Chapter 61

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

Belle is gripping my hand tightly as we approach the door to the stairwell leading to the rooftop garden in the estate. Silas howls in the background, probably chasing some poor creature on the grounds far below.

The ride home from our visit with Eleanor was filled with tense silence, with Belle gnawing on her lip and staring out the windows, clearly deep in thought.

“You’ll see. Things will make sense. I know it. It’s been there all along, waiting for us.”

She huffs out a breath as we climb the spiral staircase, our hurried footsteps echoing against the stone walls.

My blood pulses inside me, a strange tingling appearing in my hands. My breathing quickens—it feels like I’m about to have the floor pulled out from under me. It’s the moment before everything changes.

I’ve always avoided going to the rooftop garden—it has always been a place that seems more haunted, mournful, colder than the rest of the house. But right now, the discomfort from before has disappeared, and in its place I feel a breathlessness.

Anticipation.

Moments later, we step into the abandoned garden, a breeze brushing over our skin—a gentle caress. The weeds have grown taller than when I was here many years ago, but for the most part, it looks exactly the same—frozen in time .

Belle pulls me toward the edge of the roof, to the side facing the rose garden, and my pulse echoes in my ears, the rickety click I hear when sitting on a rollercoaster, ascending to the peak before plummeting down. Silently, she tugs me to the bench that has been there for as long as I can remember, her eyes wild, a desperate gleam in them.

“Look,” she whispers urgently, pointing to a rusty placard I’ve never noticed before, because I’ve made it my business to avoid this place.

My heart is buried here with you, my love resting alongside you for eternity and beyond.

I’ll forever roam the land, searching for you, aching for you.

Missing you.

Scything agony tears through my chest, the impact robbing my breath like a gut punch. I clutch the bench for support as the world spins around me and an inexplicable wetness gathers in my eyes.

Heartbreak. Traumatizing heartbreak that has teased the edge of my consciousness for my entire life; a hole inside me I’ve always thought was attributed to my role in the curse. Except now, the veil is pierced, and the pain rushes through, so potent it’s disorienting.

“W-What?” I whisper, staring at the words that seem so familiar, yet I could’ve sworn I’d never seen before.

Visions of me clutching Belle in the rose garden below, the storm raging around us—a sepia-tinged slideshow that’s becoming clearer by the minute.

“I know. I know,” she whispers back before touching a spot on the placard and I hear a quiet click before a brick pops out.

Still reeling from the onslaught of grief, I stare at Belle as she takes out the brick and sets it aside. Then she reaches inside and takes out a parcel wrapped in paper and twine.

“I found this the day I was taken. It’s Silas’s missing journal from the time period when everything started.”

She looks up, her eyes filling with sadness as she carefully flips opens the leather-bound cover.

January 2, 1860, Wraithmoor Abbey

I saw your smile today and I can’t fathom why you were happy given you were ironing dresses and jackets at five in the morning.

I can see it. Her smile. Belle’s smile brightening a dreary morning as she hovers over a table, hard at work with a pile of laundry gathered on the side.

A lump forms in my throat. I’m well educated, multiple degrees under my belt. Other than the curse that my family believed in for good reason, I’m a believer in science.

But nothing can explain this. Nothing except for… I take a deep breath and keep reading.

January 13, 1860, Wraithmoor Abbey

You came into the library tonight, looking for a specific book for Louisa, a Herculean task I heard her give you when I walked past her rooms earlier today.

My wife was temperamental and would most likely change her mind tomorrow, and all of us would suffer from her wrath. You didn’t notice me as you bustled around the bookshelves, humming under your breath even though I knew you had been working since before dawn and must be exhausted.

I should’ve announced my presence, but I found myself transfixed, wondering what the source of your happiness was, and if you could find it in you to share it with me.

Curiously, instead of picking up only one volume, you started piling more and more books on your hand. The stack balanced precariously high, all the while you wore that beautiful smile on your face, like you were excited at the worlds you would find in the pages within your arms.

And when I finally couldn’t resist anymore, and asked, “Which one of those books are you most looking forward to?” You let out a very unladylike shriek and the books dropped to the floor with an unfortunate volume or two joining the kinder in the fireplace.

Your first words to me were, “You are a serial murderer of books, Your Grace!”

But your lips twitched, the humor clear in your eyes, and I felt a spark of happiness in my chest.

I think back to Austria, when I saw Belle making a mess of the cooking, the strange sensation I felt when I called her a serial murderer of vegetables. How it felt familiar when she gave me a mock glare, an impish smile on her face.

Then there was the feeling of my heart stirring when she sat in my car for the first time, like it was finally awake after lying dormant in my chest for so long.

My breathing grows ragged and I stare at Belle, watching her eyes well with moisture as she looks at the diary—pages and pages of love and devotion from a man I feel a distinct kinship with to a woman who feels very much like her.

The same tugging of the soul. The same warmth on a dreary day. The same spark of light in the gloomy skies.

Belle whispers, “Do you sense it? The answer to the riddle?” She wrenches her gaze away from the journal and stares at me, her familiar tawny eyes darkening. She places her hand on her chest, and murmurs, “This feeling inside me…it’s like…coming home. Do you feel it?”

The answering beating in my heart thuds louder in my ears, a rioting warmth spreading to every atom in my body, chasing away the emptiness and cold I’ve always felt my entire life.

Until her.

A crinkled piece of paper falls out. I pick it up, finding the ink on the surface marred by water marks. I set down the diary and read .

My Beloved Silas,

If you read this, then I and our unborn child have already departed this world. I have risked everything and given you my all—my love, my dignity, my reputation, and being the foolish woman I am, if we could rewind time, I’m not sure I would have had the strength to stay away from you.

It details the heartbreak of a desperate woman who endured unspeakable tragedies, who felt she had no other way out. A woman who thought she was abandoned.

I clasp my hand over my mouth, my eyes burning, chest heavy with grief. The scene from my dreams. The sketch from Eleanor. The broken woman in my arms, the letter in her grasp.

It’s this one. I’m sure of it.

I get to the bottom of the letter.

I wish for your family to learn not to give love so cruelly, so selfishly. To learn the meaning of true sacrifice. Should a firstborn son of the Anderson name fall in love and marry, the person of his affections shall fall to an untimely demise lest the lesson be learned.

Yours, faithful in death,

Emma

“The curse,” Belle gasps. “Does this mean what I think it means? That it exists?”

My heart thuds loudly in my ears, blood rushing swiftly to my head. I reread the words, my mind sifting through all the journals and letters I’ve read in the past about the curse. All the deaths in the family before grandmother. The unexplained branch shattering the windows. The ardent belief in the curse by every Anderson generation since Grandfather Silas’s time.

I look at Belle, suddenly fearful for her life again, but then the last few sentences of the letter echo in my mind.

True sacrifice. Lesson be learned.

And I feel a crushing sense of relief. One that feels as true as my love for Belle.

I look at my beloved and murmur, “I don’t think we’ll ever know definitively, Belle. But… if there was a curse, we’ve broken it. I know it deep inside.” I point to the last lines of the letter.

Belle’s eyes rove over the sentences. She murmurs, “Of course. Sacrifice. Y-You almost died for me. Y-You—” She chokes up, unable to continue.

“Shhh…” I tilt her face up and find her eyes shining with tears. “Everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”

A breeze blows by, the pages of the diary fluttering, catching our attention, until it lands on a page.

October 2, 1863, Wraithmoor Abbey

My Beloved Emma,

I’m standing at the spot where you took your last breath, wondering what you saw before you closed your eyes three years ago. The hopelessness you must have felt. The agonizing betrayal. The desperation.

This is the same place where my lungs took their last breath, the last breath that filled my body with life, not merely life-sustaining oxygen.

Because my life ended when your soul left this earth.

The only reason I haven’t joined you in the great beyond is because of the devastation I would bring to my family, who are innocent in all of this.

Not a day passes by where I don’t think of you—your smile, your kindness, your laughter, your dreams of seeing the world—visiting my ancestral home in England, painting the canals in Venice. You’re the first face I see when I wake up in the morning, and the last image in my mind before darkness overtakes me at night. I’d dream of you—running in the garden, beckoning me to find you once more.

Do you still hate me? Do you still love me?

I will find you again, and again, and again. One day, I’ll make every one of your dreams come true and wipe away all the tears you’ve shed for me. Wait for me.

Yours eternally ,

Silas

“Venice,” Belle whispers, “I’ve always been waiting to go there with the right person…” Her voice trails off.

Me. She’s waiting for me. My mind spins. The answers, however unbelievable, are battering me from all directions. They don’t have to make sense for them to be true, Maxwell.

Shaking, I turn the page, finding a crumbled letter tucked inside.

My Beloved Emma,

In the next few days, you will see me behave like the role I was born into, a coldhearted duke. But let me reassure you, the man you love is still here, still very much in love with you with all of his heart.

“Oh my God,” Belle whispers. She’s shaking like a leaf next to me. “This letter…”

“Belle,” I rasp, emotions clogging my throat. The letter, the dreams, the incomplete sketch by Silas in the gallery, the locket—all pieces of a tragedy from centuries ago.

A tragedy that kick-started everything.

“This was the letter I saw in my dream,” Belle murmurs, tears flowing down her cheeks. She shakes her head. “But it wasn’t a dream, was it?”

I don’t know how to answer her. All I can do is to hold her tightly to me as we finish reading the letter .

We will escape and start a new life together. We will be free. While I won’t have my wealth and influence, I know my life will be far richer because we’ll be together. Bear with me and forgive me for the hurt I’m about to cause you.

I love you most ardently and fervently.

Wait for me.

Yours forever, this lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter,

Silas

29th of September, 1860

“The curse… This is how it all started. But she never knew he didn’t abandon her.” Her eyes widen and she whispers, “I-I don’t know what’s happening, b-but I heard him in my dream. She never got the letter because the duchess took it. She wouldn’t have killed herself if she’d known. She d-died thinking he didn’t love her anymore. She never found out!” Belle cries, her face mottled, clearly overcome with emotions.

I pull her to me and wrap her in my arms, my hands smoothing over her back as she trembles in my embrace.

“Belle,” my voice is thick and hoarse, “I think she knew. Maybe much, much later…but she knew .” Perhaps Emma knew all those years ago when her soul lingered behind, looking after the man she loved, after she took her last breath on earth. Maybe that’s why Belle has these dreams…these visions. It doesn’t make sense and yet, it makes perfect sense.

Belle freezes, her sobs quieting. Her breath hitches as she pulls back and looks at me.

“I love you most ardently and fervently…this lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter,” I rasp, my body thrumming with crackling electricity.

These vows—I feel them in the depths of my soul, words I’ll live and die by. Perhaps the impossible is possible.

“The words…” She shudders. “You said them the night you were shot and in the hospital.” And they’re the same words Silas wrote to his Emma.

“I remember. I remember it all.” I breathe, my eyes catching hers.

“Belle,” I wipe the tears on her face, “she knew. Whether it was back then and that’s why you had those dreams or centuries later, but she finally knew.”

Her face crumbles and tears fall down her cheeks again, sobs tearing out of her lungs.

“I love you so much.” I hold her in my arms. A heady warmth sweeps through my body. The chains of the curse binding my family are broken. The deaths are solved.

We are finally free.

I hug her closer, tighter against me. I’ll never let go. Not again.

Minutes pass by as we reel from the revelations, finally getting the answers we’ve been searching for all our lives.

“I think my soul recognized yours the moment we met, and I’m the lucky man who gets to fall in love with you all over again,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her hair.

A breeze blows by, bringing a scent of wildflowers—faint, a whisper of spring around the corner. The season of hope and new beginnings.

My voice leaves me as she flips to the next page of the journal, and what I see there has my heart thudding in a righteous rhythm .

A sketch—a dark silhouette of a woman wearing a locket, the jewelry rendered in the most intricate details. It’s the same locket around Belle’s neck. An inscription is dotted with watermarks. Tears, if I had to guess:

Once lost but destined to be found. My love for you transcends time and death.

Belle’s eyes widen and I reach for the locket on her chest, the one I knew belonged around her neck the moment I laid eyes on the photo. Gently, I open it.

Images of the past meld with the present, of my fingers tracing the words when they were newly carved and again when I put the locket around Belle’s neck centuries later.

To E,

Upon you, my dearest, my love rests for eternity and beyond, for anything less would be insufferable.

Your servant,

S

To Emma from her Silas, star-crossed lovers.

My heart churns and flutters as I stare at my wife, the woman I’ve been waiting for my entire life…and quite possibly longer, even if everything transcends logic and common sense.

I’ve loved her since before I can remember. Every moment with her just adds to the tapestry we’ve been weaving together since the dawn of time.

“Belle,” I whisper, my hand gently clasping her nape.

“Maxwell.” She looks up, her luscious lips parted, a pink swath blooming on her face. She looks like a wildflower in the snow. The beginning of spring.

Slowly, I lean down, watching her eyes flutter shut, and press my forehead against hers.

I breathe her in.

Her scent. Her warmth. Her vitality.

The wind caresses our bodies—a lover’s embrace, and I angle Belle’s face toward mine. My nose grazes her cheek, then to the hollow where her ear meets her neck, and every nerve ending inside me is on fire.

Burning for this woman in my arms.

Unable to withstand it any longer, I press kisses to her soft skin as I make my way back up to her lips.

A thousand kisses for all the years we were apart.

A thousand kisses for all the tears she had shed for me.

A thousand kisses to represent a tiny fraction of the love I feel for her.

Clasping her face in my hands, I seal my mouth over hers, my heart burgeoning and doubling in size.

Perhaps our bodies are transient in this world, but a soul is eternal, each lifetime leaving an indelible imprint behind, a familiar verse we’ve forgotten, but the feelings they evoke are permanent. That’s why we roam this earth looking for the other half of our souls, seeking a connection that has been written in the grains of time.

We break apart for air and I tuck an errant lock of hair that has blown in front of her face.

Her lips curve into a bright teary smile, as beautiful as the golden sunlight breaking through the thick clouds behind us .

“I’m home,” she whispers, moisture glinting in her eyes. “I love you, Maxwell Angus Silas Anderson.”

“And I love you, Annabelle Charlotte Law-McKenzie Anderson,” I reply. “This lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter.”

At the edge of my sight line, at the ground level where the rose garden lies, in the patch of soil where no life has ever taken root—a mark of the cursed land—the tender shoots of a new rose bush pierce the ground, their fragile green stems whispering of hope and new beginnings.

The locket is reunited with its owner, two lost souls reunited, and I am finally whole.

Finally home.