Chapter 57 - The Ruins of the Chapel
Paramedics swarmed around Julian and me, draping heavy thermal blankets over our shivering shoulders and pressing oxygen masks to our faces. I waved them off after a few deep breaths. I did not need an ambulance; I needed to stand. I needed to see what remained.
Supported by Julian's steady arm, I walked slowly toward the edge of the terrace. The fire department had managed to contain the blaze to the lower crypt and the chapel itself, preventing the flames from jumping across the stone colonnade to the main residence. But the chapel was a total loss.
The ancient stained-glass windows, brought over from Europe in the late nineteenth century, had shattered outward from the heat, their colorful fragments scattered like dead autumn leaves across the lawn. The timber roof had collapsed inward, leaving only the blackened, jagged stone walls reaching toward the gray sky like the ribs of an ancient, slaughtered beast.
"It's gone, Evelyn," Julian murmured, his hand resting gently over mine on the crook of his elbow. "A century of history. Burned to ash for a lie."
"No, Julian," I said, watching the thick steam rise as water jets struck the glowing embers within the pit. "The history was already corrupted. Tyler merely applied the torch to the rot."
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"And the papers?" he asked quietly. "The deeds? The secret registers Tyler brought down there?"
I looked down at the mud beneath my boots. In my hand, gripped so tightly my knuckles had turned white, was a single, scorched brass cylinder I had snatched from the open cavity of the plinth before the ceiling gave way. It had survived the collapse. It was the original charter of 1888—bearing the true, unadulterated boundary lines of the Mercer valley.
