Ashes Beneath the Tongue.
565 Words
The priest’s warning weighed on Lucas as he walked back into the waking streets of Elmridge. Dawn had broken, weak and gray, but it brought no warmth. Villagers moved about with wary glances, carrying buckets from the well, chopping kindling, lighting lamps against the lingering gloom. Every face turned when they saw him. Some stared too long. Others looked away too quickly.
The Raven’s Rest Inn still smelled of stew and woodsmoke when he pushed through its door. Eleanor Graves stood behind the counter, drying a cup, her sharp eyes narrowing at the sight of him.
“You went up there,” she said. Not a question.
Lucas dropped into a chair by the hearth. His coat was damp, his cigarette nearly spent. “You all knew,” he said evenly. “About the fire. About Eveline. You’ve known for years, and yet no one leaves this village.”
A silence spread. The handful of villagers inside froze, pretending to busy themselves, but their ears tilted toward him.
Eleanor’s hands stilled on the cup. “Leaving doesn’t help. The ones who tried…” She shook her head. “They dream of her still. Some never wake from it.”
Lucas studied her, smoke curling between them. “That’s not the whole story.”
It was an old trick—say the thing with enough certainty, and people filled the silence themselves.
Sure enough, an old man at the back table muttered, “We gave her what she wanted…” before being shushed by the others.
Lucas’s eyes sharpened. “What she wanted?”
Eleanor’s voice snapped like a whip. “Enough!”
But the old man’s words spilled out, trembling with guilt and age. “The night of the fire… it wasn’t an accident. We set it. We tried to burn her out, to bury her under stone. But—” His gaze dropped to the table. “She didn’t die alone.”
The room seemed to tilt. Lucas leaned forward. “Who?”
The villagers exchanged glances, fear thick in the air. Finally, Eleanor spoke, her voice a ragged whisper. “Children. Five of them. Taken by Eveline that summer. We thought she’d hidden them inside. When the flames took the palace, we prayed the children would escape. None did.”
The old man’s hands shook violently. “The fire didn’t silence her. It fed her. Their screams bound her tighter to the stones. That’s why she lingers.”
Lucas’s cigarette burned low between his fingers, the ember flaring red. His mind flickered to Evelyn,her reflection twisting in the glass, her voice calling from the walls.
The villagers avoided his eyes now, shame heavy on their shoulders. They were not just victims. They had made a bargain of desperation—and birthed the very curse that chained Ravenwood.
Lucas stood, the chair scraping hard against the floor. His voice was quiet, but edged with steel. “You wanted her buried in silence. But silence is what keeps her alive.”
Eleanor’s face tightened. “Then you mean to finish what we could not.”
Lucas tipped his hat low, smoke trailing as he moved toward the door. “No. I mean to drag her screaming into the light.”
The inn fell into hushed stillness as he stepped back into the gray morning. Above the village, the palace loomed, darker than the clouds, waiting.
- Writer
