Chapter 6
I could not sleep.
The only light in my bedchamber came from the moon, thin and wan, spilling through the parted drapes like a ghostly hand reaching across the floor.
I lay beneath the coverlet, still as death, though my mind refused to rest. My thoughts bloomed like ivy, creeping into every dark corner, tightening their coils until I could scarcely breathe.
After I’d retreated to my room, Nelly brought up tea before brushing out my hair and helping me into my nightgown. The steam had smelled faintly of lavender and chamomile.
Whatever I had seen in the dining room window was perhaps further proof that something inside me was breaking just as it had in my mother.
Perhaps, I thought miserably, this was how my mother’s madness began. A trick of the eye, a breath in the dark… a single moment when the border between sanity and nightmare thinned until one could no longer decipher reality from fantasy.
I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t stressed. I was newly married, finally safe, and yet my mind, faithless thing that it was, would not leave me in peace.
Sylum hadn’t come to my chamber. Perhaps he believed my story about the wine and assumed I’d fallen asleep. I wished he had come. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have felt quite so restless. Quite so afraid and alone in the strange place that was now my home.
I needed air. Or movement. Or something.
Slipping from the bed, I padded barefoot across the cold floor and pulled open the door. The corridor beyond was drenched in moonlight, long ribbons of silver crawling across the floor.
I moved quietly, my nightgown trailing along the floorboards as I walked. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I had to keep moving, as though I could outpace the thoughts that chased me.
The halls twisted endlessly. At times, I could almost feel the house bending around me, turning me back upon myself like a maze built by unseen hands.
Eventually, I found myself in a corridor I didn’t recognize. The ceilings here were lower, the air colder, the walls rougher—older than the rest of the manor, untouched by polish or paint. Forgotten.
Nothing about Blackthorn was unkempt. It was obvious that Mrs. Ashby saw to that with almost religious devotion. And yet… something beneath all her care felt deeply wrong, as though the house itself were simply too determinedly dark.
The story of Sylum’s late betrothed gnawed at me as I wandered. Had she walked these halls too? Had Elizabeth felt this same suffocating stillness pressing against her ribs?
A creak behind me froze my steps.
I turned slowly, pulse quickening. The corridor stretched long and empty, the moonlight fractured into uneven shards. Nothing moved.
My lips parted in a shaky laugh. “You’re being foolish,” I told myself. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Still, I moved faster.
Another sound came closer this time. A slow, deliberate creak. Like a footstep. Like someone matching my pace just behind me.
I spun again. “Hello?”
Only silence answered, thick and smothering.
My pulse thundered in my ears as I pressed on, turning corner after corner until the manor seemed to close in around me. Then, from far down the hall, I saw it. A faint golden light spilling from a door left slightly ajar.
I hesitated. Then curiosity, ever my ruin, won out over intelligence.
I crept forward, bare feet silent as I stepped lightly, and pressed myself into the shadow of a doorway near the end. Voices drifted through the crack, low and urgent.
“You’re sure this will work?” a woman asked, her voice sharp with unease.
“You worry too much,” came a man’s reply.
My heart seized.
Sylum.
I inched closer, straining to catch more.
“You don’t worry enough,” the woman hissed. “Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea—”
“Do as I’ve said,” Sylum interrupted, his tone clipped. “You know what’s at stake.”
The voices lowered further. I caught fragments, muffled through the stone.
“…Sleep…”
“…The plan…”
“…What if she finds out…”
A chill swept down my spine. She? Who were they speaking of?
Me?
I pressed closer, holding my breath, but the floor betrayed me. A soft creak beneath my heel, sharp as thunder in the silence.
The voices quieted instantly.
Footsteps, slow and heavy, moved toward the door.
My heart lurched. I pressed myself into the shadow of a nearby alcove, praying the darkness would swallow me whole.
“It was probably just the wind,” the woman said at last, her voice so near I could hear the fabric of her dress rustle.
A pause. Then the footsteps turned and receded.
I didn’t move until the light beneath the door guttered out entirely.
Then I ran.
I ran through halls I didn’t know, down staircases that seemed to lean beneath my feet. I must have taken a wrong passage. Then another. Panic prickled beneath my skin.
When I finally rounded another corner, a sudden shape loomed out of the darkness.
“Your Grace?”
I gasped, stumbling backward as Mrs. Ashby materialized from the shadows, a solitary candle held aloft. Its flame carved hollows across her face, sharpening her cheekbones, deepening the furrow of her brow, and making her eyes appear like pits of cold iron.
“Mrs. Ashby,” I breathed, pressing a hand to my chest. “You startled me.”
Her gaze slid from my face down to the hem of my nightgown, rumpled and dust-stained. “I might say the same, Your Grace. What compels you to wander the halls at this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I commented lightly, though my voice trembled despite me. “I thought a short walk might clear my mind. I… got turned around.”
Her mouth thinned just slightly, the candlelight catching on the fine lines bracketing it. “Indeed. These halls are very easy to lose oneself in.”
Her tone was courteous. Her eyes were not. They watched me with a hunter’s patience as though marking each of my tremors, each of my breaths.
I swallowed. “I thought I heard His Grace speaking with someone. Down the hall.”
Mrs. Ashby stilled as though I’d struck her. Even the candle flame seemed to freeze.
“His Grace?” she repeated, soft as a blade sliding from its sheath. “You must be mistaken. His Grace retired some time ago. “His valet left him hours before I began my rounds.”
Her gaze lingered on me a heartbeat too long, assessing, dissecting. Then she offered a tight, mechanical smile. “You should return to your chamber, Your Grace. These corridors can be… treacherous in the dark.”
I nodded quickly, her subtle warning slithering down my spine.
“Of course.”
She turned, gesturing for me to follow, and together we walked the silent passageway back toward the west wing. I kept my eyes on the floor, afraid that if I looked up, I might see something I shouldn’t.
When we reached my door, Mrs. Ashby inclined her head. “Rest well, Your Grace.”
But as I slipped inside, I could still feel her eyes upon me through the crack, watching, waiting, as if to ensure I did not wander again.
The house was silent, but I could still hear my pulse beating in my ears like a drum.
Sylum.
What had he been discussing in secret at this hour? And with whom?
And why had Mrs. Ashby lied? I knew his voice… knew it was him…
Wasn’t it?
I climbed into bed, pulling the coverlet up to my chin. My mind circled the fragments of conversation, fitting them together like broken porcelain. None of it made sense, and yet dread gnawed at the edges of my reason.
I must have dozed, though I didn’t remember slipping into sleep. My body lay heavy, cocooned in warmth. The line between dream and waking blurred.
Then came the sound.
Faint at first, like a sigh. Then again. A long, shuddering exhale that grew into a soft, muffled sob.
I sat up, my pulse hammering.
The weeping swelled and receded, as though pacing just beyond the walls. It came from everywhere—below the floorboards, behind the plaster and inside the bones of the manor itself.
Elizabeth?
The thought slid cold and unwelcome into my mind.
Elizabeth, who had fallen from the east balcony. Elizabeth, who had died alone in this house.
I pressed a hand over my heart, straining to listen over the intense pounding in my ears.
The sobbing ebbed and flowed once more, fading to a whisper, then returning louder as if growing closer.
My lips parted, my breath shallowing.
This was an old house, I told myself. Old houses breathe. They shift and settle. They sigh when the wind moves through their stones.
But this sound, this horrible crying, was too human. Too alive.
“It’s nothing,” I assured myself. “It’s just the wind.”
And yet, as I spoke the words, I thought again of Elizabeth.
Was it her, crying through the walls?
No. It couldn’t be.
I pulled the blanket closer, willing the sound to fade. Slowly, it did. The sobs quieted, dissolving into the hush of the manor.
I exhaled. Foolish. I was being foolish.
Until the floorboards creaked.
The noise came from just beside the bed. I turned toward it, slowly, carefully, but there was only darkness. I closed my eyes and counted until sleep came to claim me, thick and heavy.
And just as I slipped beneath it, the sobbing returned and twisted itself into a scream.
The gold canopy dissolved into writhing black vines, and the floor melted away beneath me like sinking mud. I was no longer in my bed at all, but suddenly falling. Falling into a sea of darkness that smelled faintly of roses and blood.