Chapter 6 - THE GIRL IN THE CHAPEL GLASS
Blackwood’s private chapel stood beyond the east wing, attached to the mansion by a covered stone passage no one used anymore.
It was smaller than Mara expected.
Dark wood pews. A cold altar. Colored glass throwing weak morning light across the floor. The kind of place where wealthy families once asked heaven to forgive things they never intended to stop doing.
Lucien unlocked it with an old brass key.
“Celeste came here after Adrian died,” he said. “Sometimes I’d find her kneeling, not praying, just… thinking.”
Mara walked slowly toward the front.
Above the altar hung a smaller mirror, oval-shaped, black-framed like the one in the west gallery.
The moment she looked at it, the air in the chapel seemed to shift.
Her skin broke out in chills.
Then the world slid sideways.
She was no longer standing in the chapel as Mara.
She was Celeste.
Hands shaking.
Rain still in her hair from that first secret meeting.
A candle burning too low.
Her own voice whispering into the dark:
“If the stories are true, I don’t want to be saved. I want the truth to survive.”
Another memory followed.
Celeste placing one hand over the mirror while Mara—her real self—stood opposite her in confusion.
“You actually believe this?” Mara had asked.
Celeste answered, “I believe desperate women in this family learned how not to die unheard.”
Then another fragment.
The crash.
The car spinning.
Blood.
Glass.
Mara half conscious beside her.
Celeste grasping Mara’s wrist and pressing the Blackwood ring into her palm.
“Remember for me,” Celeste whispered.
Then darkness.
Mara came back to herself with a cry.
Lucien was beside her.
“What did you see?”
She clutched the edge of a pew, breathing hard.
“She brought me here before the crash,” Mara said. “She knew the mirror might do this. She thought if one of us died before the truth came out, the other might carry it.”
Lucien’s face tightened with grief so pure it looked older than him.
“She planned her own death?”
“No. She planned for betrayal.”
The distinction mattered.
Mara stepped toward the altar.
Below the mirror was a shallow drawer hidden inside the wood.
Inside lay a sealed audio recorder.
Lucien pressed play.
Celeste’s voice filled the chapel at once, stronger than the first message, though still trembling.
“Lucien, if you are hearing this, then I was right to fear Edwin more than I feared losing you.”
Lucien closed his eyes.
Celeste continued.
“I know you think I stopped trusting you. That isn’t true. I stopped telling you things because I was afraid your love would make you reckless.”
Mara looked at him.
His jaw tightened.
The recording went on.
“Edwin found out Adrian discovered the shell transfers. I do not know exactly what happened on the water that night, but I know Edwin threatened him the day before. I heard enough to be sure.”
Lucien’s hands curled into fists.
“And if Mara hears this from the wrong side of life,” Celeste said softly, “then I am sorry for the cruelty of that. I asked for help and dragged you into my family’s curse.”
Mara’s eyes filled.
Celeste’s voice dropped lower.
“The western trust clause is in Helena’s original deed. If fraud against the charitable estates is proved, control of every contested holding passes immediately out of Arden hands and into independent administration. Edwin would lose everything. That is why he came after the ledgers.”
Lucien looked up sharply.
“That’s the destroy him clause.”
Mara nodded.
The recording crackled once more.
“Lucien… if I die, do not let grief turn you into another man who confuses love with possession. If Mara survives in any form, help her leave this house when it’s over. She did not choose my name. Do not make her wear it longer than she must.”
The words seemed to strike him physically.
Then came the final sentence.
“And if I am still anywhere near the glass, I will let go when the truth is spoken.”
The recorder clicked off.
For a long moment, neither Mara nor Lucien spoke.
Finally Lucien said, “She knew.”
“She knew enough.”
“No.” His voice was rough now. “She knew exactly how I would fail if I lost her.”
Mara looked at the dark oval mirror.
“She loved you.”
He laughed bitterly.
“She also prepared instructions for what to do with the woman trapped in her body after her murder. That’s not exactly a normal marriage.”
Mara almost smiled through tears.
“No,” she said. “It really isn’t.”
Then footsteps pounded in the outer corridor.
They were not subtle.
Not staff.
Lucien turned instantly.
Two of his security men appeared in the doorway, breathless.
“Mr. Graves,” one said, “Edwin just left the estate. We think he’s going to the trust board.”
Lucien’s head snapped up.
“What?”
“The emergency session was moved to noon. Someone sent notice in Mrs. Graves’s name.”
Mara felt the floor drop beneath her.
Edwin was moving now, before they could.
If he reached the board first, he could claim Celeste was unstable, present forged authorizations, and use confusion to seize control.
Lucien grabbed the chapel recorder, the ledgers, and the flash drive in one motion.
“He’s trying to outrun the evidence.”
Mara straightened.
“Then we stop him.”
Lucien looked at her.
At Celeste’s face carrying Mara’s fire.
At the impossible woman who had become his only real ally in the ruins of his marriage.
Then he nodded once.
“Get your coat.”
As they rushed from the chapel, Mara looked back one last time.
In the black oval mirror, the reflection behind her own did not quite move the same way.
Celeste stood there for one flickering second, pale and calm.
Not trapped.
Waiting.
Waiting for the truth to be spoken aloud in front of the men who had spent years burying it.
And Mara understood then that this was no longer only about surviving inside another woman’s body.
It was about finishing the sentence Celeste had died trying to say.
And if they failed before noon, Edwin Arden would not just steal money.
May you like
He would bury both women again.
This time permanently.
