Chapter 105: The Manor of Unclaimed Doors

The road to the packless manor did not appear on any map Darius carried. Nora had known it would not. She had folded the burned coordinates into her coat pocket the night before, next to Hope's spare blanket, and when the dawn came gray and windless, she had simply pointed north and told Maeve to drive. The old pack wagon groaned over frozen ruts. Maeve kept both hands on the wheel, her knuckles pale against the leather. In the back seat, Darius sat with his shoulder pressed to Nora's, his palm open on his thigh where the silver name still branched through his veins like frost splitting stone. "It's close," he said. Not a question. Nora nodded. She could feel it too. A pull beneath her ribs that had nothing to do with pack bonds or mate claims. It was older. Colder. The manor recognized her the way the grave had recognized Seraphine. Hope slept in a wrap against Nora's chest, her breath warm and even, her small fingers curled around the edge of Nora's collar. She had not stirred since they crossed the dead-zone border. Maeve slowed the wagon. "There." The manor rose from the snow like a bone that had been buried too long and pushed itself back into the light. Three stories of pale stone and dark windows, the roof sagging in the middle as if the building had exhaled and never inhaled again. No smoke rose from the chimneys. No light moved behind the glass. But the doors. They lined the front facade in a row that should have been impossible for a building this size. Twelve of them. Maybe more. Each one made of dark wood, each one carved with a name that had been scratched through with something sharp--nail, knife, claw--leaving only the ghost of letters behind. Nora stepped out of the wagon before Maeve killed the engine. The snow came to her ankles, dry and cold, and the silence here was different from the forest. It was a silence that listened. Darius came to stand beside her. He did not take her hand. He did not offer comfort. He stood, and his presence blocked the wind, and that was enough. Maeve lifted Hope's carrier from the back seat and fell in a step behind them. "I count fourteen doors from here. There's more around the sides." "Each one belonged to a woman," Nora said. She could feel it. The names were crossed out, but the weight of them remained--the weight of women who had been brought here, named, unmade, and sent back into the world with no family to claim them. That was the manor's purpose. Not a sanctuary. A transaction floor. Nora made her choice. She walked forward. The doors did not move. The wind did not pick up. But as she passed the first door, she felt something shift in the wood, a release of pressure like a held breath. "Don't touch them," Darius said quietly. "I wasn't planning to." She stopped in front of the seventh door. The name carved there had been crossed out twice, the second line deeper than the first, as if the person who scratched it had been angry the first time and furious the second. She stared at the crossed letters and felt her heart pick up a rhythm that was not entirely her own. Then she heard it. A click. The lock turned. The door swung inward on its own, revealing a narrow hallway lit by a single candle at the far end. The flame did not flicker. And from the darkness behind it, a voice spoke. *Nora.* Her mother's voice. Soft. Tired. The voice of a woman who had not spoken in twenty years and was not entirely certain she should speak now. Nora's throat closed. She felt Darius move behind her, his hand settling at the small of her back, warm and steady and present. "That's not possible," Maeve whispered. Nora stepped over the threshold.