all shall love me and despair

The halls of Edelweiss Estate are silent. Eva has dismissed every one of her employees already, given them all hearty severances and as best as she could, arranged for their employment at other establishments across England, across Europe. Her act of passion and destruction should not be at their expense. Call her cruel, call her wicked, call her many things, but she is not illogical. No one should suffer besides this house in which she poured her memories and the lifetimes she cannot get back.

It is quiet.

The lights are dimmed, mostly for effect than anything else, mostly because there is something poetic about a doomed manor steeped in moonlight, and Eva decides that it is time now, but first she must visit each of her favourite places for the final time.

The kitchen

Ah, perhaps the room Eva has used the least, beyond telling her staff what to make for events or helping to taste the wines – but it is the room she encountered Snow for the first time this stint in Swynlake. It plays like an intro, the first stirring notes of the violin in “Scheherazade.” She lingers in the doorway. The lights are off here and the way the shadows cast upon the stark white marble conjure the image of Snow’s svelte figure draped across the counter.

Something catches in her throat. She turns to leave.

The upstairs library

The settee that Snow used to dramatically fold herself upon has been mostly untouched since her death. Mostly, because the day after, Eva sat silently on it and slowly leaned into the plush velvet, pressing her face into it as close as she could, inhaling the last bits of Snow’s scent.

The greenhouse

She will probably miss this one this most. She has cultivated the plants, tended to them herself. While she has many landscapers for the grounds, she personally took the time to care for her greenhouse plants. She strokes the leaf of a peace lily, the only goodbye to the greenhouse she makes. She wonders if the plants know.

The music room

A grand piano rests in the center. A gift to Snow some birthdays ago. It has gathered dust since her death. Eva glides over. She plays one note. Two notes. Somewhere in the distance, she can hear Snow sing.

Snow’s bedroom

Gowns are still strewn over the floor, as if Snow has just stepped out. The curtains on the canopy bed are half open. A memory preserved in time.

The ballroom

Eva recalls the grand parties – not just the ones in the summers of the 2010s, but the ones before, in decades prior, in centuries prior. She remembers the first ball they ever threw here – Snow’s debut into society – and when all the guests had left, they danced a waltz together and Eva held Snow in her arms. The moonlight spilled in through the windows and though no music played, the two women danced to their own melody.

They fought here too, Eva remembers. They snarled, they scratched. But for as bitterly as they fought, they loved with more passion.

The rose garden

Snow’s grave is amongst the roses. Eva does not bother to kneel, but she does look fondly upon it. She reaches a hand to touch the curve of the headstone. She made sure to specify that this spell would not harm the grave. In the paperwork she left to the town, leaving the property to Swynlake, she maintained that it should be cared for – the grass around it trimmed so it would not run over with weeds, the stone kept up. If Eva visited, perhaps some decades down the line, she would seek the grave out first.

The moon is high in the sky now. In sixteen days, it will be two years.  

It is here it must happen. It is now. Any longer and she would doubt herself. And Eva does not like to doubt herself.

She reaches for the little bottle the witch entrusted to her and hesitates, not because she is wavering about her decision in this moment, but because she wants to take this final moment to mourn.

The moonlight – the roses – the grave –  

With a single finger, she unstops the bottle.

What comes out of it, she cannot especially see, but it rushes out all at once, a sort of haze, and the moment it touches something that something bursts into flame. The roses catch quickly, their blooms going out like mini supernovas.

The fire sweeps into the ballroom, the floor to ceiling glass bursting and shattering.

The drapes of Snow’s canopy bed, the gowns upon the floor, they all go up in a brilliant blaze of scarlet fury, as burning and heated as the nights of passions.

The flames catch on the pages and pages of sheet music, onto the grand piano. They burn and crackle, drowning out all the other sounds.

Eva’s plants cannot scream as they burn. They are plants, they do not think, but perhaps if they were capable of some sentient thought they would ask her why. Perhaps they know.

The books in the library catch fire swiftly. The settee less so, but when the flames finally lick upon it, it happens all at once.

The flames burst through the kitchen, eviscerating all that was once there. No countertops, not slinking figures in the shadow, no memories of a reunion on a dark night. Fire, flame, ash  –

As the fire rages on, Eva gives the flames – Edelweiss, her life in Swynlake – one last lingering look. And then she walks away.