The Ravenwood Palace

The Notebook.

The rain eased by afternoon, though the sky never cleared. A pale, watery light slipped through the clouds, giving Elmridge the look of a painting left too long in the damp. Lucas walked the narrow lanes with no clear destination, letting the village guide him the way he often let suspects do in the city—through the weight of their silence, the shape of their fear.

He passed shuttered windows, doors that closed as he approached. Only the sound of the wind moved between the crooked cottages, carrying with it the faint toll of a distant bell. It wasn’t Sunday.

At the edge of the village, past the last row of houses, Lucas found himself before the church. It stood like a sentinel on the rise, its stone walls slick with rain, its bell tower looming against the gray. A rusted iron gate barred the graveyard beside it, where rows of leaning headstones pushed out of the earth like broken teeth.

The door to the church was ajar.

Lucas stepped inside.

The air smelled of wax and damp wood. Streaks of light bled through stained-glass windows, scattering broken colors across the pews. At the far end, the altar was bare save for a single candle burning low, its flame trembling in the draft.

He moved down the aisle, boots echoing against the flagstones. It was then he saw it—half-hidden beneath a pew, as though dropped in haste. A leather-bound book, its cover damp and scuffed.

Lucas crouched, lifting it carefully. The initials were pressed into the cover: A.F.

His pulse quickened. Anna Fletcher.

He sat on the pew, opening the notebook with steady hands. The pages were filled with hurried writing, sketches of maps, fragments of names. One sketch stood out—a floor plan of Ravenwood Palace, the east wing marked with a circle. Beneath it, scrawled in uneven ink:

Eveline’s chamber. The fire began here.

Lucas turned the page. The writing grew more frantic. Words crossed out, ink smeared as though written in haste.

She listens. In the walls. In the bells. Eveline was never buried. They lied. The grave is empty.

A final line, nearly illegible, clawed across the page:

If I don’t return—don’t let her follow me back.

The church door creaked.

Lucas snapped the notebook shut, slipping it inside his coat. His hand drifted toward his revolver, but when he turned, he saw only a figure standing in the doorway—Eleanor Graves, the innkeeper.

Her face was pale in the dim light. “You shouldn’t have found that.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “Funny thing about me, Mrs. Graves. I tend to find what people don’t want me to.”

Eleanor’s gaze flicked toward the notebook hidden in his coat. Her voice dropped, heavy with warning. “Then burn it. Before it’s too late.”

Outside, the bell tolled again—slow, deliberate, though no one was in the tower. The sound shook the air, rattling the windows, echoing through Lucas’s chest like a heartbeat not his own.

He looked at Eleanor. For the first time since arriving, her eyes held fear not of him, but of something much greater.

And Lucas knew, with the certainty of a man too deep to turn back, that Anna Fletcher’s trail did not end in the village. It led to the palace.