White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-24

The air in the house had become a suffocating shroud. Perceval sat at the kitchen table, the diary of his past—his and Alice’s —hidden securely beneath the floorboards of the parlor. Every time the front door clicked open, his heart stuttered, a primal alarm bell ringing in his blood.

When Lucy walked in, the transformation he had to perform was nauseating. He had to soften his eyes, slacken his jaw, and play the part of the listless, bored fiancé she expected. He watched her move through the kitchen, observing the way her fingers curled too tightly around a wine glass, the way her eyes darted toward him—not with love, but with the cold, hungry assessment of a jailer.

He saw the monster now. He saw the way her smile never reached her eyes, the way the shadows seemed to bow to her presence. She wasn’t just his fiancée; she was the architect of his greatest agony. Yet, he was paralyzed by the gaps in his own mind. Why did he remember the smell of Alice’s perfume, the weight of the ruby necklace, the taste of a life cut short? He didn't know about the medium, the blood sacrifice, or the soul-binding ritual he had once demanded of fate. He only knew that the man he had been was gone, and he was currently a man playing a deadly game of chess against an opponent who had already won once.

"You’re brooding again, Percy," Lucy purred, sliding into the chair opposite him. She reached out, her nails grazing his wrist. The contact made his skin crawl, but he didn't pull away. He couldn't.

"Just the house," he lied, his voice steady despite the hammer of his heart. "It’s... difficult to keep the past at bay."

She smiled, a thin, sharp line. "The past is dead, darling. Let it stay buried."

The moment she finally left for her evening errands, the house exhaled. Percy didn't wait. He sprinted to the library, the place where the veil was thinnest. He didn't look for books this time; he stood in the center of the room, closing his eyes, letting his grief and his confusion bleed into the atmosphere.

"I know she did it," he whispered to the empty, dusty air. "I know it wasn't him—it wasn't me. She killed you. She cursed us."

He waited, his breath hitching, feeling foolish and desperate. The silence stretched, heavy and profound. He opened his eyes, about to turn away in defeat, when the temperature in the room plummeted. The scent of midnight roses—sweet, intoxicating, and sharp—flooded his senses.

He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A presence, cold and electric, drifted behind him. It wasn't the static of a ghost; it was the warmth of a memory.

He froze, his heart hammering against his ribs like a bird in a cage. Then, a touch—soft, fleeting, and impossibly real—brushed against the shell of his ear. A whisper, faint as a dying breath but clear as a bell, drifted through his consciousness, bypassing his ears and settling directly into his soul.

"Remember the ruby, my love... the binding was yours."

The voice was hers. It was Alice, his Alice. And as the words settled in his mind, the final, jagged piece of the puzzle clicked into place. He hadn't just been a victim of a curse; he had been the one who had woven the cage. He had forced their souls to bleed together across time, a desperate, arrogant demand that had brought them both back to this house, to this hell, to finish a war that had been started a century ago.

He didn't turn around. He didn't dare to. He simply stood there in the dark, shivering as the realization took root: he wasn't just searching for his wife. He was looking at the price of his own eternal obsession.