White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-19

The decay of the estate was not merely a matter of time; it was a physical weight. For decades, the house had groaned under the burden of silence, its wallpaper peeling like shedding skin, the air thick with the dust of forgotten memories. I had been adrift in a grey, aimless void, a whisper of static in the corridors, until the sound of a key grinding in the rusted lock tore through the stillness.

I manifested in the center of the foyer, my ethereal form shimmering like moonlight caught in a spiderweb.

They stepped over the threshold, bringing with them the sharp, intrusive scent of the living. He was the first to enter: Perceval Cornelius Thorne. My breath—or the memory of it—stilled. He was a mirror image of the man who had loved and destroyed me, possessing that same sharp, angular jaw and the haunting intensity of a soul restless before its time. Only his hair differed, falling in dark, unruly waves that seemed to catch the dust motes dancing in the light.

Behind him walked Lucy. I recoiled. She was my sister reborn, an identical echo of my sister’s sharp features and cold, assessing eyes. There was a malice in her stance, a calculated way she surveyed the ruins, as if she were inspecting a cage she had finally reclaimed.

Perceval moved through the hall with an air of profound, listless boredom. He dragged his hand along the banister, his eyes vacant, as if he were wandering through a life that didn't quite fit. He was engaged to this woman, yet he looked at her as one might look at a necessary, tedious obligation.

I couldn't help myself. Guided by an ancient, magnetic pull, I drifted toward him.

As I passed, I felt a sudden, electric jolt—the ruby. It was nestled against his skin, hidden beneath his shirt. Cornelius’s necklace. The binding spell, dormant for eighty years, ignited at the proximity of my spirit. The contact sent a shockwave of recognition through the ether.

Tentatively, I reached out. My hand, translucent and cool, brushed against his cheek.

The reaction was instantaneous. Perceval stopped dead. His hand flew to his face, his eyes widening as a sudden, sharp intake of air escaped his lips. He turned, his gaze sweeping the empty air where I stood, and for a fleeting, impossible second, our eyes locked. A flicker of recognition—a soul-deep knowing that transcended the decades—flashed in his dark gaze. The boredom vanished, replaced by a sudden, frantic hunger, a desperate yearning for something he couldn't name.

Lucy, standing by the parlor door, narrowed her eyes. Her fingers twitched, and for a moment, the temperature in the house dropped to a freezing, unnatural degree. She sensed the shift. She looked at Perceval, her expression twisting into a mask of subtle, dangerous jealousy.

"Is something wrong, my love?" she purred, her voice a silk-wrapped razor.

“Uhh, no it just got cold all of a sudden in here. There must be something wrong with the roof. We will need to get that checked out as soon as possible if we want to live here” Perceval said. He didn’t know what had happened. Years and years of empty searching his memory of us must have slipped and vanished with the time.

Lucy had brought him back here to a place where he took away mine and it holds life. She had been reincarnated and she had taken him as her own and brought him here, I’m sure as a form of torture to me. To spite me. She didn’t know that I was still here, all along, waiting.