Dear Sir,
This is to inform you that your letter, received in Atlanta and addressed to a Miss Katherine Pierce, is being returned as undeliverable. The address listed was destroyed under Sherman’s siege, with no survivors.
It was signed by someone I could only assume was a long-dead postal clerk.
“Do you think she was trying to escape him?” I asked.
“She must have been,” Damon said, his mouth set in a tight line.
I nodded. In truth, who knew what Katherine and Samuel’s relationship had been? They were the only two who knew for sure, and Katherine was dead—and Samuel would be, imminently. But from the way Damon’s shoulders relaxed, I knew he needed to believe that what Samuel and Katherine had wasn’t a true love.
I pulled more papers from the drawer. While Damon was focused on our upcoming battle, I was intent on finding out more about Samuel. I knew it didn’t matter; he’d be dead in hours.
And then I saw it.
The paper was yellow and crumbling, but five words at the bottom said everything we needed to know.
With eternal love,
Your Katherine.
My eyes followed Damon as he double-checked our traps. He couldn’t know. I had saved my brother’s life several times since we reunited in London, but what I did next was perhaps the most I’d ever done to protect him. I took the paper and ripped it into dozens of pieces, letting them fall to the stone floor like snow.
Damon would spend eternity thinking Katherine had loved him. He couldn’t survive otherwise.
Several hours later, as Damon and I crouched in Samuel’s office, I was still thinking about Katherine. There hadn’t been any more letters from Katherine hidden in the desk, and I wondered if Samuel had deliberately destroyed or hidden Katherine’s other letters. I wondered when Katherine and Samuel had met, and how many decades they’d spent discovering every secret of their bodies and brains. I’d only known Katherine for several weeks, and her image was branded indelibly in my mind. What could it possibly have been like to know her for generations?
Just then, I heard a loud bang, different than the sounds we’d been listening to all day, of girls hurrying to and from the laundry room, of nuns clicking their rosary beads as they walked by, of the building settling into itself. This sounded like a clap of thunder.
“I’m going to investigate,” I said, stepping delicately over our cobweb of traps. Maybe it was time for us to move into our hiding spot—the tiny coat closet in the corner of the room—and wait for Samuel to enter.
I cracked open the door, peering into the hallway. It was empty. The nuns and the girls must have been well trained not to go near Samuel’s office. Except for the odd interaction we’d had with the handyman in the morning, we’d barely heard footsteps. I stepped out, but saw nothing that could’ve produced the noise. I was about to turn back, when I thought I saw movement in one of the other rooms.
“Damon!” I hissed, before creeping to the window and peering in. I blinked in surprise. There was Cora, alone and unprotected. She was sitting in the corner with her knees hugged to her chest. “Damon, it’s Cora!”
I pushed the door with all my might and heard the lock break, but the door itself barely cracked open.
Cora looked up in fear when she heard the commotion.
“It’s me, Stefan,” I whispered through the slim opening. Relief was evident on her face, and then I heard the clanking of chains. Cora was shackled to the wall, and it was impossible for her to stand completely upright. “I’m coming!” I hurled my weight against the door again.
“Violet brought me here,” Cora said miserably. “She brought me around the back, where a man took me and chained me up.”
“Stay there!” I instructed. “Damon, help get the door open. It’s just jammed,” I lied to Cora. I could sense something was holding the door shut. It wasn’t a lock—my vampire strength could pull through that. It was something stronger, more sinister. My stomach knotted as Damon joined me and we both shoved against the door with our hands. Still, it wouldn’t budge wider than a half inch.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Damon. No simple door should be a match for the two of us, even with my diet of animal blood.
Damon shook his head and picked up his crossbow. “I don’t know. We’ll help her later. He’ll be back soon.”
“Stefan, go. Help your brother,” Cora said, sliding back to the filthy floor in a heap. “He’s right. It won’t do any good if Samuel sees anything amiss. I’ll be fine.”
I gave Cora an encouraging smile before Damon and I retreated back into Samuel’s office. We jammed our bodies into the coat closet, not daring to speak. Damon had the crossbow at the ready. We weren’t particularly well hidden, and I knew we only had seconds to react when Samuel finally entered. The waiting was agony—and I could only imagine how hard it was for Cora. Who knew what torture she’d endured?
Suddenly, I heard someone whistling discordantly in the hallway. Damon glanced at me and nodded. Samuel was here.
The door clicked open. I braced myself, listening for the twang of the wire as it was tripped, but nothing happened. Instead, Samuel stood absolutely still in the doorway, sniffing the air.
Quick as a flash, he reached into his boot to pull out a stake. Damon used that moment to burst from our hiding spot and release a vervain-soaked bolt from the crossbow. It landed in Samuel’s gut, and he fell to the ground in a heap.
I leaped to my feet and raced toward Samuel, careful to avoid the trip wire. He lay on the ground, the crossbow bolt deep in his stomach, his face a mask of rage as he reached to pull it out. Damon appeared by my side, standing over Samuel with a candle in his hand.