Chapter 13
I remained in my chamber for as long as was still considered polite, picking half-heartedly at my breakfast and indulging in several cups of Mrs. Ashby’s calming tea.
The warm blend softened the edges of my nerves, but never quite smoothed them; something in me stayed taut, stretched thin like wire beneath my skin.
A sharp, efficient knock shattered the fragile quiet.
Mrs. Ashby stood in the threshold, her posture as straight and severe as ever. “Lady Havenshire requests your presence in the drawing room, Your Grace,” she said with the faintest nod, as though the word requests were not a suggestion at all, but a command.
My stomach twisted. “Of course. I’ll come at once.”
The drawing room smelled of bergamot, and an old, aristocratic sort of disdain that wafted from the Dowager.
Sunlight, pale and wintry, fell through the lace curtains, gilding the edges of porcelain cups and gleaming silver spoons.
The Dowager Duchess sat like a queen enthroned, her posture immaculate, her gown a confection of midnight silk trimmed with pearls now.
A single diamond pin glittered at her throat like frost.
“Ah, the bride,” she crooned as I crossed the threshold, her tone sweetened only enough to make the bitterness more apparent. “Do come in, Lady Blackthorn.”
Her smile was narrow and practiced. I curtsied, careful not to look too long at the disapproval lurking just beneath her painted civility.
I smiled, fighting the urge to throw the horrible woman out. “Your Grace,” I murmured, straightening.
She gestured with a graceful flick of her wrist to the seat opposite her. “Sit, child. I thought it was time we had a proper conversation, woman to woman.”
I obeyed, smoothing my skirts as Mrs. Ashby poured the tea in tense silence.
The Dowager lifted her cup delicately, taking a long, thoughtful sip before setting it down. “You must forgive me for not attending the ceremony,” she stated flatly. “I was… indisposed. The news of your union was quite a shock.”
I smiled faintly, unsure if I should apologize for my own wedding. “Yes, it all happened rather quickly.”
“So I gathered.” Her lips twitched, not quite a smile. “One does not often see a Duke wed by special license with such haste. London is quite abuzz with curiosity.”
I felt the heat rise in my cheeks but kept my tone even, unwilling to play her game. “I imagine so.”
My gaze drifted to the hearth.
The fire seemed to behave strangely. Flames rose too high, licking hungrily at the grate, their shadows twisting up the walls in contorted shapes.
Heat pressed against my skin, thick and suffocating.
The lace curtains stirred without a breeze.
The wallpaper seemed to pulse faintly, as though something beneath it strained for release.
I tugged at my collar, breath catching.
Across from me, the Dowager leaned forward slightly, observing me like a cat watching a mouse make an ill-advised move.
“My nephew has always been impulsive,” she criticized, her voice low and smooth, “but this—even for him—was uncharacteristically reckless. I do hope you understand the burden such a marriage places upon our family name.”
My teacup trembled faintly in my grasp as my pulse faltered, then stumbled back into rhythm.
“I do, Your Grace,” I managed, my tongue twisting around my words awkwardly. “I assure you I will do my best to uphold the family’s honor.”
Her gaze crawled over me like a slow touch. From my dark hair, still damp from the bath, to the modest dress I had carefully chosen, to the scar across my cheek.
Her nose twitched in faint distaste.
“Yes,” she murmured, her tone cool as glass. “I imagine you will try.”
I glanced down into my tea.
The liquid inside was no longer still.
It quivered.
At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, perhaps a ripple from my shaking hand. But, the surface warped again, a slow bulge forming beneath the amber liquid, like something… rising.
I blinked. Then again.
But the change didn’t vanish.
The color deepened, roiling inward until it darkened to a molasses black. Then thicker. Denser. The smell changed, no longer lavender and bergamot, but something rotting beneath sugar, like spoiled fruit left too long in the sun.
Movement caught my gaze.
Tiny black shapes squirmed to the surface.
One, then two.
Fly legs.
They wriggled free, their slick bodies struggling through the darkened tea, wings clinging to their sides under the sticky sheen.
My lungs cinched.
It’s not real. It’s not real.
But my hand was still shaking, and the flies were still climbing—dozens now, dragging themselves from the cup like a sacrament of madness, scrambling up my arm. Their wings fluttered weakly, the tea clinging to them like sap.
My body wouldn’t obey me. I sat stiffly, frozen in horror, acutely aware that the Dowager was still speaking. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance, muffled and off cadence. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look away from the cup.
Slowly, I lowered it, forcing my hand to place it back on the table with trembling care.
A sharp voice snapped through the haze.
“Are you listening to me, girl?”
I jolted.
The teacup slipped from my fingers, the porcelain clinking loudly against the saucer. I flinched, snatching it back into my lap. I blinked rapidly as I turned toward her with what I hoped was a look of comprehension.
But when my gaze met the Dowager’s, something inside me cracked.
Isolde smiled.
Her teeth were too uniform. Her skin was too polished—an eerie, porcelain gleam. And then, before I could blink, her features began to… loosen.
It was subtle at first, like wax softening under flame. Her jaw shifted. Then her cheekbones warped beneath her skin, the diamond brooch at her throat bleeding silver down her neck in a viscous rivulet.
Her smile widened. Too far.
The corners of her mouth tore open with a sound I swore I felt rather than heard. Her painted lips peeled back like wet paper. Fine cracks spidered across her powdered face, the flakes falling like delicate charred petals upon the carpet.
My breath collapsed. My body forgot the rhythm of living.
“It’s in your blood now,” she snarled, but her lips didn’t move. The words echoed inside me, sliding along the inside of my skull like something alive.
My teacup slipped from numb fingers. It shattered against the floor in a burst of white porcelain and amber droplets that reminded me too much of old blood.
“Stop,” I gritted out, though I wasn’t sure if the word escaped or lived only inside me.
My body was a tomb. My limbs were heavy stones. I sat petrified, the only motion was the tremble that now shook my entire frame.
Her eyes hollowed.
Her smile split further, revealing a darkness where a throat should have been.
The lace collar at her neck liquified into her skin. Dozens of tiny black legs spilled out from beneath it—spiders, impossibly fast, spiraling over her shoulders and vanishing beneath her gown like rats returning to the walls.
When she reached toward me with a hand that wasn’t a hand anymore, something in me shattered.
A scream tore free from my throat, wild and ragged. I surged backward, scrambling over the settee like an animal cornered. My skirts tangled. I tripped, crashing into a side table, sending porcelain flying. The world pulsed, light and dark, then light again.
In that final moment of madness, her face shifted once more.
Not Isolde.
Not entirely.
A bloated, pale, lifeless visage slid beneath the Dowager’s dissolving features like a second skin.
Elizabeth?
I shrieked, clutching at my skull as if I could claw the vision out before it fused into memory. Glass tinkled. The fire hissed. Somewhere above, Poe screamed in a fury not meant for mortal throats.
Voices cut through the madness.
Mrs. Ashby’s heels struck the floor sharply as she rushed toward me, skirts swishing with haste. “Your Grace!”
Isolde had already risen, stiff and imperious, eyes wide with a mixture of shock and contempt. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, stepping back from the chaos as if she feared that whatever plagued me could be contagious.
I cowarded in the center of the wreckage. My breath came in short, fractured gasps. Hair wild, my hand outstretched as if warding off phantoms, I curled my knees to my chest and tried to will my mind back into my body.
But something inside me had splintered beyond repair.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. Ashby repeated, ignoring the shaking of my hand as she knelt beside me. Her voice lowered, gentle and firm as she cupped my chin. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t bear to look. I was too afraid the horrors would still be there, lurking in the corners of the room, crawling in the corners of her face.
“The bugs,” I cried, barely able to speak around the rawness in my throat. “Her face…”
Her fingers, though cool, were steady as she lifted my chin. “Look at me, Your Grace,” she urged softly. “There are no bugs. No… faces.”
Something in her voice, steady and grounding, cut through the madness enough to make me trust her. I opened my eyes slowly.
Mrs. Ashby’s face hovered before mine, her brows drawn in concern, her eyes filled with something I could almost call kindness.
The room was still once more. The fire crackled in its ordinary cadence. Shadows rested instead of writhing. The heavy, pulsing pressure that had surrounded me was gone.
And Isolde, when I dared to look at her, was only Isolde once more.
She stared down at me with an icy, aristocratic glare. Not with the face of some hideous creature or the mask of a dead woman, but with that of a woman who saw madness before her and was thoroughly… utterly disgusted.
I opened my mouth, shame rising fast in my throat. I had made a spectacle of myself. A hysterical bride with madness in her blood. But, before I could say anything, a thunderous flurry of wings tore through the room.
Poe.
“Merciful heavens!” the Dowager shrieked as a black shape hurtled past her head.
The raven swooped once, twice, then dove for the Dowager’s powdered coiffure with all the fury of an avenging spirit.
“Wretch! Thing of evil!” he screeched, talons tangling in her silver curls as she batted helplessly at the air. “Nevermore! Nevermore!”
Isolde flailed as she spun clumsily in place. “Get it off! Mrs. Ashby! Do something!”
Mrs. Ashby ducked her head protectively over me as Poe continued his righteous assault, feathers and hair, and indignation flying in every direction.
The door burst open.
“Lucy!”
Sylum.
He strode into the chaos like a storm, coat unbuttoned, eyes wild as they took in the wreckage. His gaze landed on the Dowager still fending off Poe, then locked onto me, crumpled on the floor, trembling in Mrs. Ashby’s arms.
“Get him off me!” Isolde shrieked, her composure unraveling in curls of disheveled hair and smudged rouge.
“Call him off,” Mrs. Ashby hissed through her teeth.
“Poe! Enough!” His voice was surprisingly calm.
With a disdainful croak, the raven abandoned the Dowager and fluttered to the mantle, feathers puffed in victory.
Sylum crossed the room in quick strides. He knelt beside me, his voice strained with concern, one hand brushing back the tangled curls from my damp forehead.
“Lucy… what happened?”
“I—” My voice broke. “I thought I saw…”
I trailed off, unable to say it aloud. The flies. Isolde’s face. The spiders. Elizabeth.
How could I tell him the truth? I met his eyes, searching mine with that all too familiar look of concern and pity.
What would he do if I told him? Would he think I was losing my sanity just as my mother had? Would he send me away too?
Mrs. Ashby cleared her throat. “She had a… moment. She’ll recover.”
“A moment? Your wife is completely mad just like her mother!” Isolde snapped, straightening her crushed gown. “I told you not to marry her!”
But Sylum didn’t even look at her.
His eyes remained on me. His voice, low and steady, cut through the lingering fear. “Lucy, are you alright?”
I blinked up at him, trembling. “Yes… I think so.”
“Sylum!” Isolde shrieked, stomping her slippered foot. “Do something this instant!”
His jaw tensed.
“I intend to,” he retorted sharply, rising to his feet as he glared at her.
“Pardon?” the Dowager huffed.
“She’s unwell. She needs rest. We’re leaving. Now.”
Isolde sputtered, but Sylum didn’t wait for a reply. He scooped me up with effortless strength, one arm beneath my knees, the other around my back.
“I can walk,” I murmured, humiliated.
“I know,” he offered softly. “But I wish to carry you.”
Poe trailed behind like a shadow, his head tilted, his beady eyes watching everything.
Behind us, the Dowager’s voice rose again in shrill protest, but the door shut before I could hear it.
The corridor outside was cool and dim, a balm against the fever that still clung to my skin. I curled closer to Sylum, my pulse slowing at last, and let myself believe, if only for a moment, that I was safe.