13. Fractured Trust
Chapter thirteen
Fractured Trust
The sky’s purple-grey like a bad bruise, smoke rising from three fires across the grounds.
I half-trip after Silas out of our underground hideout, my lungs already burning from the air.
My house—well, mine now—still stands, but who knows for how long?
Garrow’s men set fires precisely to trap the main house if we don’t move fast. The calculation pisses me off more than the actual flames.
Silas bolts toward the fiercest blaze, his steps steady in the chaos. “We need to contain the east wing,” he calls, words measured and direct. His eyes scan the property sharply. “Garden shed’s gone. Focus on what’s still standing.”
I follow without thinking, running on adrenaline even though my body aches from our cramped night in hiding. The grass crunches underfoot—burnt, black, and crumbly where flames went through.
Something clicks in the back of my smoke-fried brain.
Those sirens from earlier—the ones that made my stomach drop—they never came here.
The wail peaked and just faded, moving away from us.
Probably some bullshit call on the other side of the county, another crisis cooked up by Garrow to pull every unit away while his men struck a match.
Why bother sending cops when you can just make sure none ever show?
Up ahead, fire’s already eating through Grandma’s trellis, climbing the ivy like it’s got somewhere to be.
Silas drops to his knees beside what looks like an ordinary decorative stone, his fingers hovering over it for a heartbeat too long.
“Here,” he says, voice tight. His hand trembles slightly before finding an indentation I’d never have noticed.
He presses hard, twists counterclockwise, then pulls back as if burned.
The stone shifts, revealing a brass valve beneath.
“Turn it fully open,” he instructs, not meeting my eyes. “Clockwise this time.”
I drop next to him, fumbling with the old thing. The metal stings—not from fire, but from years underground. It resists, then screeches as it gives. Water blasts up through ornamental spouts I’d written off as rich-people garden junk on the east side of the house.
“The estate has its own defence network,” Silas explains, already moving toward the next hidden valve across the lawn. “Underground cisterns, gravity-fed pressure system, irrigation channels disguised as decorative elements.”
I roll my eyes as water shoots from gargoyle mouths I thought were just decoration. “Naturally,” I mutter, wiping sweat with a soot-stained sleeve. “Secret valves, hidden pipes, why would Grandma mention a Victorian firefighting system? Just another Tuesday at Murder Manor.”
The ghost of a smile touches Silas’s lips as he activates another valve. “Would you have believed her?”
He’s got a point. Weeks ago, I’d have dismissed talk of water networks and hidden guardians as my eccentric grandmother’s delusions. Now I’m wrist-deep in old plumbing, working with a man who lives in my walls. Life comes at you fast.
Water hisses as it meets flame, steam rising in angry clouds that momentarily blind me.
I stagger backward, coughing, only to feel Silas’s steadying hand at my elbow.
“Stay low,” he instructs, guiding me toward a garden hose station I never knew existed.
“The system won’t handle everything. We need to supplement manually. ”
For the next hour, we work in grim silence, falling into rhythm as if we’ve done this a hundred times.
Silas handles the hidden valves while I fight with hoses, spraying flames that keep leaping beyond reach.
My arms shake, muscles burning worse than the fire.
My hair is a tangled, sweaty mess, stuck to my neck despite the freezing morning air.
“How did you know?” I pant as we reposition to tackle flames threatening the western porch. “That they’d start a fire. You had the war room prepared, those maps ready.”
Silas winds a hose around his forearm with practised efficiency.
“Garrow’s father attempted similar tactics in 1993. Different excuse, claimed vagrants were trespassing, but same strategy. Destroy what you can’t control.”
I snort, aiming the hose at the flames. “Like father, like son—emotional toddlers whose solution is to burn things down. What’s next, devil horns on my portrait?”
The estate fights back like it’s waited for this.
Water arcs from stone borders, catching firelight.
Those “quaint” garden channels are tactical waterways, funnelling streams right where we need them.
My ancestors hid paranoia behind pretty Victorian ornaments.
Even the decorations have a secret agenda.
Something snaps overhead, loud as a gunshot, and this massive burning branch comes crashing down right where I was standing.
Before I can even gasp, Silas has me by the waist, yanking me back so fast the world blurs.
Tiny embers rain down on us like hellish confetti, little hot kisses stinging wherever they find skin.
Silas jerks his chin toward the ancient oak whose branches stretch over the roof. “That tree falls, we lose the entire west wing of the house,” he says, already pivoting his hose upward toward the flames dancing in its highest branches.
Flames leap from branch to branch, consuming centuries as I catch my breath. Watching the tree burn hurts—it survived storms and neglect only for Garrow to torch it for spite.
“Not happening,” I growl. I drop my hose, spot the gardener’s cottage, and sprint toward it across the scorched grass.
The cottage stands apart from the main grounds, untouched by the spreading flames.
I wrench open the weathered door. Cobwebs break over my face as I duck inside.
I grab the rope from a rusted nail, then snatch up the hand axe propped against the wall.
“Keep the water on the base!” I yell to Silas as I turn back, already calculating the lowest branch I can reach.
His head whips around, eyes widening as he realizes my intent. “Elara, no—”
But I’m already climbing, hands finding the notches of the old oak just like when I was ten. The bark feels cool, almost greeting me. I scramble up with my childhood rhythm, rope across my chest and Dad’s hand axe at my hip.
Six branches up, I hit the fire line. Here, normal tree meets crackling hell.
The heat punches me right in the face. My eyes instantly stream; my skin feels like it might bubble off.
Down below, Silas hoses the base. His jaw clenches so tight I can almost hear teeth grinding.
I loop the rope around my torso, pulling it tight—no way I’m becoming a human fireball today.
I start. Hack. Swing. Flaming branches snap and drop beneath me.
I keep my eyes on those burning bits, making sure nothing lands on the main trunk or the roof below.
My shoulders scream with each chop, but I push through.
My face is slick with sweat and smoke-tears. The axe handle grows slick in my grip, threatening to slip. Each swing sends pain jolting up my shoulders. I grit my teeth and chop again, refusing to stop while even one branch still burns.
This isn’t just some dumb tree. It’s a survivor, like me, with roots sunk into the same dirt holding my family’s bones.
If it burns, a piece of me burns with it.
So I keep hacking at the flames like a lunatic.
My body ignores its limits, fueled only by stubbornness that says some things must be saved—even if it hurts like a bitch.
Finally, the last burning chunk crashes down, and Silas blasts it with water before it can do any more damage.
I hang there like a Christmas ornament, lungs on fire, arms shaking so bad I don’t trust them to get me down in one piece.
From somewhere below, Silas’s voice floats up through the smoke, solid as a rope when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.
“Let go, Elara. I’ll catch you.”
And somehow, despite everything, I believe him.
I release the rope and feel momentary weightlessness.
Then strong arms break my fall, setting me gently on scorched grass.
For one suspended moment, we remain frozen.
His hands are at my waist, my palms against his shoulders, faces so close I can see individual droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes.
The next hours? Just a sweaty, smoky mess of hauling hoses and yelling directions at each other until the last stubborn flame finally gives up and dies.
By then, the sun’s up, showing us exactly how screwed we are.
The shed’s totally gone, just a pile of black sticks and melted whatever.
Our shoes crunch on the dead grass as we walk the property line, checking for any sneaky hot spots.
But the house made it. The old stone walls look like hell, all sooty and gross, but they held.
“It could have been worse,” Silas offers, his usual stoicism softened by exhaustion as we stand side by side before our battered sanctuary.
I nod, my throat feeling like I swallowed sandpaper.
Can’t talk. Don’t want to anyway. My whole body’s gone empty, as if someone unplugged me, muscles doing that weird jelly-shake thing after you push too hard.
But underneath all that exhaustion? There’s this hot little coal burning, part pride, part screw-you-Garrow, part holy-shit-we-actually-did-it.
He wanted to burn us out. We said no. That counts for something.
This old place has seen worse shit than tonight. Now I get why my family put in all those crazy water systems; they weren’t just being paranoid freaks. They’d dealt with assholes like Garrow before, guys who think burning something down is the same as owning it.