15. Three Days Until Bonding
Chapter fifteen
Three Days Until Bonding
Laurel
I slow my horse to a stop. “What do you mean?”
“This is the old Bellefleur Estate, your ancestral home. Where your father was born and all the men before him.”
I look back at the wreckage of the mansion. “How can that be? Dad’s only been gone, what? Thirty years? This place looks like it’s been abandoned for a century.”
“It was already falling apart before he left.” Carrson looks toward the ivy crawling up the walls. “Your family moved into the city generations ago, but they kept this place, or at least they tried to.”
We tie the horses by the front door. Carrson reaches deep into his pocket and pulls out a big brass key. He hands it to me. “This is yours.”
“The key?” I ask, confused.
“The house,” he answers. “Father took it to the High Council. The Bellefleur properties have been held by The Order since your father left. They’re putting this estate, the house in Ashport, and the family accounts under your name while your dad is in rehab.”
I stare, sure I heard him wrong. “The money too?”
“All of it.”
Speechless, I stand there another second, holding the key in my fist.
A house.
Money.
A name that belonged to my father before it became a word he was ashamed to say out loud.
This is mine. Not a room at Ashford House someone can take away from me if they change their mind.
Carrson climbs the steps, then glances back over his shoulder. “Coming?”
I follow him to the porch.
The massive double front doors are painted a pale color that has buckled and peeled. Magnolia blossoms are carved into the center of each panel, their petals worn soft by rain and time.
“Let’s take a closer look.” Carrson tips his head back to take in the second story.
Magnolias greet me again when I unlock the door and push it open. They’ve been carved into the banister of a curved staircase. There’s a sweet smell lingering in the air. Rotten flowers or perfume that seeped into the wallpaper and never let go.
I take one step inside. Then another, looking left and right where hallways branch off in each direction. I choose left, and Carrson follows.
I turn. “You’ve never been in here?”
“No,” he answers, his eyes checking the corners of the room. “When I was a kid, I thought it was haunted.”
“What about now?”
“I still think it’s haunted.”
Together we explore. The deeper we go, the darker it gets.
Dust dulls the windows. Corridors stretch into shadow, their wallpaper patterned with faded magnolias that seem to appear and disappear as the light changes.
The air smells of mold, rotting wood, and the same spoiled perfume that greeted us at the door.
Somewhere ahead, a loose door shifts on its hinges with a long wooden groan.
Carrson and I stop. Cold air moves through a crack in the window at the end of the hallway.
“A draft,” he says.
“I’m a little scared,” I admit, reaching behind me.
Carrson takes my hand. “I’m here.”
Walking blind, I let him lead me through the darkness. There’s a wide dining room where portraits cover the walls. Men in dark coats. Women in silk gowns. Children with pale faces and solemn eyes.
I move toward one near the fireplace. A woman sits in a high-backed chair with a book open across her lap, although she isn’t looking at it. Her eyes are fixed somewhere beyond the painter, dark and unreadable. A magnolia blossom is tucked into her hair.
“She looks sad,” I say.
I try to picture her life. She must’ve been bonded to a Bellefleur man, just like those dark-haired women are bonded to Carr. The century doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. Women placed in rooms, dressed in silk, arranged like flowers in a vase.
A shiver runs through me, noticeable enough that Carrson rubs his hand up and down my arm, urging warmth back into my skin. For one irrational beat, I want to pull away from him.
He hasn’t done anything wrong, but I’ve spent the last few days looking at women who were probably touched gently too. Guided by the elbow. Kissed on the temple. Told they were safe while the walls closed in around them.
Carrson’s hand stills when he feels me tense. “Laurel?”
I try to relax, to remember this is Carrson, but I can’t. Not while the dead woman watches.
Will that be me someday? Another woman on display?
The house opens in bits and pieces after that. An office. A narrow parlor. A nursery at the end of the upstairs hall, its ceiling painted with clouds and stars, a cracked rocking horse in the corner.
“Your father might have slept here,” Carrson says.
I try to picture it.
My father as a boy. Small enough to fit in that bed. Lying awake in the dark, wondering what kind of man he would become.
I’ve spent the last few years frustrated with him. Angry about the things he couldn’t give me. Answers. Stability. A version of himself that didn’t disappear into a bottle and leave me guessing who would come back out.
Standing in this empty room, I wonder what had been taken from him first.
Once, I looked at Carrson and thought about the way monsters are made. My father is not a monster. Not in the way Carr can be.
But he still left damage behind.