90

C lay appeared at the entrance of the Manor, his shirt soaked in dirt and blood as he dropped to his knees in the gravel and pressed his forehead into the ground.

“Where is she?” Koen gripped my shirt as I worked to cover his most extensive wounds.

He was barely able to keep his eyes open but the words tore from him, shaky and broken. The sound of his agony ripped me apart from the inside out.

“Clay!” He yelled, his voice cracking.

His breathing became ragged as he tried to sit up from the truck bed, pushing me away from him. “Clay, where is Florence?” He asked again, slipping from the tailgate and crumbling to the ground because his legs were still too weak.

“Ko,” I grunted as he started to crawl in stumbled, painful motions toward Clay. “You can’t go back in there–” The Manor had let us out… but why? “Koen stop!”

I attempted to lift him but he pushed me away, knocking me into the dirt beside him, and we stayed there on the ground staring across the five feet to Clay, who finally looked up from the gravel with grief in his eyes .

“She…” He breathed out and stopped, closing his eyes to ground himself. "She sacrificed herself for us.”

“No,” Koen shook his head. “she wouldn’t do that.”

“ Yes , she would,” I said from beside him, wrapping my arms around my knees as I folded in to keep the heartache at bay. “It’s exactly what she would do.”

“The house is sapient,” Clay finally said, composing himself enough to talk.

A sapient house? Of course it was. It was alive. Just as she had been saying all along.

I looked up at the Manor, cursing myself for not realizing sooner.

“It wouldn’t let her go. She had become a part of it. Agatha Warren drew her in and Orchid Manor has kept Florence alive to keep it company.”

“That’s why it let us out–” I nodded in confirmation. The Manor had won, it didn’t need us anymore. It had proven the point it wanted to make.

“The house loves Florence in whatever sick and twisted way it believes love is. But now it’s taken over her completely, she never had a choice.”

Florence didn’t belong to anyone.

Her soft hair flashed across my vision and I could almost smell her rose-petal scent tickling my nose. My cheeks flushed with heat as the memory of her fingertips brushed my throat and her lips ghosted my jaw. I could feel every ounce of her in the wind that kicked up under my chin and I clenched my teeth tightly together to hold in the strangled whimper that rose from me .

Rage quickly flooded my veins as I pushed to my feet and started toward the truck's bed. Koen watched with hollow eyes as I started digging for things in a fit of unbridled anger.

“That means I can burn it to the ground.” I looked over at the Manor seething.

“You’ll burn her alive,” Koen choked out. “You can’t.”

His heartbreak was evident in the way his voice broke.

“She’s gone, Koen,” Clay said, tears streaking through the dirt that clung to his sharp cheekbones. “She’s not there anymore.”

“That’s a lie.” Koen tried to get to his feet again but failed, screaming out in agony when he realized he wasn’t strong enough to get himself back into the house to try for himself. “You’re lying!”

“I watched the Manor take her,” Clay practically sobbed, holding it back just barely as he rose to his feet. “She’s…” He couldn’t bring himself to repeat it.

The pause in his words rattled through all of us, Koen’s shoulders slumping over as Clay inhaled what he could into his lungs.

“Burn it to the ground.” Clay turned his gaze on me, so profound and dark.

I nodded once, fishing out the petrol cans and digging for my lighter. I threw a box of salt at him. “Follow close,” I warned him as I strode back into the Manor.

Clay picked himself up off the ground and kept at my back. The walls felt more alive than ever, like consuming Florence had pumped them into overdrive. The vibrating that I had felt the first time we entered the Manor was tenfold now. It shook through the soles of my boots into my calves and made the muscles tighten uncomfortably in my chest .

The walls were no longer hole-filled crumbling plaster but pristine and covered in rich wallpaper that blanketed the entire entrance. I stopped for a moment, staring around at it all in awe. The dark hardwood flooring looked as if it had just been laid, and every sconce, lantern and lamp was lit, bathing the room in a warm romantic glow.

Tall, dramatic curtains made of deep velvety fabric hung over the pristine and dazzling windows that reached to the ceiling. The chandelier that had smashed, crystal dancing across the floor in my memories, was in perfect condition hanging from the ceiling, dripping with soft flickering candlelight.

The staircases were grand and imposing, and yet, I could clearly envision her there, dressed as she had been that first day, cheeks blushing and eyes flashing, holding in her laughter as she watched us argue about whether to stay or leave. It had been like this for her the whole time? Why had it taken me so long to be able to see it, to see her.

Breath hitched in my throat and my heart ached painfully in my chest.

“You can see it–” Clay turned to me and I nodded, my eyes watering in angered confusion. He watched me for a moment longer before saying simply, “I’m sorry.”

He said it like it was supposed to quell the agony I felt over being too late to love her.

I steeled my emotions away and swallowed down the agony that filled my throat, threatening to explode from me in a painful scream.

“Watch.” I pointed to how the picture frames shook on the wall, ready to drop or fly at us without warning. Distracting myself with the hunt at hand. The Manor was getting ready to expel us. “I don’t need you hurt, too,” I said, my tone tight with barely concealed anguish .

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t feel anything,” Clay sighed, his tone flat.

I turned to look at him briefly, seeing the pain that stained his features and understanding where he was coming from. I couldn’t have imagined being down there, watching the Manor take her. It broke something deep inside Clay, something I wasn’t even sure had existed in the first place, but it was evident all over his face. He wouldn’t come back from what he saw. Not anytime soon, maybe not ever.

“I know.” I nodded with a strangled sigh and started to dump petrol over the staircase, bounding up the steps until looping back around and splashing it over the walls upstairs. I got some of the doors and soaked the carpets, chucking the can away from me as Clay salted all the entryways he could see.

“What’s that?” I asked as he reappeared at the top of the stairs.

“Her poems.” He shoved the worn book into his back pocket.

“Did you grab the bags?” I asked him.

“I don’t want any of it. It all smells like her.”

I nodded in agreement. We could get new shit, but the memory of Florence would haunt us forever. I stared at the Manor, my heart sluggish and rage dissipating.

What I wouldn’t give to have her scold me for being so solemn.

I would trade–I stopped the thought before it formed, unable to deal with the repercussions of my own heartbroken thoughts. This was my fault .

I had brought us here.

“Good?” Clay asked.

I was far from it .

I would never admit it out loud, I barely could to myself, but it hurt, seeing Florence laying there in the dirt, and knowing now that it was the last time I would ever see her. She had looked so broken… and I was helpless. Knowing that I couldn’t do anything to change it or scrub it from my memory. Her tiny, broken body was so cold and fragile. To be taken like that, stolen.

I was livid.

I wasn’t good.

“Yeah.” I took one last look at the house and pushed him out the door.

Koen was still where we left him, staring blankly at the house.

“It’s gonna be okay, Ko.” Clay wandered over to him, putting on a brave face as he settled down in the gravel beside him. Neither of them said anything else as I flicked the lighter open and stared at the flame.

“Just do it,” Koen coughed, still struggling to breathe properly. His eyes were rimmed with red from crying as he stared past me at the Manor.

I rubbed my thumb over it one last time and tossed it down into the line of petrol, watching the entire trail go up in flames. It cracked and licked at the floors, spreading fast and covering the stairs and rugs. It smelled like smoke and death as the clouds started to plume from the windows and doors.

“Good riddance.” I backed away from it.

I wandered over to stand next to them, my fingertips brushing through Koen’s hair at my side as he leaned into my leg. Clay stared up at the Manor in horror as the flames started to burn hotter. A loud, painful, screeching sound tore from the wood as though it was screaming out in pain, but it washed over me in relief, not only for me but for Florence .

I wanted to ignore the sharp, stinging pain in my chest. To pretend it was exhaustion and soreness from the months behind us, but it wasn’t. It was longing, grief, and sorrow and they weighed heavy on my heart to remind me that we had all lost something precious.

“Why isn’t the Manor defending itself?” Koen choked out between sniffles.

“It’s sufficiently distracted with whatever it’s doing to her now, this might be the only time to completely overwhelm it, destroy it,” Clay said, his brain finally starting to tick normally.

“Will it work?” He asked.

“We can only hope.” Clay nodded and watched the Manor with dark eyes.

“I’m sorry, Koen,” I whispered as soft sobs escaped him. Smoke billowed into the sky, staining it black and darkening the clouds.

“Do you hear that?” Clay choked out, pushing onto his feet and turning his head to stare down the long drive, but I didn’t hear anything. “There’s no one coming.”

He was right. With the heat coming off the house, the smoke, and the sound of snapping wood and billowing flames, emergency services should have been up the hill by now, but nothing but the house dying echoed through the air.

“God damnit–what if that didn’t work?” Clay repeated Koen's doubt, sounding truly horrified in a way I had never heard before. It struck me. What if she’s still trapped forever? The words went unsaid between us.

My hands clenched tightly. What if no matter what we had done, her beautiful soul would be tied to this cursed ground?

“It worked,” I said out loud. “It had to. ”

I turned from the heat, sinking next to Koen with the medical kit, and started back on his wounds. He didn’t move or speak as I went over each puncture and cut roughly, covering the large ones that still trickled dark crimson down his cold skin.

Koen seemed so far away, even as the fire from the Manor danced vividly in the reflection of his eyes. We were alive but it did not feel like a victory, we hadn’t gotten everyone out.

“You were right,” I said quietly—a moment just for us, not the Manor.

Koen didn’t move but I knew he could hear me.

“I was scared.” I swallowed tightly as I covered one of the last significant cuts that wrapped around his throat.

It looked so painful. His skin was raised in thick coils where the vines had twisted around his throat to steal the air from his body—bruises that would take weeks to heal and scars that never would.

“Scared to lose you and Clay, but I was scared to take what I needed, scared to love her the way she deserved, and now…” I stared at the house as it continued to burn bright, the upper floor giving way and crumbling into the main area. A plume of sparks and smoke cascaded up like fireworks.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I apologized. “Maybe if it hadn’t…”

“Don’t do that,” Koen’s lips moved and the sound came out, but it was quiet against the loud snaps of wood and the rushing air. “That is the one thing you aren’t allowed to do.” He looked at me, and my chest was constricted at the sight of him.

His lip was ripped open from a thorn, purple and caked with dried blood. His left cheek split open, and a nasty bruise was forming up the side of his face, staining his temple and hairline almost black where more dried blood stuck to a gash beneath his curls.

“She would have waited patiently for you, no matter how long it took you to figure it out. Florence–” He stopped, composing himself as he tripped over her name. “She would have waited for you to figure it out.”

There was a certainty to his words that made me believe him.

“Do you think she’s free?” Koen asked me, but I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Yes,” Clay answered for me, coming to settle in the dirt with us, his face still stained with mud and ash. His cheeks were red and dry from standing so close to the house as it burned, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain when he spoke again. “I’d like to think that when she closed her eyes for that final time, she drifted somewhere peaceful, away from the confines that held her for so long. That she’s in the wind around us, in the trees and the river...”

He looked over at us.

“In the wildflowers,” he whispered, his eyes filling with tears.

“Definitely in the wildflowers,” Koen huffed, the laughter tangled with anguish.

“But she’s free.” I nodded and wrapped my arm around Koen, just needing a moment to remind myself that we hadn’t lost everything tonight.