Read a Sample: The Last Blackmere

Excerpt from Chapter 1: The Tenth Winter 2,492 words

Chapter 1: The Tenth Winter

Liora Blackmere knew the cabin by sound.

She knew the soft click of the stove when the fire settled low. She knew the thin whistle that came through the northern window when the wind pressed hard enough against the frame. She knew the hollow complaint of the third stair from the top, the low groan of the pantry door, the brittle pop of frozen branches outside when the night grew cruel.

She knew the sound of Severin breathing.

That was the sound she listened for now.

Slow. Heavy. Uneven.

Not sleep exactly. Not peace. Severin Blackmere had never slept like a peaceful man. Even in the deepest hours of winter, when the whole forest seemed buried under ice and dark, her uncle slept like someone waiting to be punished. His breath caught every so often, as if some old memory had put a hand around his throat.

Liora stood outside his room with bare feet pressed against the cold wooden floor, one hand closed around the iron key she had stolen three weeks ago.

Her heart beat so hard she could feel it in her teeth.

Behind the door, Severin shifted.

Liora froze.

The hallway went still around her. The shadows of the cabin stretched long and thin across the walls, broken only by the weak orange glow bleeding from the kitchen stove. Snow tapped against the windows like fingernails.

She counted his breaths.

One.

Two.

Three.

A pause.

Four.

Still asleep.

Liora let the air leave her lungs without sound.

For ten years, counting had kept her alive.

She had counted the steps from her room to the pantry. Seventeen if she stepped wide over the loose board. Nineteen if Severin was awake and she had to move naturally.

She had counted the seconds it took him to unlock the weapons cabinet. Twelve when he was calm. Seven when he was afraid.

She had counted how many days passed between supply checks, how many candles remained in the cellar, how many matches were hidden inside the flour tin, how many times he said the world outside was dead before she stopped asking him to prove it.

Ten winters.

Ten summers.

Ten birthdays that were not celebrated after the third year because she had thrown the little honey cake he made against the wall and told him he had no right to remember the day she was born.

He had cleaned the frosting from the floor without speaking.

After that, he stopped making cakes.

Tonight, Liora would stop waiting.

She turned the key slowly in the lock of the storage room.

The metal resisted at first. It always did in the cold. She pressed her thumb against the bow of the key and eased it forward until the mechanism gave a soft internal click.

Not loud.

Not enough to wake him.

Still, she waited.

Behind Severin’s door, the breathing continued.

Liora slipped into the storage room and closed the door behind her until only a narrow line of hallway light remained.

The smell hit her first.

Oil. Leather. Dust. Dried apples. Metal. Old paper.

This was the room Severin opened only when he thought she was asleep. The room where he kept the things he trusted more than people.

She had been inside once before, three months earlier, when he forgot to latch the door after checking the winter stores. She had only had nineteen seconds then. Enough to see the shelves. Enough to know where the map tube was. Enough to notice the black leather case locked beneath the workbench.

Enough to begin planning.

Tonight, she took what she had already chosen.

The hunting knife came first.

It was not the largest blade. Severin would notice that missing too quickly if he woke before dawn. She took the smaller one from the back of the second shelf, the one wrapped in oiled cloth, the one he used for gutting rabbits and cutting rope. Its handle was dark wood, worn smooth by his hand.

Liora hated that it fit so well in hers.

She slid it into the inside pocket of her coat.

Next came the map.

The old paper was rolled tight inside a brass tube. Severin had marked it in black ink and red pencil. Roads. Rivers. old rail lines. Warning symbols. Crossed out towns. Circles around places he had never explained.

He had told her once, years ago, that maps were lies people told themselves about control.

“Roads change,” he had said. “Borders change. Names change. But water remembers. Hills remember. Stone remembers. Learn those first.”

She had pretended not to listen.

She had remembered every word.

She took the compass from the nail beside the shelf. It was brass, heavy, scratched on one side. She knew it had belonged to Severin’s father because he had said so the night he got drunk on the last bottle of wine in the cabin and spoke for hours about blood, duty, and betrayal.

She took three wrapped oat cakes, two strips of salted venison, a tin of matches, a coil of cord, and a small cloth pouch of dried berries.

Not too much.

Too much would slow her down.

Too much would tell him she had planned to live.

The signet ring was in the drawer of the small writing desk.

For almost ten years, Severin had worn it on a chain beneath his shirt. The ring was silver, darkened with age, set with a black stone carved in the shape of a bird descending over water. The crest of House Blackmere.

He had stopped wearing it after the last argument.

Not their worst argument.

The last one.

It had been six nights ago, after Liora found the hidden radio beneath the false floor of the cellar and heard a voice speak her name through the static.

Liora Seraphine Blackmere.

Confirm bloodline.

Return before winter.

She had reached for the transmitter with shaking hands, but Severin had torn it from the table and smashed it against the stone wall until the voice died in a crackle of sparks.

Then he had gripped her shoulders and said, “You do not understand what is calling you.”

She had stared at him and said, “Then let me answer it.”

He had looked old in that moment. Older than forty nine. Older than grief. Older than guilt.

“No,” he had whispered.

And that was when Liora knew he would keep her forever if she let him.

Now she opened the drawer and took the ring.

It felt cold, almost wet, against her palm.

She nearly put it back.

The Blackmere name had never saved anyone. Not her. Not the world. Maybe Severin was right about that, at least.

But the voice on the radio had known her full name.

Someone outside knew she was alive.

Or wanted her to be.

The ring might open a door. It might buy time. It might get her killed.

She took it anyway.

The Black Ledger was last.

It sat beneath the workbench in its locked case. For years, Severin had guarded that case more carefully than he guarded the rifles. She had once asked what was inside, back when she was still young enough to believe questions could force answers.

He had said, “The reason I damned myself.”

She had thought he meant her.

Maybe he had.

The case lock was harder than the storage room door. She had no key for it, only a rusted pick she had shaped from a snapped stove hook and hidden inside the hem of her blanket.

Her hands shook as she knelt.

Not from cold.

Never from cold. She had learned cold. Cold was honest. Cold did not pretend to love you while locking the doors.

She slid the pick into the lock and listened for the pins.

One.

Nothing.

Two.

A soft scrape.

Three.

Her fingers slipped.

She closed her eyes.

Behind her, the cabin creaked.

Liora stopped breathing.

No footsteps.

No voice.

Only the wind.

She tried again.

This time the lock opened.

The case lid lifted with a sigh of old leather.

Inside was a book wrapped in black cloth.

It was thicker than she expected, bound in dark leather, its cover unmarked except for a symbol pressed into the center. The same bird over dark water, but beneath it was a phrase in small silver lettering.

What falls returns to us.

Liora stared at the words.

She had heard them before, though not from Severin.

Her mother used to say them at the end of family dinners when the adults raised their glasses and the children were expected to sit very still. Her father would repeat them in a voice so quiet it barely seemed human.

What falls returns to us.

As a child, Liora thought it was a prayer.

Now, holding the book Severin had hidden for ten years, she wondered if it had been a promise.

A floorboard groaned.

Not the wind.

Liora turned.

The line of light beneath the storage room door shifted.

Her blood went cold.

Another groan.

The third stair.

Severin was awake.

For one wild second, she could not move. Ten years of fear rose in her like floodwater. Not fear of his hands. He had never beaten her. Not fear of hunger. He had never starved her.

Fear of his voice.

The way he could make a locked door sound reasonable.

The way he could make the outside world sound worse than captivity.

The way he could look at her with sorrow and still choose the key over her freedom.

“Liora?”

His voice came from the hall.

Rough with sleep.

Close.

She shoved the Black Ledger into her satchel and stood.

The storage room door opened before she reached it.

Severin stood in the doorway in his gray wool shirt and dark trousers, one hand braced against the frame.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The years between them seemed to gather in the room.

He looked at the open case. Then the satchel. Then the knife shape beneath her coat.

His face did not harden.

That would have been easier.

Instead, it broke.

“Liora,” he said softly. “No.”

She hated him for saying it like a plea.

She tightened her grip on the satchel strap. “Move.”

“You cannot go out there.”

“I can.”

“You do not know what the world is now.”

“Then I’ll learn.”

His eyes moved to the brass map tube under her arm. “You think a map will save you?”

“No.” Her voice shook, but she forced the rest out. “But staying here will kill me.”

Something flickered across his face.

Pain. Anger. Fear.

Fear most of all.

“You are alive because of this place.”

“I am alive in spite of it.”

“You were sixteen.”

“And now I’m twenty six.”

The number landed between them like a body.

Twenty six.

She had not said her age aloud in months. Maybe years. In the cabin, time was measured by stores, winters, repairs, scars. Not birthdays. Birthdays belonged to people who had futures.

Severin looked away first.

“I had no choice.”

Liora laughed once, low and humorless. “That is the first lie you taught me.”

His jaw tightened.

“You want the truth?” he said. “The truth is that there are men outside these woods who would trade ten children for the coat on your back. There are towns where the wells are poisoned. There are roads where people hang warning signs made from skin. There are settlements that sell names to Meridian for salt and antibiotics.”

“Meridian,” she said.

The word changed him.

His face went still.

Liora stepped closer. “You always stopped when you got to that part.”

“Because that part is worse.”

“Worse than taking me?”

“Yes.”

The answer came too quickly.

It cut deeper than she expected.

For a second, she saw him as he had been when she was little. Uncle Severin, the only adult in the Blackmere house who crouched to speak to her instead of looking down from a great height. Uncle Severin, who once smuggled her a sugared plum before a formal dinner and told her not all rules were sacred.

Then she saw him as he was now.

The man who had stolen ten years and called it mercy.

She pulled the ring from her pocket and held it up.

His eyes widened.

“You do not want to carry that,” he said.

“I do not care what you want.”

“The name will not protect you.”

“Then why are they calling for it?”

Silence.

The stove popped in the kitchen. Outside, the wind dragged snow across the roof.

Severin looked suddenly exhausted.

“Because blood is paperwork to people like us,” he said. “Because the old world died with signatures still waiting to be honored. Because your parents and their friends built locks that only certain veins could open.”

Liora’s mouth went dry.

“My parents are dead.”

Severin closed his eyes.

She felt the room tilt.

“You told me they were dead.”

“I told you many things to keep you alive.”

“My parents are dead.”

He opened his eyes.

“No,” he said.

The word was quiet.

It destroyed something.

Liora did not remember moving.

One moment she was standing by the workbench. The next she had shoved past him into the hall, shoulder striking his chest hard enough to make him stumble.

He grabbed her wrist.

Not roughly.

That made it worse.

“Liora, listen to me.”

She twisted, drove her heel into his shin the way he had taught her to do to men larger than herself, and yanked free.

He cursed and reached for her again.

She pulled the knife.

The blade came up between them.

Severin stopped.

His eyes went to the knife, then to her face.

For the first time in ten years, Liora saw him understand something.

Not that she hated him.