Midnight found Sarah on her knees under the hawthorn tree, her fingers frozen stiff with clawing the frozen earth. Lucas's shovel clanged on stone with a sharp ring that resonated through the still garden. Moonlight filtered through the bare branches above, illuminating their hands in ghostly silver as they tugged with all their might to shift a moss-covered slab aside.

The stench of wet earth and rust clung to the air.

Sarah's breath caught. Below the stone was a small iron box, its face worn but still closed over by a intricate lock in the shape of entwined lovers. Same design as the locket.

Lucas shook with fear as he rummaged into his pocket. "It's the same keyhole." He placed the silver locket against the lock—and with a groan of reluctant metal, the mechanism opened.

The chest creaked open on a sigh of released breath.

There was a pile of letters tied with a now-rotting ribbon, a miniature portrait of Emily with her lips frozen in mid-laugh, and—

"A pistol." Lucas grasped the old gun with horrified awe. The metal barrel glowed dully, the wooden stock carved with the same hawthorn motif that had decorated all of Thomas's paintings. "This is what killed him."

Sarah's fingers encircled a crumpled parchment sealed with a crimson-red wax 'V'. When she burst the seal, wind whistled around them, its mutterings in a language she somehow understood:

"The price must be paid again."

The letter's contents spilled onto her lap—a confession in spidery script:

"I, Charles Bennett, did murder Thomas Everhart here, for the crime of loving my sister. But as he died, he swore an oath—that death would not keep them apart. That through fire and time, they would return."

Lucas's hand closed around hers, numb. "Sarah, see."

Their roots at the chest pulsed pale red, as if fed by some subterranean current of blood. The same unearthly light gleamed from their lockets, casting their faces into ghastly relief.

Sarah was certain in a flash of comprehension what they had to do.

"Thomas and Emily never had their turn." She jammed the pistol into Lucas's hand, then enclosed his around it. "But we're standing where they died. Where their story ended."

The wind stopped. In the distance, church bells rang the witching hour.

Lucas's eyes locked with hers—Thomas's, Emily's resolve, centuries of desire reduced to this moment. "Then let's rewrite the ending."

They put the pistol down, together.

The earth trembled. The hawthorn's limbs lashed back and forth as if blown by a storm, dropping fire-hued petals that clung to their skin like blood-stained snow.

And from under the roots, a gold glow began to seep forth.