The tenement crouched under Wolthrope’s night, its walls sighing with damp as Eleanor sat by the hearth, its embers a faint pulse in the gloom. Thornfield’s dust clung to her lungs, her cough a low rasp she stifled with a rag, lest it wake Eldric. She lit a taper, its flame trembling on the scarred table, and turned to Margaret, slumped on her pallet. “Hush, my babe,” she sang, the lullaby a whisper from her own childhood, and Margaret’s lips moved, a faint hum threading through her fog—“The wind doth sigh.” For an instant, Eleanor glimpsed her mother’s old warmth, a cruel flicker soon snuffed.

  Eldric stirred, his bent legs tangled in a patched quilt, and crawled to her. She lifted him, his weight a feather against her chest, and he nestled close, his wooden bird pressed to her lap. “I love you,” he murmured, voice soft as ash, and her throat burned—his trust a weight she feared she’d fail. She rocked him, the fire’s crackle a fragile hymn, and saw James in his sallow face—his eyes, his hope—now fading under her care. The mill’s toll gnawed her bones, sixpence a thin shield against their want.

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  Henry wheezed from his corner, his hands limp, his stare fixed on shadows. She reached for him, brushing his cold fingers, but no spark answered—his voice, once gruff with tales, silenced by time’s relentless tide. Margaret’s hum faltered, her breath a shallow ebb, and Eleanor’s chest tightened. This quiet night, stitched with their frail sounds, was a tapestry unraveling—her family, her heart, slipping through her grasp like sand.

  She clasped Eldric tighter, his warmth a fleeting bulwark, and stared into the dark beyond the cracked pane. Wolthrope’s mills thrummed, a distant growl, and she felt their hunger mirror her own—a beast poised to devour. The candle guttered, wax pooling like tears, and she whispered a vow to the silence: to hold them close, though she knew the dawn would bring no reprieve.