A new beginning?
819 Words
She returned to her room, but it no longer felt like hers.
The small cot was just a cot. The pale blue blanket just a folded square. Her wooden box, her only possession held three things: a small iron cross, a brush missing half its bristles and a torn scrap of cloth she had once used as a doll's dress. That was all. She slid the lid shut and tied a string around it. Soon all of it would be a distant memory. Nothing more, nothing less.
The silence in the hallway felt heavier now. Like it knew.
She didn’t see the other girls on her way out and perhaps that was on purpose. No tearful goodbyes. No hushed warnings. Just one long walk through cold stone, out the side door, into the cold morning.
A man was waiting.
He wasn’t dressed like a noble -just dark wool clothes, a hat, gloves. His face was hidden in shadow, but he gave a small bow. His coat had silver buttons. That was the only detail Clara noticed. That, and the fact that he didn’t speak. To her.
He opened the carriage door and held it there.
Clara looked up at the building behind her. The convent she had spent nineteen years inside. It had no warmth. No memories she wanted to keep. And yet, her legs didn’t want to move. Why?
“Get in,” the man said.
It was the first word she had heard from anyone since the office. His voice was blunt, not unkind. She stepped up and sat on the velvet seat inside. Her box rested in her lap.The door closed behind her. The man did not get in.
A moment later, the carriage began to move.
She pressed her fingers against the window and watched the convent disappear behind the trees. Then the trees grew thicker, and the world she had once known completely vanished.
Hours passed.
The light shifted. The road grew worse—narrower, bumpier, more tangled in root and mud. At some point, the clouds gathered thick above the trees. The driver never spoke. There was no sound but hooves and wind. Silent as she was used to. Nothing new, she thought.
Clara leaned back and closed her eyes.
She remembered a moment—not from the convent, but before. A face she couldn’t see. A scent like firewood. Arms lifting her. Then—nothing. The memories always slipped away too quickly, like water in cupped hands.
The wheels struck a rough patch, and the carriage rocked. She jolted forward.
When she looked out again, a rusted iron gate loomed ahead, tall and twisted with ivy. The woods behind it were black with shadow. The gates creaked open without anyone lifting a hand.
They passed through.
Her fingers tightened around the wooden box in her lap. She began to see it then through the mist, the house. It rose from the earth like it had grown there. Black stone walls, four tall towers, dozens of windows without curtains. The manor had a face. Cold. Watching.
Vines climbed up one side, like hands trying to pull it back into the dirt. The chimney smoked faintly. Thunder rumbled far off. And in front of the door, standing alone in the rain, was a man.
Tall.
Still.
Not moving.
Her heart skipped as the carriage slowed. The driver pulled the horses to a stop. The man didn’t move to help her down. He just waited. The driver opened her door. Clara stepped out slowly, one foot into wet gravel, her shoes already soaked. Her breath fogged.
She looked at the man. He looked back at her.
His hair was black and pushed back, wet with rain. His coat was buttoned high, his gloves neatly fitted, his eyes impossible to read. Pale grey. Like the sky before a storm.
He said her name.
“Clara Vale.”
The way he said it made her knees feel unsteady. Like he had known her longer than she had known herself. He took one step forward. Not too close. Not yet.
“You’ve come,” he said. His voice was smooth. Quiet. Dangerous in how gentle it was.
She nodded.
He looked her over—slowly. Not rudely. Not kindly either. Just... thoroughly. Like she was something he had ordered and was now inspecting for flaws.
“Have you been told why you’re here?” he asked.
“No,” Clara said.
He nodded once, as if that pleased him. “Good.”
He stepped aside, motioning towards the door.
“You may enter. From this moment on, your body, your time, your silence—they belong to me.”
Clara blinked. He waited. Watching.
“Do you understand?”
Her voice caught in her throat, but she managed a quiet “Yes.”
He didn’t smile. But something in his eyes changed. Sharpened.
“Then come inside.”
- Writer
