White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-26

The erosion of their engagement was not a landslide; it was a slow, agonizing decay. Perceval had become a shell, a man walking through his own life with the glazed, distant stare of a sleepwalker. He no longer cared for the renovation, the meals, or the future Lucy had meticulously planned. He spent his days drifting through the corridors like a specter, his fingers tracing the wood paneling, his eyes searching for shadows.

Lucy’s irritation had curdled into a cold, sharp-edged fury. She didn't know about the diary, and she certainly didn't know about the ethereal, haunting presence that clung to him like a second skin. To her, Perceval was simply failing. He wasn't the man she had pursued, the man who was supposed to be the dark, dangerous Cornelius of her memories. This version of him was a weak, melancholic ghost of a man—a disappointment that stung her pride.

One night, the tension in the bedroom reached a breaking point. The air was thick with the scent of stagnant dust and the faint, lingering aroma of roses that Percy seemed to carry with him everywhere. Lucy, draped in silk that was meant to provoke, climbed into the bed and pressed herself against him.

"You haven't touched me in weeks, Percy," she hissed, her hand sliding down his chest, her nails digging into his skin. "I didn't bring you to this house to play the martyr. I want my fiancé back."

Perceval flinched as if she had branded him. He rolled away, his eyes wide and hollow, staring into the dark corner of the room where he felt her—a cold, comforting presence that offered him a peace Lucy could never touch.

"I can't," he whispered, his voice trembling with a revulsion he couldn't hide. "I don't know who you are, Lucy. But you aren't what I need."

Lucy went rigid. The rejection was a slap across her face. She sat up, her eyes gleaming with a frantic, hateful light. "You are nothing! You are a hollow, pathetic creature who can't even hold onto his own sanity!"

She didn't wait for a reply. She erupted from the bed, her movements sharp and jagged as she began throwing her belongings into a suitcase. The bedroom, once a sanctuary for her twisted ambitions, now felt like a tomb. She paused at the doorway, turning back to look at the man who lay shivering in the dark, clutching his chest as if he were protecting something invisible.

He’s broken, she realized, a bitter bile rising in her throat. He isn't him. The darkness is gone, replaced by this... this spineless adoration for nothing.

She realized with a jolt of pure, spiteful clarity that she had made a monumental error. She had reached across time to claim a man who was no longer the villain she had worshipped; she had tethered herself to a corpse of a man who was already lost to the past.

"Stay here, then," she spat, her voice echoing through the silent, oppressive house. "Rot in this ruin with your ghosts. I’m done playing with a relic that has lost its edge."

The front door slammed with a force that shook the chandeliers, and then, silence descended.

Perceval didn't move. He didn't check the window to see her car pull away. Instead, he waited. He felt the shift in the room, the temperature dropping, the comforting weight of a phantom hand resting on his shoulder.

He was finally alone in the house he had built for his own destruction, and as the darkness swallowed the room, he smiled. He was closer to her now than he had been in a century as he drifted to sleep with the feeling of his ghost curled around him.