Chapter 61 Dreams stop being Dreams

Chapter 61 Dreams stop being Dreams
Beatris

I stayed upright against the headboard long after the vision ended. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it again.
His scream. It had torn itself out of him.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth and stared at the floorboards until they blurred. If he had loved her that much, then how had it ended with blood and teeth and her body breaking apart in his hands?

My fingers drifted to my throat. I could still feel the knife. Still feel the hot rush of blood pouring through my fingers. Then his mouth at my skin. I shut my eyes hard.

"Why?" I whispered into the empty room.

The fire answered with a low crack. I looked toward the mirror. The woman staring back at me had brown hair. Brown eyes. My face. My body. My fear. Me, not Eudora.
And yet, in that field, with his blood on my hands and death in my throat, I had not known where one of us ended and the other began.

A knock sounded. Three soft taps. I straightened too quickly, wiped at my face with the back of my hand, and forced my voice steady.

"Come in."

The door opened, and Elin stepped inside carrying a breakfast tray. The moment I saw her, something inside me loosened.
I still did not know whether she had ever truly been on my side. She had refused to help me more than once, and part of me was still angry enough to feel the sting of it. But seeing her there, alive and ordinary and solid in the doorway, brought a relief I could not quite deny.

Maybe because, even when i said nothing useful, she still listened. Or maybe because I had started to believe everyone in this house had become a shadow except her. 

She stopped when she saw my face.

"You look awful."

A hollow laugh escaped me.

"I feel worse."

She crossed the room and set the tray beside the bed. Tea. Bread. Fruit. Everything warm and ordinary and painfully out of place against the chaos still crawling through my head.

"You didn't sleep."

It wasn't a question. I looked at the tray instead of her.

"I don't think I ever really woke up."

The silence that followed was awkward in a way ours had not been before. Elin adjusted the spoon beside the saucer, though it did not need adjusting. I watched her fingers.

"I've been dreaming," I said.

I lifted my eyes to her.

"They don't feel like dreams."

Her gaze moved to my face at last.

"What do they feel like?"

"Like I've been dropped into something that already happened," I said. "Like I'm not watching it. Like it's happening to me."

Elin said nothing. So I kept going.

"I know what a dream feels like. I know what fear feels like." My voice thinned. "This isn't that."

She turned away and reached for the teapot.

"You should eat before it gets cold."

A bitter smile pulled at my mouth. I pushed the blanket aside and stood. Pain still burned through my ribs, but I ignored it. I crossed to the mirror and stared at my reflection instead of her.

"I saw her die."

That did it.
Elin's hand slipped. A drop of tea struck the saucer. The sound was tiny. But loud enough.

I turned slowly.

For the first time since she had entered the room, something cracked through her careful calm.

"Who are you talking about?" she asked too quickly.

"I didn't say her name."

That silenced her. I took a step closer.

"I saw a woman with my face," I said. "And I saw Alexander with her."

Elin stared at me as if the walls themselves might be listening.

"I don't know what is happening to me," I said. "I don't know if I'm ill or mad or if this house is doing something to my head, but I need someone to tell me I'm not imagining all of this."

Her eyes flicked toward the door.

"This place does things to people," she said quietly.

"No." I shook my head. "That isn't enough."

"It has old grief in it."

"It has secrets in it."

"And old stories." Her voice had flattened with strain. "Things people are better off leaving alone."

"But they don't leave me alone," I said.

That brought her eyes back to mine.

"What if they keep coming to me? "What if they want me to come to them? I tried, Elin. I tried pretending none of it was real. I tried telling myself I was only frightened. And then I found out what Alexander was."

The name landed harder than I expected. Elin blinked.
Not because she hadn't heard it before, but because I had said it so plainly. No title. No distance. Just his name, stripped bare between us.

I saw the surprise in her face before she hid it. I went on before she could speak.

"I don't know what else to call any of this."

She looked down at the tray.

"I saw an old portrait."

The breath she pulled in came too quickly. The stillness that followed said more than anything else could have. I moved before I could think better of it.

"There's something I want to show you."

Her expression shut at once.

"No."

"You don't even know what it is."

"I don't need to."

I stepped closer.

"I know where there is a portrait of her."

Elin went pale.

"You've heard of her," I said.

"Beatris, stop."

"Why?"

Her eyes flashed.

"Because I don't want to get in trouble just for knowing something I shouldn't."

The force of it held both of us still. I searched her face.

"You don't even know what she looked like."

"No."

The answer came fast. Too fast to be careless, too firm to be uncertain.

"I've never seen her face," Elin said. "None of us have. Not the younger ones. Everything was taken down years before we were old enough to understand any of it."

She swallowed.

"All I know is what everyone knows."

I stared at her.

"What does everyone know?"

Her mouth tightened.

"That Lord De Vere loved her madly."

Nothing in her voice softened the words.

"That after she died, he had half the house closed off and every image of her taken away."

A chill moved through me.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

But something in the way she said it told me she had wondered. I held her gaze.

"And you're not curious?"

For the first time, something close to anger entered her face.

"Curiosity is how girls get hurt in this house."

The room fell silent. That was more truth than she had given me in weeks. And she knew it.
Regret crossed her face at once. She picked up the empty water jug from the bedside table.

"Please eat something," she said, though her voice no longer held warmth. "You don't look well."

She turned toward the door.

"Elin."

She stopped, but did not look back.

"If I show you, you'll understand."

"No," she said.

The door closed behind her. I stood there staring at it, my ribs aching, my heart beating too hard.

Whatever these visions were, they were not only in my head.