“Did you know about it?” Wes barked at Florence.

“You’re asking me if I knew about the secret door?” She snipped back, the darkness returning to her voice.

“Yes, Vengeful,” Wes responded.

“I knew of the door, Wesley,” she said.

“And you didn’t tell us?”

“I had no idea it moved in a special pattern. All of the doors move, why would this one be special? I’ve never tried to open it. There's something wrong with it.”

“But what’s in the cellar?” I asked Clay, suddenly feeling left out.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But the house is hiding it the best it can, seemingly even from the one thing it loves.”

Florence’s eye snapped to Clay at the word thing, her hand digging into the chair's cushion as she steadied the anger and let it pass through her.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Clay ground his teeth together and closed his eyes.

She was fighting so hard against the toxin in her veins that was turning her vengeful and vicious. She didn’t want to hurt us but it was getting harder with every day.

“So you want us to find an impossible shifting door and go down into the unknown cellar of a temperamental century-old Manor on an ‘ I don’t know’?” Wes quipped, moving past the upset, seemingly for Florence’s benefit.

“Yes. If I’m right it might contain all the missing links we’ve been searching for. What the Manor really is, or even how to kill it.”

“We’ve been in scarier places.” I smirked. “And I’m itching for a fight.”

“We have no idea what’s down there and someone should stay here with her.” Wes pointed his gun in our direction.

Florence scoffed, drawing my attention back to her.

“I’ll stay,” Clay offered.

“No.” Wes didn’t hesitate. “I’ll need your help finding the door.”

“Give me a gun.” Florence shrugged, turning slowly to the side to look at Wes.

“No,” he repeated, all the amusement falling from his face. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her not to hurt us. It was that he didn’t trust her not to hurt herself. I could see the difference.

“You can’t run a hunt,” she groaned, pushing from the chair on shaky legs, “without all three of you. The last time you did, one of you almost didn’t come back.”

“This is different,” Wes said as she slowly moved across the floor.

Clay’s eyes locked on the bruises that painted her pale skin as she limped toward Wes.

“No, it’s not,” she clipped.

The tension in the room was tight and, for a moment, I thought Wes might lose his composure as she invaded his personal space, but he didn’t. His hand pressed against her face as his hazel eyes narrowed on her dark green ones .

“Give me a gun, lock me in the room, and all three of you go,” she said to him, almost leaning into his touch. The intimacy of the moment clawed at me. She had been so careful with me, with Clay, but she seemed to find solace in Wes’s dark cloud aura in her sick, angry haze.

I half expected him to argue with her, but he pulled out the Hunter's knife at his hip and held it between them with the blade in his fingertips and the handle toward her chest.

“Stay here,” he demanded.

“Can’t make it much further,” Florence groaned, pain flickering across her face.

Wes took that as an agreement to his request and ushered Clay from the room in a flurry of hushed conversations, leaving Florence and me alone for the first time in days.

“Are you sure?” I made my way to her, where she stared down at the knife in her palm, wholly fixated on the blade brushing across her skin.

“I’ll be alright, Koen.”

“I don’t believe that,” I swallowed tightly and helped her across the floor to the bed, letting her settle down on the mattress before covering her legs with the blanket. “But I also know there's no use arguing with you.”

“Smart man,” she hummed, but when I didn’t move she looked at me. “What, Koen?”

“I hate this.” I chewed on my lip and dropped beside the bed so we were at eye level. “I—”

“Don’t.” She cut me off.

It had been stewing for weeks, the urge to tell her how fast my heart beat in my chest every time she was near. To explain to her just how important she was to me. I wanted to tell her that no one had ever made me feel like this. But the words always got stuck, or we were constantly interrupted.

I knew exactly how foolish I sounded. It wasn’t lost on me that we had only known each other for a few months but when she stared up at me with those eyes. It felt like she had known me my entire life. Clay kept sweeping his feelings under the rug and said that the intense emotions were purely because of the fast-paced forced proximity situation, but I knew deep down that he was wrong.

The feelings between Florence and I were solid. They were real.

“Come on, Blossom,” I whined. “Don't do that, don’t shove me away.”

“A lady never shoves,” she mused with a half-hearted smile. “And I’m not. I’m protecting you and that oversized heart I love so much.”

She finally looked over at me and there were those eyes. They burned into me, piercing and sad, reminding me I never stood a chance against her.

“My heart doesn’t belong to me anymore,” I confessed. Wes called out from the main floor, his angry voice carrying over the stairs to us. “Hold on to it,” I said, shoving back from the bed and flicking a finger beneath her chin, “until I get back. And try to eat something, please.” I pointed to the tray.

Florence frowned as I walked backward out of the room, taking one more look at her before I left her to help the others in the cellar. My hand shook around my gun as I pulled it from my waistband. The feeling in my palm vibrated aftershocks of the machete. Memories flooded me as I tried to push down my issues. I didn’t want to let Wes down again. I couldn’t.