His keen nose led us to an arched doorway with ornaments cast from clay. “She’s down there.”

“You’re sure?” The nervous, hopeful question popped out. “I— Sorry. I trust you. I just…”

The silence weighed on us. I wasn’t sure what we’d find down there, but I sensed it would be nothing good.

Another comforting squeeze of his hand. “I know.”

Together we walked the gently sloped path until it opened wide into a cavern that appeared to once serve as a sitting room. Couches and tables were organized in the same way you’d expect to find them in a house but…off…just a bit. The deeper we went into the room, the more odds and ends I spotted.

“This is all debris from the pond.” Graeson voiced what had been itching the back of my mind.

“She used everything.” Old Christmas ornaments hung from the ceiling on fishing line. Tires stacked two high made the tables I’d noticed. One wall’s archway was framed by license plates. “This is amazing.”

To think the sprite had lost all this—a home she had poured so much of her heart into creating.

We kept exploring, and I almost wished we hadn’t. I was the one who found it, a time capsule sure to cast more fractures in Graeson’s already shattered soul. I waffled on the threshold. In the end, I didn’t have to speak a word. Drawn by my presence or by some faint scent, he arrived a heartbeat behind me.

The cramped room had been emptied of its furnishings. All that remained were a pair of couch cushions shoved together like a mattress with a thin sheet crumpled at one end and a bowl that might have once held water or food.

The wooden stiffness from my arm seemed to have infected Graeson’s legs. He crossed the room, gait uneven, and squatted by the messy pallet. His hand hovered over the sheet for a full minute, maybe longer, before he fisted it and brought the fabric to his nose. His back muscles shifted as his lungs expanded. The wobble of his exhale, as though it snagged in his throat, fractured my heart.

Slowly, I crossed to him and rested my hand on his shoulder.

“He kept her here.” His knuckles whitened on the pitiful sheet that had been Marie’s only source of comfort in this cold place. “All that time she was right here.” He punched the floor, and the scent of copper hit the air as his knuckles burst. “Right here.”

“You couldn’t have known.” I toyed with the ends of his hair. “There’s no way you could have guessed what we’re dealing with now, then.”