Chapter 8: The Poison Garden
The invitation wasn't framed as a choice.
Caelum delivered the news over breakfast, as if announcing the weather.
"We leave Friday," he said.
Elara didn't look up from her coffee. "We?"
"You, me, Alec. Driver. No security."
"No assistants?" she asked, skeptical.
"No audience."
That got her attention.
She glanced at him. He was calm, too calm—knife-like in his restraint.
"What's in Connecticut?" she asked.
Caelum met her eyes.
"My mother's ashes," he said. "And some truths you've been trying to guess at."
She blinked. That wasn't the answer she'd expected.
He stood. Buttoned his jacket. Adjusted the cuff links like the conversation hadn't pierced anything in him at all.
"Pack something warm," he said. "The estate hasn't been touched in years."
The drive up took three hours.
Elara sat in the backseat, the journal on her lap, the photograph folded in her pocket, her thoughts spinning tighter with every mile.
Alec sat across from her, reading something on his tablet, pretending not to watch her.
Caelum didn't speak much. He worked through most of the ride, muttering occasional corrections into his phone's dictation app—numbers, names, deadlines.
But something in him had shifted.
Not looser. Just heavier.
When they passed the final gate, Elara sat up straighter.
The estate rose like something out of a novel—massive, gray-stoned, shrouded in ivy and wind. The kind of place where ghosts weren't rumored.
They were expected.
The car stopped.
Caelum stepped out first.
Then he turned, extended a hand.
Elara hesitated.
Then took it.
The gravel crunched beneath her heels as she crossed the threshold.
And for the first time, she realized—
She wasn't just walking into his home.
She was walking into the story Celine had never lived to finish.
The house smelled like old wood and older secrets.
Not musty. Not forgotten. Just… waiting.
Elara stepped into the front hall and froze. The ceiling soared above her, ribbed with timber beams. A chandelier hung like a frozen scream overhead, all crystal and teeth. The floors were dark walnut, glossy with polish but showing wear in the exact spots where feet had passed for decades.
Every room visible from the foyer was curated with absence—portraits removed, furniture covered, light bulbs left unscrewed.
It wasn't a home.
It was a memorial too proud to grieve.
Alec's footsteps echoed off to the right, already vanishing toward the east wing. Probably to make calls. Or to make sure no one found what he hadn't hidden well enough.
Caelum stood beside the main staircase, watching her. Not speaking.
She walked slowly past him, letting her fingers trail along the bannister.
"How long since anyone lived here?" she asked.
"Ten years."
"You never come back?"
"No need to," he said. "Everything worth remembering is buried."
"Is that where we're going next?"
His mouth didn't move. But something in his eyes flickered.
"I'll show you the house," he said. "You'll know what you're looking for when you feel it."
The words weren't comforting.
But they weren't meant to be.
He moved first, and she followed.
Room by room, the house unfolded—cold library, sunless parlor, a dining room large enough to seat thirty and silent enough to crush thought.
In every room, something felt… off.
Books slightly too ordered. Drapes drawn too tightly. A mirror covered in cloth but smudged around the edges—as if someone had been peeking.
In the upstairs hall, she paused.
There was a faint scratch in the wood beside one of the doors. Deep, deliberate.
Three letters, carved by hand:
CEL
Elara reached out.
Touched the carving.
And for the first time since they'd entered, she didn't feel watched.
She felt recognized.
Caelum left her alone after lunch.
No explanation. Just a passing glance and a quiet, "Explore what you like. Stay out of the basement."
Elara didn't answer. She waited until the house settled into stillness again—Alec's footsteps distant, Caelum gone—and slipped out the back door.
The wind hit her like a breath she hadn't earned.
The estate's garden was massive, wild, mostly overtaken by creeping vines and dry leaves. But there, near the end of the western path, half-swallowed by ivy and time, stood a glass structure she hadn't seen from the car.
A greenhouse.
It leaned crooked against a tall hedge, hidden like a secret too proud to confess itself.
Elara stepped closer.
The glass was fogged in places, fractured in others. Green-black mold curled in the corners. But there—at the base of the door—fresh footprints.
She crouched. Touched them.
Not hers. Not Alec's shoes.
Someone else had been here recently.
The door was padlocked.
Old, rusted, but intact.
She searched the base of the hedges. Nothing.
Then turned and checked the small tool bin beside the door—still latched.
Inside: gardening shears, a dull trowel… and a key.
Elara stared at it.
Too easy.
But she took it anyway.
The lock clicked open like it had been waiting for her.
She slipped inside and shut the door behind her.
The air inside was warm. Damp. The kind of warmth that clings.
And underneath the rot and moss—
roses.
Dozens of them. Dead. Blackened. But planted deliberately in a ring.
At the center stood a wrought-iron chair.
On it: a tarnished gold hairpin.
Elara's throat tightened.
She'd seen it before.
In an old photo of Celine.
The air inside the greenhouse felt unnatural.
It wasn't just the rot or the trapped heat.
It was the quiet.
The kind of quiet that remembers voices.
Elara stepped forward, slow and deliberate. Her breath fogged the glass just barely. Her fingers closed around the tarnished hairpin—delicate, intricate, shaped like a twisting gold vine.
She'd seen it in a magazine spread with Celine once, years ago. Part of a campaign. It wasn't just jewelry.
It was a symbol.
A promise.
Her sister had worn it everywhere during the final weeks before the crash.
And now it was here, forgotten—or left.
Elara turned slowly, scanning the ring of roses.
Something didn't fit.
The soil had been disturbed recently. A single patch near the back had a slightly different hue—darker, wetter. She knelt beside it and used the trowel to dig.
Three inches down, her metal blade struck something.
She cleared the dirt gently, breath catching.
A small notebook. Wrapped in cloth. Bound tight with a ribbon now almost rotted through.
She unwrapped it slowly.
Inside: drawings. Sketched by hand. Page after page of plants, flowers, poisonous species labeled in her sister's handwriting.
And in the back:
"He said I reminded him of his mother. I think he meant it as a threat."
Elara sat back on her heels, heart thudding.
The he wasn't Richard.
That line—delivered like a knife slipped under skin—was about someone else.
Someone who knew this greenhouse well.
Someone who might've brought her here.
Elara stood slowly, clutching the book.
Outside, a shadow moved just beyond the glass.
Too fast to see clearly.
But not fast enough to pretend it wasn't watching.
Elara froze.
Her hand tightened around the notebook as her eyes darted to the glass doors. There was something on the other side of the greenhouse, hidden in the shadows.
A figure.
Too tall to be Alec.
Too familiar to be anyone else.
Caelum.
She hadn't heard him approach, but she knew the weight of his gaze without even looking directly at him. It was a presence she felt in her chest, pulling her deeper into the mystery. His shadow stretched like a dark thread across the floor, and then the door creaked open with an unnatural slowness.
"Found what you were looking for?" he asked, his voice like velvet—smooth, but with an edge that cut through her thoughts.
Elara didn't turn toward him. She kept her eyes on the pages of the notebook, her fingers tracing the drawings of toxic flowers, each more intricate than the last. Each one had a name—deadly nightshade, belladonna, foxglove. All of them marked in a language that didn't just speak of danger.
It spoke of control.
"Celine was here," she said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. "She knew what these flowers meant."
Caelum's gaze flickered to the drawings. A cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"She wasn't the only one who knew," he said softly. "My family... we've always had an interest in the delicate balance between beauty and danger. You see, the Blackthorn estate isn't just a place of privilege. It's a laboratory."
The word hit her like a stone in the chest. "What does that mean? What do you mean by a laboratory?"
Caelum stepped inside the greenhouse, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The air seemed to grow heavier, more suffocating with each passing second. He didn't come closer. Instead, he just stood there, watching her, as if he were waiting for her to understand something she hadn't yet grasped.
"It means everything here—every design, every plant, every arrangement of glass and stone—is a reflection of our family's history," he said, his voice darkening. "My ancestors were obsessed with controlling life. They studied poisons, cultivated them, tested them. And over time, they learned how to impose death, as easily as one might write a note."
He stepped closer then, his presence overwhelming.
"The greenhouse is only one of the many places where we keep the past alive," he continued. "Where we keep control. And my mother..." He hesitated, his jaw tightening. "She made sure Celine learned a few things from that legacy. She thought she could harness it."
The weight of the truth hit Elara like a tidal wave, crashing through every layer of denial. "So Celine—she was learning how to control poison?"
Caelum's smile returned, this time colder than she'd ever seen it. "No. She was learning to understand it. To manipulate it."
"But why?" Elara's voice shook. "Why would she—"
"Because Celine," he interrupted softly, "was never just your sister. She was part of something far bigger. She just didn't know it yet. The family secrets. The power we hold. And the part you'll never escape."
He was inches from her now, and for a moment, Elara didn't breathe.
"Who is he, Caelum?" she demanded. "Who's the one who trained her? The one she was afraid of? And why—why is she afraid of you?"
His lips parted in a faint, bitter laugh. "Ah, now you're asking the right questions."
He leaned in closer, his breath warm on her ear.
"The question, Elara," he whispered, "is not who trained her. It's who didn't."
The air between them tightened.
Elara stood her ground, the notebook pressed against her chest like a shield, though she knew it offered no protection from the truth it contained—or from Caelum.
"You keep playing games," she said. "But my sister wasn't a player. She was used."
"No," Caelum said, his voice like steel beneath silk. "She was clever. Calculated. Too clever for her own good."
"Then why is she in a hospital bed?" she snapped.
Caelum's gaze darkened.
"She chose to involve herself in something that was never hers to touch," he said. "My mother warned her. Alec tried to scare her off. But she wouldn't let go. Because Celine didn't just want answers. She wanted control."
Elara shook her head. "You're lying."
"I'm not," he said. "And neither is the garden. That journal she left behind? That wasn't a cry for help. It was a map."
"A map to what?"
He studied her.
Then, slowly, he turned and pointed to the greenhouse floor—toward the center where the circle of roses had grown, now wilted, blackened at the edges.
"There's something buried beneath that chair," he said.
"What?"
He looked back at her.
"Proof."
Elara took a step forward. "Of what?"
But he didn't answer.
Instead, he stepped out of the greenhouse without another word, leaving the door open behind him and the heavy silence of the garden pressing inward like a breath she couldn't release.
Elara stared down at the floor.
The roses.
The chair.
The thing beneath it she was now too terrified not to find.