//CLARA//
Utterly confused, finally the last fog of fuzziness cleared my head.
I scanned the room, looking for a light switch, a misplaced charging port, or even a rogue piece of IKEA furniture.
Nothing. Just heavy, dust-collecting velvet curtains and the flickering, low-res glow of actual candles. There wasn't a single LED in sight.
"Okay, hilarious," I muttered, my voice sounding weirdly breathy and high-pitched.
Brilliant! I almost fall for it.
A hysterical laugh bubbles in my throat as I push myself up. The rough linen of my nightdress was scratching every bit of my skin.
"Very funny, Mom. You really went all out on the 'ancestral manor' aesthetic. Did you hire a production crew from the History Channel?"
I waited for the hidden cameras to pop out. I waited for my mother to walk in with her iPhone, laughing about how she finally 'humbled' me for TikTok.
The man, playing Casimir—because who else could he be? —simply watches me with an air of clinical perplexity. The look in his slate-gray eyes was far too convincing, simmering with a genuine concern that felt unsettlingly real for an act.
That cold, analytical scrutiny that felt way too high-budget for a prank.
Honestly, why hadn't a casting director scouted this guy for a major franchise yet? He surely deserved a damn award, not some talentless nepo-babies currently clogging my feed.
"I can see that you are still in distress," he stated flatly. "The events of the day have been…taxing."
"Taxing?" I scramble to my feet, swaying as the blood rushes from my head.
The room felt suffocating, thick with the carbon dioxide expelled by the flickering candles and those ridiculous gas lamps. I needed oxygen.
More importantly, I needed to find a production assistant or a craft services table. Anything to prove this was a set.
I stumbled toward the French doors at the far end of the room, my legs feeling like they belonged to someone else.
"Try a twelve-hour economy flight in the middle seat! That's taxing. This is an abduction!"
I fumbled with the heavy brass latch.
"My mother has clearly lost it, blowing my entire marketing budget on this period-piece psychological terror! I want to talk to her right now! And I want my phone back!"
Actor Casimir tracked my every move, his body tensed to spring forward with a flawless performance of a guardian concern.
"Eleanor, stop."
His voice cut through my rant, dropping into a register of haunting gravity.
"Your mother is dead."
I ignore him and shove the doors open, stumbling out onto the vast, flat rooftop terrace surrounded by a stone parapet instead of the small balcony I have pictured.
The view steals my breath.
It isn't Newport.
Below me was a sprawling, gas-lit city of mansions and orderly, tree-lined avenues lying under a blanket of night. The air is cold and smells of coal smoke and horses.
The skyline is a jagged silhouette of spires and gables against a star-dusted sky.
There are no electric lights. No soundstage for effects. No cars. Not even a distant hum of traffic or a blinking light from a passing plane above. I can even clearly see the Milky Way in the absence of light pollution.
Everything felt wrong. The scale, the silence, and the very smell of the world are wrong.
No.
This felt real. Way too real to be a prank setup. No production budget on earth could replicate the bone-deep chill of this air or the terrifying scale of the cityscape behind me without any CGI or green screen.
I turned slowly, my back to the impossible, gas-lit city.
Actor Casimir...no, could he actually be the Casimir?...stood in the doorway, framed by the amber glow of the room behind him.
"The air is cold, Eleanor," he coaxed beckoning me back in.
Seeing him like this, the physical manifestation of my great-grandmother's frantic diary entries, was uncanny. The math was impossible, but the evidence was undeniable. Somehow, the diary and that cloying scent of gardenias had acted as a bridge. The static noise that had screamed in my ears pointed to one insane, terrifying conclusion.
A choked, ragged sound tore from my throat. I wasn't in a prank. I was trapped in someone else's life, living in someone else's skin.
He moved then, stepping out of the frame and closing the distance between us until he was only a breath away. The sheer gravity of his presence so close to me is like a physical force, pulling me into him.
As it started to sink in to me, crushing my ability to stand, my knees didn't just wobbled, they gave out entirely.
Before I could hit the stone, his arms were there. He caught me by the waist and hauled me upward so abruptly that my breath hitched. My entire weight relying solely on the strength of the arm wrapped around me.
"Easy now," he murmured into my hair, his voice suddenly vibrating with a tenderness immediately melting me into a mush.
My body pressed completely against his broad chest. The only thing keeping the world from spinning away was the solid heat of him.
I looked up, my vision blurring. My hand rose of its own volition. My fingertips brushed the hard line of his cheekbone, then trailed, feather-light, down the tense plane of his jaw. He went utterly still, a statue coming to life under my touch.
I felt the muscle in his jaw leap, a frantic ticking beneath my fingers, the restraint in him so taut I thought it might shatter. He looked like a man who wanted to pull back but couldn't bring himself to.
I ignored it, feeling his warm skin. Flesh and blood and wool, and a scent of sandalwood and starched linen. Not some synthetic, store-bought fragrances.
"Are you…real?"
It was a foolish question, but it was the only one my broken logic could form.
He didn't answer with words. His arm tightened almost imperceptibly around my waist, his gaze dropping to my parted lips for a searing instant before lifting again, filled with a conflict that mirrored my own.
"You should not be out here," his voice rough around the edges, and the tenderness now layered with a darker restraint. "You are still unwell."
The hunger from the diary pages is tangible. The air between us became a palpable living thing.
Yet even more so, I am still too terrified, too utterly unmoored, to do anything but to deflect the only weapon I have left. Denial.
"Yes, unwell." I cleared my throat, planting both my feet into the ground as I steadied myself, withdrawing from his embrace and shivering as the cold air blew past me.
"And a little peachy. This is just… a lot. For a prank. My mother pulled out all the stops. The city model is incredible, flawless. The method if acting is completely…"
I'm rambling, my eyes darting from his face to the city and back with my nervous laughter clawing at my throat.
"You're very good. Seriously outstanding for the role. I hope you'll get more projects you deserve. What agency were you from?"
Casimir didn't react to the praise. He simply stares at me in the moonlight, seeming to be figuring out what on earth I was talking about.
He's seriously clueless.
"A prank," he repeated, his tone not playing along with my antics but studying and tasting its absurdity.
"I had prayed, in some foolish, secret corner of my soul, that this was merely another of your parents' extravagant whims. A ludicrous charade and that they would walk through that door, laughing at the grim jest."
He took a deep breath and composed himself, adjusting the lapels of his wool coat with a precision that was maddeningly elegant. The gesture was subtle, yet it sent a tremor through me that had nothing to do with the cold.
As I watched him, a single line from the diary screamed in the back of my mind.
'He is my ruin.'
He lifts a hand, slowly, and then his thumb brushes over my cheeks, wiping over a single tear I didn't know had fallen.
It caught me off guard. Since when had I cried?
Seriously, I am not a cry baby! What the fuck?
"The night air is no place for a lady in your condition, Eleanor. You will come inside at once."
It was a command. From my supposedly step-uncle. My guardian.
And in that moment, drowning in impossibility and that terrifying, magnetic pull my body cannot resist. I have no fight left.
This isn't a performance my mother had orchestrated for me. The prank is a lie I told myself to keep from screaming.
Wordlessly, shivering, I turn and walk back into the bedroom. He follows, closing the French doors behind with a definitive click.
He pauses, looking at me for a long, silent moment from across the room.
"Rest," he finally said, the word leaving no room for argument. "We shall revisit this conversation in the morning, when you have reclaimed your composure and your thoughts are... coherent."
With that, he withdrew, the heavy mahogany door shutting me in. I stood in the center of the room, listening to a silence so deafening it made my ears ring.
I really was Eleanor Thorne.
It really was 1879.
Oh, great-grandma, of all the people in our bloodline, why did it have to be me?