Chapter 31 Return to Blackburne
I walked the winding stone path along Wicker Street, my shoes scuffing against the uneven cobblestones.
The scent of rain lingered in the cracks, mixing with the faint traces of chimney smoke curling from distant rooftops.
The street was quieter than I remembered, or maybe that’s what Sundays were like in Greenwich now.
Ahead, the bookstore stood still and solemn, its windows dark, its door marked by a hastily written sign: Temporarily Closed.
A heaviness settled in my stomach. I reached for the doorknob, my fingers brushing against the brass, cold and unwelcoming after months of absence. It had been almost three months since I’d left, and so much had changed.
But I wasn’t here for nostalgia.
I was here for Estelle.
“Mother?” My voice wavered as I stepped inside, the bell over the door letting out a feeble chime. “It’s me, Dahlia.”
The scent of parchment and old incense wrapped around me like an embrace, familiar and grounding.
I inhaled deeply, greedily. Home. I had missed home.
The floorboards creaked beneath my weight as I moved forward, each step stirring dust motes in the dim afternoon light filtering through the curtained windows.
These steps were worn with love, softened by the passage of time.
Not like the floorboards in Foresyth—those were warped by decay, splintered by counter-magick.
“Mother?” I called again, climbing the stairs.
A faint voice, like a breath against the walls, responded. “Dahlia?”
I pushed open the door to her room.
She sat by the window, her thin frame curled into the armchair, hands resting lightly on top of a book.
A cup of tea rested on the windowsill, long cold and forgotten.
For a moment, the light caught her just so, illuminating her bright blue eyes.
She was all the light to my father’s darkness.
Despite the lines of fatigue, the hollowed contours of her face, she still had that unspoken radiance.
“Dahlia!” she said again, louder this time, her entire face blooming with relief. “I knew you’d come back to me.”
I studied her, cataloging the small changes. The silver threaded through her chestnut hair, the deepening shadows beneath her eyes. A hot tear streaked down my cheek before I could stop it.
“I thought you said Angelise was overfeeding you,” I tried to joke, my voice unsteady. “You look thinner than the last time I saw you.”
“Oh, hush now, child. Why are you fretting?” She waved her hand toward me. “Come sit beside me. I’m glad to see you’ve been eating better than I have.”
I pulled a stool close to her chair and sat, my hand finding hers. I let the soft warmth radiating from her palm ground me.
“Mother, I . . . I wasn’t honest with you,” I admitted, my throat tightening. My fingers fumbled with the flap of my satchel before pulling out the letters. “I didn’t go to Foresyth to learn about bookbinding. I went to learn about my father.” I hesitated, then added, “And Julian.”
At the name my mother stiffened. Her eyes flickered, something unreadable shifting behind them.
“Julian,” she echoed.
“You knew about him?” That warm, sinking feeling twisted in my gut. A betrayal, thick and undeniable.
She exhaled, her other hand tracing slow patterns against the chair’s yellow fabric. “Yes,” she admitted. “I know of Julian.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ll have to forgive a mother for trying to protect her daughter.” A weak smile, an attempt at levity. “I wanted to keep you away from all of this.”
“It’s my history. You can’t.”
Her hand fell into her lap, resigned. “Of course,” she murmured. “I should have known better than to think I could protect you when you’ve always been so good at protecting yourself.” There was no coat of malice in her words, only observation.
“Then tell me,” I pressed. “Tell me what really happened.”
And finally, she did.
She wove the past into the present, mirroring the same thread of events I had pieced together from my father’s letters.
How Daniel left Foresyth before Julian was born.
How she met him in the months that followed.
How they built a life together—fell in love and had me.
How she had agreed to let the past stay in the past, burying it beneath bookshelves and quiet evenings.
But I couldn’t bury it. I couldn’t forget. I dropped my hand from hers.
“I don’t understand how you forgave him,” I said, my voice thick with something between frustration and grief. “He killed Elizabeth Svenski—an innocent girl.”
She looked at me then, and I saw it, the weight of her years and what she had carried.
“We all have regrets,” she said softly. “I cannot judge a man’s future solely by his past. I saw the light in Daniel that he never wanted to acknowledge.
He turned his life around, he helped people, Dahlia.
He brought criminals to justice. He gave families solace.
He was an excellent husband, and in his own way . . . a loving father.”
I clenched my jaw, my hands curling into fists in my lap.
“But the bloodlust,” she continued. “That never truly left him. He described it as acid in his veins. We tried everything—herbs, tonics—but nothing worked.”
“So, what did you do?”
She hesitated. “We went to a healer—an acquaintance of your grandmother, Tatiana was her name. She specialized in reversals. Lifted curses and hexes.” Her lips pressed together, weighing her next words carefully. “But there was a cost.”
My stomach turned. “What cost?” I breathed out.
But I already knew. I had learned to read my mother’s face long before I had learned to read books. And right now, she was holding back something devastating.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” My voice was barely above a whisper. “Your health.”
She broke my gaze and looked back at the window.
“The reversal helped him,” she admitted. “It stabilized him. He could be a father to you.”
“At your expense. At the cost of you being a mother to me.” My breath came sharp and uneven.
“We didn’t know the full effects,” she said quickly. “It was a blood exchange. I gave him my clean, unencumbered blood, but I had to take his in return, to help him carry the burden. My deterioration came slowly.”
A slow, burning heat coiled in my chest.
“He made you sick,” I spat, my voice shaking.
“I chose to help him,” she corrected, tucking herself back into the chair, her frame suddenly impossibly small. “As we all make our choices in the end.”
A sharp, hot streak of anger tore through me.
I hated them.
Hamra. Renate. Daniel.
I hated them all.
The heat of it tightened in my stomach, searing up my spine, urging me to run, to tear myself from this room, from the weight of my father’s sins. I stood abruptly. I had come here for answers, and now that I had them, I needed to act.
“Please.” My mother’s voice cracked. “Don’t leave me, too.”
Something inside me fractured. I looked at her, really looked at Estelle: her frail body barely indenting the cushion of the chair she sat on, the hollowness of her cheeks cast by worry, the bright eyes still shining with life.
She was the least guilty of them. She didn’t deserve to suffer.
For the sake of my mother, I steadied my breath.
For so long, I had believed I bore the weight of her illness, of this bookshop.
But I hadn’t carried my mother’s burden, I had carried my father’s.
Who else would continue to suffer under his legacy if I didn’t stop it? There were people at Foresyth I cared about. Sequoia, Aspen, Leone, Nina.
I couldn’t let them carry my father’s burden, too.
I turned to my mother, my voice steadier. “I will not leave you. I will stay with you tonight, but in the morning, I will keep my promises.”