24. Ava
AVA
T y had promised me access to more of the mansion.
Now, walking down the long, dimly lit hallway, the weight of the place pressed in around me, heavy with uncovered secrets.
My fingers trailed over the locked doors, one by one, and excitement mingled with tension in my veins.
Behind each door held the possibility of more memories. More mysteries.
More pain.
Behind me, I could feel Ty’s presence. Silent, watchful, his eyes boring into my back.
I resisted the urge to turn around and meet his gaze, choosing instead to savor the anticipation as I moved farther down the hall.
I paused when I reached a certain door, my fingertips lingering on the wood, tracing its grain as though it were the contours of a face I longed to see again.
This was Ciaran’s room .
Even the thought of his name sent a pang of longing through me, sharp and sudden.
I pressed my hand against the door as if I could feel him there, just beyond it.
“This one,” I murmured, barely daring to hope as I looked back at Ty.
His expression changed in an instant. His jaw set, eyes darkening with something hard, almost possessive, as he took in the way my hand rested on the door.
“No.” His voice was curt, final. “Pick any other room.”
I turned fully toward him, feeling my own frustration flare up. “Why not? You promised me more freedom, Ty. That was the deal.”
He stared back, unyielding. “ Not that room.”
A protest rose in my throat. “But—”
“Pick another. Or pick none .”
The bluntness of his words clawed at me, each syllable a reminder of his control.
My fists clenched at my sides, fighting against the helplessness pressing in.
He twisted the rules to suit himself, always a step ahead, always reminding me of my place.
My pride wanted to stand its ground, to refuse him outright, but the threat lingered heavy in the air—one wrong move, and I’d be back in that cold, windowless bedroom.
A thought struck me, a memory from years ago, a door kept locked for the entire time I’d lived here, the only room in the mansion I’d never been in.
The forbidden room .
A dark curiosity flared up inside me. If he wouldn’t give me Ciaran’s room, then I’d take the secrets behind that one.
Without a word, I strode down the hallway, Ty’s footsteps following close behind, a current running down my spine.
I stopped in front of the door of the forbidden bedroom and slapped my hand against the dark wood panel embossed with thorny vines and flowers, the sound echoing off the walls.
“This one,” I said, my voice resolute. “I want access to this room.”
Ty stiffened, his face growing tight as he looked at the door and then back at me. He hesitated, as though searching for the right words.
“No,” he said at last, his voice strained. “That’s…”
He trailed off, refusing to meet my eyes, his jaw clenched tightly.
I narrowed my gaze, crossing my arms.
“Then give me Ciaran’s room,” I demanded, my voice tinged with defiance.
He stood there in silence, his face shadowed and unreadable. I felt the tension tighten between us like a string ready to snap.
“You promised,” I reminded him, my voice soft but relentless. “You can’t keep me locked out of every room.”
Ty’s shoulders slumped, the fight draining from him. He let out a long, resigned sigh, his eyes meeting mine with a reluctant acceptance.
“Fine,” he muttered, the word barely audible, like a reluctant admission.
I stepped aside so Ty could stand before the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slender, old-fashioned key. It must be a master key for the whole mansion.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off it as he slipped it into the lock, turning it with a soft, metallic click. My pulse quickened at the sight of the key—the thought of it in my possession, the idea of all the other doors it could unlock.
But he was fast.
Before I could react, Ty slid the key back into his pocket, out of my reach, and stepped aside, pushing the door open with a somber look.
“Go on,” he said, his tone unreadable.
I swallowed, my heart pounding as I crossed the threshold.
Inside, the room seemed almost untouched by time, as though it had been sealed off from the rest of Blackthorn Hall, preserved in amber.
A muted dusky-lavender canopy hung over the four-poster bed, its fabric faded but once rich, shrouding the room in a quiet, melancholic grace. The faint, powdery scent of faded rose perfume lingered in the air, mixing with the scent of aged wood and dust.
I moved farther in, my gaze catching on the vanity by the wall, its mirror clouded, reflecting only shadow.
Bottles of perfume sat undisturbed, dusted like forgotten relics of a life that once was.
An armchair by the fireplace slouched slightly, its cushions bearing the soft indentations of the owner’s presence.
“This was my mother’s room,” Ty murmured. “I haven’t been in here since she—”
He didn’t look at me but stared off into the shadows, his face carved from stone .
Mona Donahue.
Her name floated through my memory, a whisper I’d heard among the Blackthorn staff years ago, yet never attached to a face.
There were no portraits, no photographs.
Ty and Ciaran’s mother was a ghost erased by those she’d left behind, as if acknowledging her was a wound they couldn’t bear to reopen.
A wave of guilt twisted through me for pushing him here, forcing him to peel back layers he’d buried so deeply.
“You never spoke about her,” I said softly. “None of you did.”
He remained silent, his lips pressed into a thin line.
The weight of the room settled over me like a shroud as I stepped farther in, my heart catching at every object that hinted at the woman who’d once lived here.
A woman’s blush-colored coat hung on the closet door, delicate and elegant, and a sun hat rested on the back of the chair.
My gaze fell on a book lying open on the bedside table, a book left mid-sentence, as though Mona Donahue had only put it down for a moment, as though she had just left, intending to return in mere moments.
But the years had only added to the stillness, encasing the room in an untouched silent tomb.
Ty’s voice broke the silence, low and hollow, echoing in the stillness. “Our mother was much younger than the professor. By nearly two decades. She was barely sixteen when they married.”
A knot tightened in my stomach.
Sixteen—just a few years younger than I was now. The thought of being married off at that age, bound to someone so much older, felt incomprehensible, wrong in a way that gnawed at me.
He let out a humorless laugh, brittle and sharp.
“Scandalous, isn’t it? But back then, no one batted an eye. Women married young.” He paused, his gaze darkening. “And… I doubt it was exactly her choice.”
A chill prickled down my spine, the weight of his words settling in, filling the room with a suffocating heaviness. I swallowed, my throat tight.
“How did she…?” But I couldn’t bring myself to finish the question.
Ty’s jaw tensed, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
“She killed herself,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “She stole plants out of father’s greenhouse and brewed herself a tea out of oleander.”
That’s why the greenhouse was forbidden to us.
He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking under his weight. He looked down, his fingers curling around the edge of the bedspread as if he needed something to hold on to.
My chest tightened as I watched Ty, his face etched with shadows I hadn’t seen before, shadows that ran deeper than anything I’d imagined.
Without thinking, I sat down beside him. My hand found his, and though the logical part of me screamed to pull away, I didn’t.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted to comfort him, to ease some of the weight he carried—even though he was my captor.
I didn’t understand it; maybe I didn’t want to .
“Ciaran refused to talk about her,” he continued, his gaze distant. “He wouldn’t even say her name again. He rebelled, became… well, you know Ci.”
He let out a faint, bitter laugh, and I could hear the complicated mix of resentment and admiration beneath it.
“And you?” I asked softly.
“I…” Ty hesitated, his eyes clouding with something deeper. “I threw myself into school, into debate club, chess club, anything that would keep me busy.”
A wave of sorrow swept through me, mingling with a new kind of grief—not just for him, but for Ciaran too. The pain they must have endured when she abandoned them, no way to understand why she’d left.
“At the time, I didn’t understand why she would leave me. Leave us.” His voice was quiet, strained with a pain that had clearly been buried for years. “I thought… maybe if I had just been perfect… if I could have been everything she wanted… then maybe she would have loved me enough to stay.”
The ache in his words hit me, raw and unguarded. It was the kind of confession that left no room for masks or games.
For the first time, I saw him—not as the man who’d trapped me here, but as a broken boy who’d blamed himself for not saving her.
I understood his fierce determination to save me —no matter how much it broke me.
Ty stood up suddenly. “Close the door on your way out when you’re done.”
He walked out abruptly, as if he couldn’t stand to be in her room any longer, his anger and pain trailing behind him like a shadow.
I watched him leave, his shoulders stiff with an unspoken weight. Ty’s words echoed in my mind, leaving me torn.
Part of me wanted to follow him, to try to ease that torment, but another part held me back—a dark, gnawing curiosity pulling me deeper into his mother’s room.
The room felt frozen in time, shrouded in sacred stillness. But the longer I lingered, the more unsettling the details became, small clues casting shadows over any sense of peace.
My gaze caught on a small wastebasket near the bed. Inside, a crumpled towel was stained with dried blood, faded yet unmistakable.
I took a step back, my stomach twisting as the room’s darkness seemed to swell around me.
My heel struck something small and glass—a vial. It rolled across the floor, its sound hollow and haunting in the silence.
I swallowed back bile, my gaze falling on the bedposts, and a chill crept up my spine as I noticed the faint grooves in the wood, marks worn down from repeated use. The marks were on all four posts, like something heavy had been tied around them.
Chains , my mind whispered, horrified.
My heart pounded as I pieced it together. Mona had been drugged, bound, forced to endure some unimaginable suffering. Perhaps… she had been the first girl?
And I had been her twisted replacement .
A shiver ran down my spine as I tried to breathe past the wave of nausea.
His mother—Mona—had suffered here, trapped in her own bedroom, and for the first time, I felt a grim understanding of the woman whose ghost seemed to linger. Trapped, controlled, like I was now.
The mansion had always felt cursed, but now I felt the weight of its secrets bearing down on me.
My eyes fell on a delicate, ornate jewelry box on the dresser, its carvings intricate and aged. So similar to the jewelry box that Ty had left for me.
Without thinking, I ran my fingers over the floral design, feeling a small bloom beneath my thumb.
There was a soft click, and to my surprise, a hidden drawer sprang open.
I reached in, my hands trembling as I pulled out a bundle of letters, each one neatly folded and tied with a faded lavender ribbon. My breath caught as I carefully unfolded one, the parchment thin and fragile between my fingers.
The first words gripped me with a sick, hollow feeling.
The letters were Mona’s.
They were prayers, or perhaps pleas, written to someone unnamed—maybe to God, or maybe just to the silence.
There was a desperation in her words, a kind of terror that seemed to reach out from the ink, echoing through the years.
And then—a dark truth. A terrible secret.
I staggered back, clutching the letters to my chest.
My gaze drifted toward the door, toward where Ty had vanished moments ago.
Should I show him? Should I lay this truth in front of him? But as I looked down at the trembling letters in my hands, fear and doubt held me back.
Would he survive knowing the depth of her suffering? Or would it only destroy him more? Would it only push him further into darkness?