The roses had withered long before she did.

Elaine lay atop the crimson velvet of her ancestral bed, each breath a brittle offering to the air. Shadows licked the walls, and somewhere beneath the floorboards, something stirred and sighed.

The curtains, moth-eaten and heavy with dust, fluttered though the windows were shut. Outside, the fog bled through the iron gate.

Lucien was beside her again. Always at twilight. Always silent, gloved, and spectral. He wore his mourning coat like a priest wears vestments: ritualistically, reverently, and as if it were made from the same darkness that encased the house.

“If my body is dying,” Elaine whispered, “tell me you love me.”

She had not asked for prayer. Not salvation. Only his voice—low and grave as the tolling bell beyond the orchard—to keep her tethered to the fragile thread of the now. To keep her from drifting too far into the hour when the walls bled secrets.

Lucien did not answer at once. His eyes—pale, mercurial things—flicked toward the window, as though listening for something she could not hear.

“I’ve loved you through three deaths already,” he said, finally. “This will only be the fourth.”

Elaine’s breath caught, not from shock, but recognition. As if something buried deep within her stirred at his words.

She turned her head, slow as a closing door, to gaze into the half-lit corners of the room. The mirror showed only one reflection. Hers. Not his. Had it always been that way?

“And after the fourth?” she asked.

Lucien smiled. “After the fourth, you remember.”

The clock struck thirteen.

The flame in the hearth rose high without wood or match, casting flickering symbols across the ceiling. Outside, the garden—long dead—breathed. Roses bloomed black beneath the moonlight, their petals dripping crimson dew.

And from beneath the bed, something began to bloom. Something that smelled faintly of her perfume.

Elaine closed her eyes. And smiled.

The End