Chapter : 95 "The Things We Fold Away"

In the quiet hollows of Everin's manor, the world had shrunk.

The grand halls—once filled with music, laughter, and glimmering candlelight—now echoed with the soft weeping of a man alone in his sorrow.

He hadn't left his chambers since his return.

Servants knocked softly. Meals were brought, untouched. Drapes were left open for sunlight that he never looked toward.

He lay sprawled across his bed—too wide, too soft, too cold—one hand pressed to his chest.

Clutched tightly in his fingers was a handkerchief.

Delicate. Embroidered with fine golden thread. And in that thread, stitched like a prayer, was a single name.

August.

It shimmered faintly in the glow of the dying firelight.

Everin held it tighter, as though the cloth might suddenly vanish. As though letting go meant losing the last part of him he still had.

Tears welled again, unbidden, slipping silently down his cheeks and into the silk pillow.

His blue eyes—usually brilliant as the sky after rain—had dulled to a stormy grey. His fine honey-brown curls, once artfully kept, now lay tousled in disarray. But he didn't care. He hadn't changed his clothes. He hadn't even unbuttoned his waistcoat. He simply lay there—crumbling, unraveling, remembering.

And then…

A memory bloomed.

One so vivid it nearly hurt.

—

Blackwood Manor.

Autumn air tinged with fire and roses.

Everin was young then. Awkward and tall, already elegant in posture but unsure in step. He had followed August from a distance, not daring to speak. August had just turned five.

So small.

So ethereal.

Too fragile to belong to anything as sharp and crumbling as this world.

Everin watched from behind the garden trellis as August walked with Katherine, his tiny hand holding the hem of his long tailored coat until they reached the study room's side doors. Then Katherine with a smile painted on her lips vanished, and August, with a fluttering sigh, slipped into the room alone.

Curious.

Quiet.

Beautiful.

In the garden, Everin had bent down and picked the fullest, most flawless rose. It was crimson, with petals so smooth they looked painted. The stem had no thorns. It felt like fate.

He crept closer to the study window. Through the glass, he saw August again—his small frame nestled in the tall chair, one elbow propped, his hand resting against a sleepy cheek. In the other hand, a quill hung loosely, long forgotten.

August had fallen asleep while copying verses.

The curls across his forehead were tousled, curling like spun silver. His lashes fanned out against pale skin, fluttering just barely with each slow breath. His lips were parted slightly, his chest rising and falling in the tender rhythm of dreams.

Everin slipped inside.

He knew he shouldn't. Knew if Aunt Katherine caught him, she'd scold him. But he couldn't help it.

He stepped forward quietly. The rose trembled in his grip.

He looked at August from up close for the first time.

The child looked carved of moonlight and poems, of lullabies and snowfall.

Everin blushed.

His heart was stammering.

He gently leaned forward, careful not to wake him, and tucked the rose into August's curls—right above his ear.

August didn't stir.

Then—without thought, without breath—Everin leaned just a little closer…

And blew a kiss into the air, right above him.

A kiss with no landing place. No claim.

Only longing.

Only silence.

—

The memory dissolved, like smoke fleeing the warmth of fire.

Everin was back in his bed now, curled in grief.

The handkerchief trembled in his fist.

And he cried.

He cried as though his heart had split somewhere between then and now. As though the little boy who had once received a rose in his hair would never look at him again without fury in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Everin whispered, voice barely more than a sob.

"I'm so sorry…"

But the ceiling did not answer.

And August was not there to forgive him.

Still, Everin clung to the handkerchief like it was a relic of something holy.

And he did not stop crying.

Not until dawn began to press pale fingers against the edges of the windows—

Reaching in like hope that didn't know when to let go.

The night had settled over the manor like a velvet shroud, soft and merciless.

Beyond the balcony, marble tiles shimmered with pale moonlight, cold and luminous, spilling through arched windows like spilled milk across a forgotten page. The curtains stirred gently, whispering secrets only the wind could understand.

Katherine stood still as sculpture.

Her long white-silver hair cascaded down her back in soft waves, a ribbon of frost against the pale silk of her robe. Her tangerine eyes—bright and burning—stared upward, reflecting the moon as though asking it a question she could not bear to speak aloud.

Behind her, the fire in her chamber crackled faintly. But it did nothing to warm the ache inside her chest.

She had not moved in a long time.

Only thought. And remembered.

"Did I do the right thing?" she whispered, her voice folding into the hush of night. "Was it mercy… or cowardice?"

She drew her arms around herself, delicate fingers clutching her sleeves as though to hold herself together. Her reflection in the window looked too fragile, too young, too old.

"I told him what I could," she murmured. "But it wasn't the truth. Not all of it."

Her lips trembled. "Because if he hears the truth… the whole truth…"

She swallowed.

"…he'll fall. And I—"

She closed her eyes.

"I can't bear to see my little angel fall into the abyss."

For a moment, silence reigned again.

But her mind, traitorous and sharp, began to replay the morning—every word, every breath, every glance.

It had been early. The garden was still heavy with dew, and the jasmine hadn't blooming beautifully.

August is now silent he is sitting too quietly, his voice calm but filled with something Katherine had learned to dread in him: quiet purpose.

"Aunt Katherine," he'd said, "why didn't you let me know about my mother past"

She had hesitated. "i didn't mean to hide it from you either by boy."

"I never saw her," he replied. " then Why?"

Katherine had faltered then, giving him the gentle, half-buried pieces. Just enough to stir the surface, not enough to drown him.

"I thought you wouldn't ask further," she admitted softly.

But he had.

"Why?" he had asked again. "Why did you hide everything from me?"

She remembered the way his voice cracked—not loud, not sharp, but like the sound of something delicate being bent too far.

Her heart had ached, fiercely.

She could not answer.

He had risen from his chair then, his slender figure backlit by the morning light, the jasmine and lilies brushing his coat as he stepped away from her.

Katherine had followed, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

But August didn't look at her.

Not at the flowers.

Not even at the sky.

Only the grass.

His gaze remained lowered, locked on the green blades beneath his feet—anchoring himself to the earth, or trying to vanish into it.

And then he'd spoken, softly.

"Farewell, Aunt."

The words rang like a door shutting in the soul.

She remembered how her breath caught, how her hand trembled and fell from his shoulder. How he walked past her, no longer the boy she once held against her chest during stormy nights, but something quieter. Sharper. Wounded.

And how he hadn't seen Seraphin standing just beyond the rose trellis.

Seraphin, who had smiled with quiet recognition.

Seraphin, who had not spoken either.

Only watched the boy pass him by without even a glance—like a ghost in a memory he wasn't meant to remember.

August had not seen him.

And Katherine hadn't stopped him.

Now, she stood again in the present.

The sky above was endless and cruelly serene.

She reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the marble railing, her skin kissed by moonlight.

"I couldn't tell him," she said quietly. "Not yet. Not when he still thinks he has time to mend."

A single tear slipped from her eye.

"I just wanted to protect him a little longer."

But the moon said nothing.

It only shone. Cold and beautiful. Untouched by guilt.

And Katherine, delicate and unmoving beneath its light, stood there like a statue carved from grief.

A mother to no one.

An aunt who could not save the child she loved like her own.

Katherine didn't move for a long time.

The moonlight curled around her like silver thread, stitching her stillness to the silence. Outside, the garden sighed with wind, and somewhere distant, a nightingale called—a sound too soft to mend anything.

But finally… her hand shifted.

She turned from the balcony and crossed the room like a ghost—feet silent against the marble, robe trailing behind her like a spill of snow.

She stopped before an old chest.

It sat low beneath the arched window, its wood dark and deeply grained, carved with curling ivy and roses half-wilted by time. The lock had long since rusted, but it was never meant to keep things out.

Only to hold memories in.

With a trembling breath, Katherine knelt and opened it.

The scent that rose was faint—lavender and cedar, the kind of scent that clings to faded cloth and forgotten lullabies.

Inside lay a world too small for the present.

Tiny garments, folded with the care of someone who knew love in every thread. Little coats, embroidered vests, soft cotton shirts with pearl-like buttons no bigger than her thumbnail. A pair of velvet slippers. A bonnet he never liked.

And there—carefully laid atop the fabric—

A toy.

A small wooden horse with peeling paint, the tail carved with loving hands. And beside it, a small stuffed rabbit with long ears and a bow around its neck, its fur worn thin from years of being held.

Katherine exhaled, shaky.

Her fingers moved slowly, reverently. She lifted each item as if it might crumble, brushing her hand across fabric that had once held August's warmth when he was no more than a whisper of a boy.

And then, tucked beside the last bundle of linen—

A hairbrush.

Ivory-handled. Gilded at the edges. The bristles still catching strands of silver-white so fine they shimmered in the moonlight.

Annalise's brush.

The very one she used to comb August's curls, her hands patient and soft as she whispered stories into the hush of morning light.

Katherine's lips parted, and her eyes burned.

Not from the dust.

But from the memory.

Annalise, sitting by the tall window, her hair tied back loosely, smile gentle as she taught Katherine how to be strong—how to care for a child, how to manage the estate books, how to move through the world with grace without ever kneeling to it.

"You must be soft, Katherine," she'd once said, threading the brush through August's hair. "But never breakable. The world does not deserve your fragility, but it will fear your strength."

And she had smiled.

That smile—

Katherine bowed her head.

Her breath hitched.

And then the weight of it all—years of silence, of hiding, of aching—slipped down her cheeks in silence.

"I loved you," she whispered into the folds of cloth. "Long before I had the words for it. And when they took you from me, I broke."

Her voice was trembling, soft as dust.

"I buried your death like a blade between my ribs and carried it every day. But I will never bury your memory. I won't. Not even now."

She gathered the hairbrush gently, cradling it to her chest.

Annalise was gone.

But the world still bore the shape of her.

In August's eyes.

In his silence.

In his storm.

She would not let the truth bury him too.

Not while she still breathed.

And so, Katherine sat there on the marble floor, surrounded by tiny garments and forgotten toys, her frame captured in moonlight—still, silvered, and aching.

A monument to love that never got to bloom.

But still grew, in secret, like jasmine in winter.