The grandfather clock chimed three a.m. and Sarah came awake with a jolt, her nightgown clinging to damp skin. The sound of her nightmare still constricted about her throat—Emily's shouting, Thomas's form falling to the garden path, the glint of her brother's gun in moonlight. She cupped her hands about closed eyes until colors exploded in the blackness, trying to wipe out the visions burned into her mind.

The mattress dipped beside her as Lucas pushed himself upright, his warmth penetrating the thinnish cotton sheet between them. He folded her shaking hands into his, turning them palm-up like an offering. His thumbs swept over the white scar from the hawthorn thorn—their shared injury—while the winter blast rattled the windowpanes.

"You're remembering her death now, aren't you?" His tone was heavy with sleep, but his eyes were wide and alert with the pale light reflected from the embers in the fire.

Sarah only turned her head, the words sticking in her throat like splinters of glass.

Lucas stood up suddenly, moving to the wardrobe where Thomas's worn artist satchel hung across the top shelf. He came back with two items in his hand and dropped them into her lap—a silver flask worn dull, which was stamped with the Bennett crest, and one sheet of parchment so dry that it shattered as she touched it.

The letter was sealed with Charles Bennett's stamp.

"Sister," it began, "as you are reading this, I will have taken my own life with the same gun that robbed you of joy. My anger destroyed us both. The Voss woman is telling us that the roots demand penance. Let my blood be the first offering for your return."

Sarah's sobs fell on the page, blurring the ink. The flask contained no wine, only black, rich dirt with a hint of copper and hawthorn petals—dirt from a coffin.

Lucas got down on his knees before her, his hands encircled around her face. "We've been so focused on their love story, we forgot someone else needed peace as well."

The house groaned around them, floorboards creaking in a strange pattern that led them to the cellar door. It was open now, yellow light spilling through the gap.

Below, the underground studio had been altered. The roots of the sapling had filled the walls with intricate patterns, a mural of history—not just Thomas and Emily's stolen brief moments, but Charles looming in the background, his face twisted in agony. The final panel showed him on his knees beneath the hawthorn, the pistol against his own head as roots wrapped around his wrists like handcuffs.

Sarah's knees came to rest on the damp earth as understanding swept through her. "He wasn't the evil one. He was the first sacrifice."

The roots trembled at her words. One vial shattered from the sapling, floating downward to come to rest in her upturned hand. Within churned not dye, but clear spring water with the smell of absolution.

Lucas's hand swept over hers as they poured it onto Charles's painted face. The roots creaked as the mural shifted—the pistol falling from his hand, the shackles dissolving into flowers.

Above them, a door slammed shut—the attic window that had shook for generations at last stopped shaking.