Chapter 7 The Forgotten Line

The wind changed with the season, curling through the bones of Thornwick Hall in quiet eddies. September arrived with a dry crispness that settled into the curtains and beneath the floorboards, as though the house itself had begun to breathe again cautious, watchful, not entirely at rest.

Mira Ellison stood alone in the eastern gallery, eyes fixed on the mural now fully restored. The spiral staircase painted on stone shimmered faintly under newly installed museum lighting. The small golden flame held by the child in the center still caught the light like a secret whispered too close to the ear.

She'd read through four of Aster's journals since discovering the chamber behind the bricked wall. They weren't angry. They weren't even mournful. They were quiet. Observational. The musings of a boy trying to make sense of a world that wanted to unmake him.

"I think they want to erase me," he had written once.

"But I've written my name on the inside of my bones."

The words stayed with her.

Across the hall, Leo's boots echoed against the polished floor. He had just returned from Velbridge with a stack of correspondence and a fresh coat of city dust on his shoulders.

"We've had a request," he said, dropping a manila envelope onto the table beside her.

Mira turned, already wary. "From who?"

He shrugged. "A solicitor from Greythorn & Parrish. No sender's name. Just a seal."

She opened the envelope slowly, her fingers tense against the crisp paper. Inside was a formal letter printed on parchment and signed with looping script:

To the current custodians of Thornwick Hall,

I believe I may have claim to a part of the Thornwick estate, not in land or title, but in blood. I ask for a meeting. Quietly. I seek truth, not scandal.

D.L.

Mira blinked. "Another heir?"

Leo crossed his arms. "Or someone who wants something."

She reread the signature again. No surname. Just initials. No threat, no legal demand. But something about the phrasing not in land or title, but in blood sent a chill down her spine.

"We should speak to them," she said finally.

Leo didn't respond for a long time. Then he nodded. "Carefully."

The following day, Mira arranged a private meeting in the west reading room. No public announcement. No record in the visitor's log. Just a discreet time slot blocked off in the schedule.

At noon, the front doors creaked open and a tall woman stepped inside, removing her gloves with precision. She was in her early thirties, plainly dressed in a navy coat, hair tightly knotted at the nape of her neck. There was something restrained in her expression not arrogance, but calculation.

"You're Mira Ellison," the woman said. "And you must be Leo Thorne."

Leo offered no smile. "And you are?"

"Delia Lockhart," she said, unfolding a small document and laying it on the table between them. "My mother was Ada Thornwick. She was born out of wedlock to Julian Thornwick and a housemaid. She never claimed the name. Never wanted to. But I think I deserve to know where I come from."

Mira's breath caught. Julian had been the youngest of the Thornwick brothers, long presumed to have died in a war abroad. If Delia's claim was true, she was a direct descendant. Not from the primary line but from blood nonetheless.

"I'm not interested in the estate," Delia continued. "I know it's gone. And I don't want it. But the story you're telling here it matters to me. I want to help preserve it."

Leo narrowed his eyes. "Why now?"

"Because for the first time in a hundred years," Delia said, "someone is telling the truth about this place. And because I want to know if my grandfather was a coward or just forgotten."

Mira looked at her. There was no performance in Delia's voice. Just need. A quiet hunger for context. For belonging. For memory.

Mira gestured to a chair. "Then sit. Let's talk."

Over the following days, Delia became an unexpected fixture at Thornwick Hall.

She didn't make demands. She offered help. She assisted in the archives, documented portraits, even helped restore the garden that Lady Ansel had once designed. Mira watched her carefully at first, wary of hidden motives, but the truth became clear: Delia was not here for power.

She was here to gather the fragments of a family that never claimed her.

In the cellar, she helped Elias catalogue oral recordings salvaged from wax cylinders staff testimonials once hidden in Lady Ansel's desk.

One recording featured a nursemaid named Mara, describing the night Aster disappeared:

"I smuggled him out through the tunnel. He was just a boy. They said he'd gone mad, but he wasn't. He just remembered too much."

Delia sat very still as the voice played. "So it's true," she said. "They buried him. Just like they buried everyone else."

Mira nodded. "And we're still unburying them."

As the weeks passed, the archive began drawing more attention. Scholars came from other cities. Historians, journalists, even novelists hungry for scandal.

Mira issued strict controls: no materials could be copied without approval, and no documents could leave the premises. Still, the questions kept coming.

One day, Leo returned from the post office with a copy of The Velbridge Gazette and on the front page, a headline in bold:

SHADOWS OF THE HOUSE: THE TRUE STORY OF THORNWICK HALL

Below it, a grainy photo of the restored drawing room, and the subheading: Illegitimate heirs. Forgotten fires. False identities. What secrets still burn beneath the surface?

Leo set the paper down hard.

"I didn't authorize this," Mira said, eyes scanning the article.

"They must've spoken to someone on-site," Leo said.

"They didn't speak to me," Delia said, entering with a cup of tea. "But they've been sniffing around. I heard someone offer Elias twenty pounds for a look at the unclassified shelf."

Mira swore under her breath. "We need to protect the integrity of this."

But it was already happening.

The truth was out and truth had a hunger of its own.

That night, Mira climbed the stairs to the attic a part of the house still half restored, untouched by tourists. She needed space. She needed air that hadn't been filled with questions.

She pulled back the old drape covering a trunk marked Ellison Family Private. Inside were remnants from her childhood ribbons, books, her father's old glasses.

And near the bottom, a letter she didn't recognize. Sealed in brown wax. Her name written on the front in careful script.

She opened it with trembling fingers.

Mira,

If you're reading this, then the house has outlived me.

I never meant for you to carry this alone. But if anyone was going to bear it, I knew it would be you.

There are more letters. And more names. Buried behind the chapel wall, where the records were never meant to go. The true Thornwick line isn't just shameful it's criminal.

Tell the story even if it burns.

Your brothShe pressed the letter to her chest and closed her eyes.

It wasn't over.

The next morning, Mira, Leo, and Delia broke open the chapel's west wall behind a panel where the old choir loft had collapsed.

Inside was a hollow space filled with documents. Not the elegant ledgers of estate management. Not the romantic letters or portraits.

These were court records. Bribed witnesses. Medical files stamped Suppressed. Transcripts of threats. Payments to silence staff.

Leo knelt in the dust, his face pale.

"This is worse than I imagined."

Delia read a single document aloud:

Subject: Eliza Maybourne Age14 sent to service in Wales under false name. Father unknown. Suspected ties to Thornwick line. Records sealed by Julian Thornwick.

Mira covered her mouth.

Leo stood slowly. "We have to publish this. All of it."

Mira's voice was a whisper. "It'll destroy everything."

Delia said, "It'll destroy what should be destroyed."

Mira stared into the dark. Then she said:

"Then we don't do it quietly. We do it publicly. At the winter exhibition. We show them not just the beauty of this place but its rot. And how we chose to name it."