Daniel Finds Bea in the Aldaya Mansion

Daniel Finds Bea in the Aldaya Mansion is a reunion staged inside a place haunted by the past. Daniel crosses the frozen, ruined garden to reach Bea, whom Julian has secretly sheltered in Penelope’s former room. Her account turns the rescue into a threshold: Daniel has found Bea, but he has also been led toward Julian and the approaching confrontation with Fumero.

The Mansion as a Threshold

The Aldaya mansion appears to Daniel like the prow of a dark ship as the tram carries him toward it. After getting off, he hurries along the garden wall to find the gap where it has collapsed. He hears footsteps on the opposite pavement, waits motionless on top of the wall until they fade, then drops into the grounds. The approach is not simply a route to Bea: each pause makes the abandoned estate feel watched, and each step carries Daniel farther from the ordinary city outside.

Winter has transformed the garden into a hard, strange landscape. Frozen weeds stand like crystal stems; ice covers the statues of fallen angels; and the fountain’s black surface reflects the darkness, broken by the stone claw of a submerged angel. Ice hangs from its finger, which points toward the main door, left ajar. The image draws the eye toward the house as if the ruin itself were directing Daniel inside. The mansion’s decay is not a backdrop to the reunion but a physical expression of the history that Daniel and Bea are about to encounter.

Following Bea’s Trail

Inside, Daniel finds a procession of candles leading into the mansion. They belong to Bea and have nearly burned down to the floor. He follows them through the entrance hall to the grand staircase, then up to the first-floor landing, where more candles mark the corridor and a third flickers outside Penelope’s former room. The dwindling light gives Daniel a literal trail to follow, while its placement ties Bea’s hiding place to the story of Penelope and the house’s buried past.

At the door, Daniel knocks gently. A shaky voice answers with Julian’s name. He opens the door and sees Bea in a corner, wrapped in a blanket. He runs to her and holds her as she breaks into tears. Her fear and relief arrive through this physical reunion before either has to explain the journey that brought them there. When Bea says she did not know where else to go, that she called Daniel’s home several times without an answer, and that she was frightened, he nods rather than replying in words. His response confirms their understanding without interrupting the urgency of her confession.

Julian’s Protection and the Past

Bea had called Daniel Julian because Julian is in the mansion. She tells Daniel that Julian comes and goes, and that he found her when she was trying to enter the house. Without needing her to explain who she was or what had happened, he understood her situation and arranged shelter for her in this room. He brought her a blanket, water, and food, then told her to wait. His care is practical and quiet: the dwindling candles, the blanket, and the supplies are the signs of a person who has made a refuge inside a ruined house.

Julian also told Bea that Daniel would come and that things would turn out all right. During the nights they spent talking, he spoke to her about Penelope and Nuria, but most of all about Daniel and Bea. He asked Bea to teach Daniel to forget him. That request gives the shelter a purpose beyond keeping Bea safe: Julian has made her a link between the two men, while also trying to prepare Daniel to let him go. Bea’s account makes Julian present in the scene before Daniel sees him, through his provisions, his predictions, and his instruction.

The Waiting Below

Daniel asks where Julian is. Bea says he is downstairs in the library, waiting for someone, and that he told her not to leave the room. Asked who the visitor is, she can only say that Julian expects someone who will come with Daniel—someone Daniel will bring. The reunion therefore ends not with the danger resolved but with a new uncertainty. Julian’s expectation places Daniel at the center of an encounter whose terms Bea does not know.

Before Daniel can act on that information, footsteps sound below, near the staircase. He recognizes the spidery shadow on the walls, the black raincoat, the hat pulled low like a hood, and the gun gleaming in the man’s hand: Fumero has arrived. The familiar figure completes the shift from refuge to imminent danger. Daniel has reached Bea and found her under Julian’s protection, but the route through the candlelit house has brought him to the threshold of a confrontation rather than to safety. The scene binds rescue, inherited memory, and immediate threat within the same mansion: Penelope’s old room shelters Bea, Julian waits below, and Fumero’s arrival turns the house into the meeting place for the past and its pursuers.