“I don’t want to leave you,” Remi said quietly, eyeing the cell and its bars.
He knew what she was thinking, and he couldn’t have agreed more. It was a medieval relic, a step back in time. It reminded him of a night once spent in a dark and odious alleyway after a long night of drinking.
“Remi, you are my salvation,” Ben said, drawing her attention back to him. He reached for her cold hands and held them tightly against his chest. “From the moment we met as children, you saved me. You cannot know how you revived me after all these years, how you have set my soul aflame with your unwavering spirit and caring heart. I cannot undo the last few months, but I will devote myself to you from this moment until the end of my life, if you will have me.”
Her eyes widened, wet with tears. “You have so much faith in me.”
“I do.” He smiled, bringing her hands to his lips and nuzzling her fingers. She smelled like rain and soap, with a distinct undertone that was all Remi. “You can do this.”
REMI
Remi dressed herself early the following morning, sorely missing Sylvie’s aid. She’d chosen a gown with buttons up the front for ease of access, though it was much too heavy for the spring. She pinned her hair up as best as she could and hurried to collect the papers from the guest room. They’d been left in a messy pile on one of the armchairs, and when she reached to pick them up, a few fell from the bottom.
Half-asleep, Remi knelt to pick them up.
A weathered slip of parchment opened in her hand as she grabbed it by its folded corner. An image of the manor had been sketched onto its yellowing face, complete with a layout of each floor. Remi hesitated before putting it back, her eyes focusing on an extra room that had been placed below the study.
“Could that be the cellar?” she asked aloud.
But the cellar had been drawn in separately, labeled alongside the wine vault. Remi put the papers down again and brought the sketch closer to the window to examine it. Her eyes widened.
Ben’s voice echoed in her memory. After that, he went a bit mad and installed secret passages throughout the manor.
“These are blueprints,” she said to herself, “and they are different from the original floor plan.”
The story of Arthur and Leyda and the fire that had nearly killed them and their child returned to the forefront of Remi’s mind. The passages were marked on the blueprints, and suddenly, the paper seemed much older than it first appeared. It was an updated version of the home after it had been rebuilt sometime in the 1600s, after the fire.
Remi covered her mouth to suppress her surprise.
“Tunnels,” she mouthed against her palm. “He’d mentioned tunnels.”
One was marked clearly on the newer blueprints.
Remi gathered her skirts and stumbled toward the door. She hurried down the hall, her boots hammering against the hardwood as rapidly as her heart beat inside her chest. A wave of dizziness struck her when she finally breached the study and dropped to her knees in front of the wrinkled rug. She took a deep breath. The floors groaned underneath her weight as it shifted.
“It was here,” she murmured. “This entire time.”
The moths led the way.
“Is that what you were trying to show me?” she asked aloud. Remi moved the rug until its lip curled up and over, revealing a hidden trapdoor built into the floorboards.
She stood and removed Edgar’s prized moth display, pushing it away from the center of the room.
Remi shifted the furniture until she could roll the rug away completely. Sweat dripped down her back in the warm velvet gown, and she pulled at the collar to breathe. The rug was heavier than she expected it would be; by the time she had the shallow handle in her fingers, she was almost out of breath.
“This is it,” she said.
The door creaked open as she pulled it up. It took every last bit of her strength to raise the hidden door. Like the rug, it was much heavier than it appeared. Once its weight shifted, she let it fall open with a loud thud and fell to her knees. She took a few steadying breaths while the numbness in her fingers wore off, then examined her newfound mystery.
A black hole extended into the ground; its yawning emergence ignited a combination of fear and excitement in Remi. Edgar had known about it the entire time, she was certain. There was no telling how many times he must have disappeared into the tunnel to explore; if the stories were true, the treasure that had once been lost had been found again in its sprawling darkness.
Remi dangled her feet over the hole, finding footing against a thin ladder that had been built into its side.
“There’s a way down!” she exclaimed, unable to contain herself.
She hesitated, an alarm going off inside of her.
Ben was waiting for her. She had responsibilities and too little time to accomplish everything in a matter of hours. “It can wait.”
Though she felt its beckoning—a mystery to be solved, laid bare at her feet.
“Can’t it?”
The resounding echo of knocking at the front door pulled her from her conflict.
Who could that be?
Remi gathered her skirts and tore herself from the tunnel’s entrance. Hastily, she drew the doors to the study shut. No one ever went into Edgar’s study anymore, but she wished she had the key so she could secure the lock.
The knocking at the door grew more impatient until it finally stopped. In the foyer, she spied a single envelope as it was pushed through the mail slot. She waited before approaching, afraid of who might be waiting on the other side. After a moment, Remi tiptoed as lightly as she could toward the door. Her name peered up at her from the white face of the envelope, the handwriting familiar.
Remi’s stomach plummeted as she picked it up, tearing it open on the spot. The message did not immediately register, for shock had numbed her thoughts. Disbelief warred against the reality of the words on the page.
Dearest Remi,
I see there is not enough room in your heart for me. Yet. But I will carve a space, my love. Once he and she are gone, I will be all that’s left in the world for you.
He and she, Remi thought over and over again. Both turned in her mind, their meanings taking different faces. If he meant Ben, who sat in a cell with the weight of false charges against him, then who could he have meant by she?
