The mornings in Silas's estate didn't feel like mornings.
No sun through gauze curtains. No birdsong or alarm clocks or warm dust in the air.
Here, day began with stillness. Like the house had been holding its breath all night, and Ivy had simply woken before it remembered to exhale.
She padded down the long hall barefoot, sweater slipping from one shoulder, fingers curled around a mug of untouched tea.
The walls stretched high, blank and white and humming with unsaid things.
She'd lived in many apartments. Rooms that smelled like mold and memory. Spaces crammed with unfinished canvases and unanswered questions.
But this?
This house had no memory.
Only surveillance.
Every surface too clean. Every corner too intentional.
It didn't feel like someone lived here.
It felt like someone watched here.
She passed a locked door on the left. Brass handle. No keyhole.
She tried it. Again.
Still locked.
She told herself she didn't care.
But it felt like the door was listening.
Breakfast was set without a sound.
A long glass table. One place set. Her place. Always just hers.
Silver cutlery. White china. A single dark napkin folded like origami.
She'd never seen anyone bring the food.
Just that it was there.
Today: poached eggs, sliced pears, and something that looked too delicate to eat.
She picked up the fork, but didn't eat.
Instead, her eyes drifted to the only other sound in the room—the tick of the antique clock on the far wall.
Each second felt like judgment.
She glanced toward the hallway.
Was he watching?
She couldn't tell.
She could never tell.
She returned to the studio mid-morning. Not because she was ready. But because there was nothing else to do.
The estate had no TV. No radio. No internet.
Only canvas.
And him.
She didn't know where Silas slept.
If he slept.
Only that some mornings she found evidence of him—notes in dark ink on thick paper, left by the easel.
"Stop holding back."
"The colors lie. Try again."
"Use what hurt."
She never heard him come or go.
But she always knew when he had been there.
It was in the way the room felt colder.
Sharper.
Like it remembered something it wasn't allowed to say.
She painted in silence for hours.
Nothing complete. Just gestures. Color bleeding into color. The start of something unnamed.
The image shifting.
A hallway.
A girl.
Shadows reaching for her from the edges.
She didn't know what it meant yet.
Only that her hand wouldn't stop.
And the more she painted, the more she forgot about the cold.
About the door that wouldn't open.
About the fact that she was being paid to bleed.
Evening blurred the lines of the house.
Rooms that looked one way in daylight changed shape in low light—reflections where there were no mirrors, warmth where there was no source.
She wandered again, fingers trailing the edge of a marble counter. One of the rooms was full of books, none in English.
Another, entirely white, with a piano in the center. Untouched. Dustless.
Everything in the house looked like it was waiting.
She reached the far wing just before the lights dimmed.
And there—at the end of a hallway she hadn't walked before— a door slightly open.
Not locked.
Not anymore.
The door creaked when she pushed it open.
Only slightly. But in a house like this, even that sounded like rebellion.
Ivy stepped over the threshold, half-expecting an alarm to wail, or Silas's voice to cut through the quiet like a blade.
Nothing came.
Just a hush that thickened around her ankles as she crossed the room.
It was dim, lit only by the last blue streaks of evening slipping through a frosted skylight. The air felt… old. Not stale but preserved. Like the space hadn't been touched in years, yet someone had taken care to keep it just as it was. A shrine.
Or a sealed wound.
She stopped just inside, heart pressing harder against her ribs.
The room wasn't empty.
It was full of paintings.
And every one of them was of the same woman.
She didn't look like Ivy. Not exactly.
But there were echoes.
High cheekbones. Wide-set eyes. That kind of haunted softness that made you feel like she was staring through you instead of at you.
The same woman, painted again and again.
In every style. Every medium. Oil, charcoal, gouache. Some hyperrealistic. Others blurred with abstraction. Always the same face.
Some of them had been slashed.
Some were unfinished.
All of them carried the same strange grief.
Ivy approached one closest to the window.
It was a portrait—only shoulders and face done in ochre and burnt umber. The woman's eyes were downcast, her lips parted as if in prayer or apology. There was a date in the corner.
The year Silas would've been fifteen.
She stepped back. Her heel knocked into something.
A stool.
Beside it, a palette knife, still smeared with dried paint.
And a note. Folded. Aged. Yellowed at the edges.
She didn't open it.
She didn't have to.
The name on the back was scrawled in the same sharp handwriting as the notes in her studio.
"Mother."
Footsteps behind her.
Soft. But deliberate.
Her stomach tightened.
She turned slowly.
Silas stood in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame.
He didn't look angry.
Didn't look anything.
Only his eyes moved—dark, unreadable, taking her in, and then the room, and then her again.
"I thought this room was locked," she said quietly.
"It was."
"You left it open."
"No."
He stepped inside.
"I just stopped locking it."
The silence between them wasn't awkward.
It was heavy. Purposeful.
Like standing on the edge of a pit you didn't know was bottomless until it looked back at you.
Ivy folded her arms, though it didn't help the cold.
"These are all of her."
"Yes."
He didn't offer more.
Didn't need to.
Ivy's eyes moved over the ruined canvases. The torn edges.
The way some frames had been burned along one side, as if someone had tried to destroy them halfway and then changed their mind.
"She's beautiful," Ivy whispered.
Silas didn't blink. "She was violent."
He moved to one of the paintings.
A softer one—done in pastels. It had been punched straight through the center.
"She used to scream when she painted. She said the colors were too loud."
He didn't speak like he was reminiscing.
He spoke like he was cataloging. Remembering inventory.
Ivy stayed still.
"And this?" she asked. "Why keep all of this?"
Silas looked at her then.
Not cold.
Not warm.
Just… exposed.
"For the same reason you keep painting your pain."
That hit harder than she expected.
Her breath caught.
The silence between them fractured, and she looked away first.
"Was she an artist?" Ivy asked, to fill the space.
"No," he said. "She was a ghost who refused to leave the room."
And then, after a beat—
"But I made her one."
They left the room in silence.
Ivy didn't look back.
She didn't have to. The weight of that woman's face followed her down the hallway.
Silas walked beside her without touching, without speaking.
And somehow, that was worse than being alone.
She felt the question press against her chest the whole way back: What do you do with a man who curates grief like a gallery?
Back in the studio, the light had dimmed.
Silas stood just beyond the doorway, not entering this time. Only watching.
Ivy hesitated at the edge of the canvas she'd started. The hallway painting. The girl. The shadows.
She saw it differently now.
Maybe she always had—just hadn't named it.
The figure in the distance wasn't running.
She was returning.
"I'm not her," Ivy said, without turning around.
Silas didn't respond at first.
Then—
"No," he said. "You're not."
But it wasn't comforting.
It sounded like a judgment. Or worse—like a wish.
She moved to the canvas. Picked up her brush.
And just held it.
The silence pressed in again.
This time, she broke it.
"How did she die?"
A long pause.
Then, softly:
"She lit a match in the bathtub. After soaking herself in turpentine."
Ivy's stomach turned.
Her hand went slack.
"She painted until the end," he added. "The mirror was covered in charcoal. She wrote her name on it. Then crossed it out."
He said it like fact. Like inventory. No change in tone.
But Ivy felt the fracture in the air.
Like a room remembering how to scream.
"You don't speak of her like a son," she said.
He looked at her then. That unsettling stillness in his eyes.
"No. I speak of her like a collector. She was… unfinished."
"You talk about her like she was a canvas."
A pause.
"She was."
That should have terrified her.
But it didn't.
It only made something click.
That was what this house was. Not a home.
Not even a cage.
It was a gallery of grief.
And she was just the next piece.
Later, she found herself standing in front of her own painting again. The unfinished one. The girl in the hallway. The shadows.
She picked up a palette knife instead of a brush this time.
Dragged it across the figure's face—just enough to blur it.
Not to destroy it.
To change it.
She wouldn't let herself be hung on a wall.
Not quietly.
The estate slept like a predator.
Silent. Watching. Waiting.
Ivy couldn't.
Sleep, that is.
The sheets in her guestroom were soft, expensive—too smooth, too perfect.
Like lying inside a blank canvas. Nothing to hold her. Nothing to ground her.
She lay there, staring at the ceiling.
Counted the shadows that moved across it, one for every hour that passed.
She didn't know what time it was when she slipped out of bed.
Only that the silence had grown too thick to breathe.
The halls at night felt different.
Not haunted.
Just… listening.
She walked barefoot, sweater pulled tight around her. Her fingers brushed the edges of marble statues, the cool grain of carved columns. Every turn felt familiar now, and yet—
It still felt like a place that didn't want to be known.
She passed the portrait gallery again.
Didn't go in.
Didn't need to.
The woman's face was already burned into her.
What frightened Ivy most wasn't the art.
It was the devotion in the brushstrokes.
The way each painting looked like a prayer.
Or a curse.
She stopped when she reached the door to the east wing.
The one Silas always disappeared through.
It was unlocked now.
She didn't open it.
Not tonight.
She wasn't ready for whatever silence waited behind it.
Instead, she found her way to the studio.
The lights were low. No sign of him.
But she knew he'd been there.
Her painting the girl and the shadows had been moved slightly. Only by inches. But enough.
He had looked at it.
Maybe longer than she wanted him to.
She sat down before it.
Touched the edge of the canvas like it was skin.
And then she painted.
Not feverishly. Not beautifully. Not even well.
Just honestly.
She painted the hallway again. But this time, the girl wasn't alone.
There was a shape behind her.
Not a man.
Not a ghost.
Something in between.
Watching.
Not hurting.
Not helping.
Just there.
She didn't hear him enter.
But she felt him.
Like gravity shifting.
Silas stood behind her, just close enough for his presence to drape across her shoulders like frost.
She didn't turn.
"You moved it," she said softly.
A breath behind her. Barely there.
"I was careful."
"That's not the same as asking."
A pause.
"You paint in your sleep."
She froze.
"What?"
"I've seen you. Around 3 a.m. You come here, eyes half-lidded, no sound. You paint. Then you leave. You don't remember."
Goosebumps rose down her arms.
He stepped closer. Not touching. Not yet.
"I thought it was grief," he said. "But maybe it's something else."
She turned her head just enough to glance at him.
"Like what?"
His gaze met hers.
"Maybe it's the only time you aren't lying."
She should have slapped him.
But she didn't.
Because part of her wondered if he was right.
And that terrified her more than his watching ever did.
Neither of them moved.
Not right away.
Silas lingered behind her, silent in the way only someone used to being obeyed could be.
Ivy stayed seated, her fingers stained with wet charcoal, her pulse loud in her throat.
He was too close.
Not close enough.
"You shouldn't watch me like that," she said finally.
His answer came low, cool.
"I watch the things I own."
She turned, sharp enough that her chair creaked under her.
"I'm not yours."
Something flickered in his expression. Almost invisible.
A twitch of restraint. Or memory.
"No," he said, with an edge of something she couldn't name.
"Not yet."
She rose to her feet.
Not to argue.
To breathe.
He didn't stop her. Just followed with his eyes as she crossed the room.
"I'm not your mother," she added, more to the walls than to him. "You don't get to preserve me."
"I'm not trying to," he said, and it sounded true.
Too true.
Like he meant the opposite.
A strange quiet filled the studio.
Not tense.
Just bare.
Like both of them were waiting for something that hadn't happened yet and neither knew whether to dread it or want it.
Silas moved first.
To the table near the window, where the sealed envelope still sat.
The contract.
He picked it up. Held it out.
She stared at it.
Then at him.
And instead of taking it, she asked, "Why me?"
He didn't hesitate.
"You're the only artist I've ever seen who paints like the world already ended."
Her breath caught.
Not from the words.
From the way he said them. Like a man who had never learned how to grieve out loud.
Slowly, she took the envelope.
It felt heavier than before.
She didn't open it. Just let it rest in her hands like a weight she'd already chosen to carry.
"Sleep," Silas said quietly, turning toward the door. "You'll need it."
"For what?"
He didn't look back.
"For surviving here."
He left.
No goodbye. No parting glance.
Only the lingering trace of him in the room cold, quiet, unsettling.
Ivy stayed long after he was gone.
Watching the studio darken as the moon shifted overhead.
Eventually, she walked to the unfinished painting.
And in the corner, with a fingertip smudged in ash, she wrote her name.
Not neatly.
Not legibly.
Just enough to remind herself:
She was still here.