OpeoluwaTemituro
Wuthering Heights Reimagined: Blackthorn Estate
......The storm bowed before Blackthorn Estate. Lightning split the sky, revealing its jagged silhouette against the city. Elara Vale stepped through the iron gates, and the wind curled around her ankles like a living thing, whispering secrets she had once refused to hear. She has returned.
Seven years ago, she had fled barefoot and bleeding from these walls. Love had clawed at her chest, consuming her, suffocating her, and she had sworn never to return. Not to Lucien. Not to the Estate. Not to the curse braided through the Blackthorn bloodline.
Yet here she was.
The doors opened without touch, and Lucien Blackthorn waited at the top of the grand staircase. He was framed in candlelight and lightning, his eyes storm-dark and unyielding. Recognition, not surprise, glimmered in his gaze.
"Elara," he said.
She whispered, "You summoned me."
"No," he murmured, descending slowly, predator-like. "You were called home. The Estate never forgets who belongs to it."
Her pulse betrayed her. "You've changed."
"Only to match you," he said.
Memories clawed through her mind: the moors behind the Estate where they ran barefoot as children, fingers brushing, laughter turning to whispered confessions. The nights in the hidden library, where his hands had once trembled against hers. The fire they had set together in the courtyard, laughing as the smoke rose toward the storm-heavy sky.
The Estate seemed to remember, shivering with anticipation.
"I warned you," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "This place... it will consume you."
He stepped closer. "Then let it. I have waited for you for years. Every moment you were gone, the Estate and I have only grown hungrier."
Her breath caught. "We can't survive this."
"We won't," he admitted. "But we will burn together."