Chapter 22
Sylum made love to me several more times that night before I pretended to fall asleep.
I knew his pattern now as surely as I knew the rhythm of my own pulse. After midnight, he rose, dressed in silence, and left me behind as though he feared what I might ask of him if he lingered too long.
The mattress dipped. Fabric slipped over skin. His breath hitched once, then steadied into that quiet, purposeful exhale he used when slipping into the dark to commit whatever sin required the moon as witness.
I waited until the door clicked shut before opening my eyes.
The house still thrummed faintly with the echoes of the evening—hurried footsteps, lowered voices, and the unnatural hush that only follows tragedy.
Lydia’s body had been taken away hours ago.
The coroner’s men shuffled through Blackthorn Manor with their lanterns and muttered superstitions, their boots leaving damp prints across the marble as they carried her out beneath the shroud.
We had all sat for supper afterward, a solemn, grotesque little tableau. Sylum at the head of the table, pale but composed. Isolde beside him, wearing her mourning expression like a piece of expensive jewelry.
And me, his Duchess, smiling softly. Nodding at the appropriate moments, my eyes lowered demurely whenever either of them looked at me too long.
All I had to do was pretend that my mind wasn’t reeling. All I had to do was behave so Sylum wouldn’t suspect me.
They discussed Lydia’s funeral arrangements over roasted pheasant and candied figs, Isolde sighing about propriety while Sylum insisted on covering the expenses.
His voice, deep and steady, held the faintest tremor of guilt…
or perhaps that was my imagination, sharpening every sound, twisting it into something meaningful and sinister.
Through all of it, I smiled. I agreed. I played the role of the calm, dutiful wife.
But I did not drink.
Not a single drop.
I lifted the wine glass to my lips, tilted it just so—enough to mimic the gesture, enough to ease their eyes away from me—but the liquid never touched my tongue. I could feel it though, could smell it. Floral undertones and something bitter beneath the sweetness.
No doubt Sylum had poisoned it or perhaps Mrs. Ashby had laced it with Laudanum.
Only once Nelly had escorted me upstairs, loosening my gown and brushing out my hair with trembling hands, did I allow myself the smallest breath of honesty.
“Nelly,” I murmured as she smoothed the last curl over my shoulder, “I should like a cup of tea before bed.”
She froze, just for a moment, her eyes lifting to mine with quiet intrigue.
“Whose tea, Your Grace?” she asked.
“I would like you to make it,” I replied softly. “Only you.”
Relief and fear warred in her expression, but she nodded and slipped from the room.
Now, in Sylum’s bed, his scent still clinging to my skin, the sheets still warmed from his body, I lay awake, staring into the canopy’s velvet dark.
The house creaked and the wind whispered around the eaves as I counted to twenty, giving Sylum time to get ahead of me so I wouldn’t be noticed.
I drew the coverlet closer to me, Poe perched on the footboard like a feathered gargoyle watching over the unraveling of my thoughts.
I was not powerless. Not anymore.
If Sylum was poisoning me—if he was unraveling me thread by thread—then I would slip quietly into the underside of his life and discover the hand behind the blade.
And if it was his…
Then at least I would die knowing his secrets, knowing the shape of his betrayal, knowing the face of the man I loved enough to let kill me.
I sat up at once.
Without the poison singing in my blood, my mind was cold and sharp. I slipped from his bed and into the shadows, gathering my night wrapper around me. Poe hopped onto the footboard, feathers fluffed in silent agitation.
“Hush,” I soothed, holding out my hand so he could climb to my shoulder.
“Let my heart be still a moment,” he croaked softly, “this mystery explore.”
“Shh,” I quieted, pressing a finger to my lips. “Yes, we are going to explore this mystery, but you must be quiet.”
The lamps burned low along the corridor, casting warped amber halos along the walls. Sylum’s footsteps echoed distantly ahead of me, steady and purposeful.
I followed him.
My pulse quickened in that terrible, beautiful way one feels when following a lover into the dark… uncertain whether he will lead you to salvation or to the edge of your grave.
I slipped down the servants’ stairwell, breath held still in my chest as the echo of his boots guided me deeper into the shadows.
I was a woman reclaiming her life by stalking her husband through his own mansion. Such a thing should have felt empowering. Instead, it felt like slipping further into a delicious, poisonous madness.
I found him in the morning room, the door cracked just enough for a sliver of lamplight to bleed into the corridor. Voices drifted through the gap.
Sylum’s first—low, tight, and exhausted.
“…I don’t know what happened, aunt. I don’t know.”
Then Isolde.
Her reply was sharp as a needle dipped in honey. “You must stop indulging her. You saw her today… covered in blood, raving in front of the constable. She murdered that poor girl, Sylum.”
My mouth went dry.
Inside, something clattered sharply. Sylum’s hand striking the table, perhaps.
“You don’t know that,” he hissed. “Lydia could have fallen… someone else could have…”
“Oh, do be serious,” Isolde snapped. “The blood was on her and she all but screamed of her guilt earlier. She’s been unstable for weeks, you said so yourself. God above, Sylum, how blind can you be? Even after what happened with your—”
“Do not say it,” Sylum interrupted before she could finish, voice low and deadly.
A hard, terrible silence passed between them.
“I will speak of what must be spoken of,” she said coolly. “You think your wife is merely troubled? This goes beyond nerves or hysteria. She is unraveling, and if you do not act, she will drag the Blackthorn name into ruin.”
My pulse thundered in my ears.
Sylum whispered fiercely, “Lower your voice. Anyone could hear you.”
Like a guilty child caught spying, I flinched, but neither of them opened the door.
Isolde pressed on. “She must be committed, Sylum. Or confined, at the very least. She is dangerous. The constable suspects something already.”
“She is my wife,” Sylum growled. “I will not abandon her.”
“You may not have a choice.”
Their words tangled in the quiet between breaths.
I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from gasping aloud. Poe shifted nervously on my shoulder, claws gripping my gown.
Sylum exhaled shakily. “Just… leave it, Isolde. Please.”
Her tone softened, just barely. “You cannot save her from what she is.”
Footsteps sounded as Isolde approached the door. I pulled back into the darkness just as the lamplight shifted.
The door creaked open. Her silhouette emerged, tall, elegant, and predatory in the low amber glow. Her chin lifted, eyes sweeping the dark hall.
I held my breath, praying to whatever God had not yet abandoned me that she wouldn’t see me.
After a moment, Isolde turned the opposite direction and glided away, her gown trailing over the floors like a snake withdrawing its coils.
Inside, Sylum remained at the hearth for several long moments, his breathing ragged, his hands no doubt clenched in his hair the way he always did when the world became too heavy for him.
He whispered something I could barely make out.
“God help me… I don’t know what to do.”
My chest constricted painfully. My husband, my possible tormentor, my possible salvation, was unraveling too.
But not as beautifully nor as precisely as I was.
Pressed into the alcove’s shadows, I held my breath until my lungs ached. Poe crouched on my shoulder with eerie stillness, his claws digging into my wrapper. Only when Sylum left the room and the sound of his footsteps quieted, did I slip out, silent as breath, following after him.
He moved quickly through the manor, his stride long, purposeful, nothing like the tender lover who had kissed me senseless only hours before. This Sylum was a stranger carved from ice. His shoulders were tense and the weight of secrets was heavy in each of his steps.
He reached his study and pushed the door open. I darted behind a tall marble statue—some Grecian goddess whose blind stone eyes seemed to judge my every trembling breath.
Mrs. Ashby was already there, waiting as if expected.
The first thing she said was too quiet to hear, strained and cracked at the edges.
“What should I tell the other servants? They are already whispering about Her Grace and… Lydia…”
Her voice broke on Lydia’s name.
Sylum exhaled, long and weary, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Tell them she broke a vase. That’s why there was blood on her nightgown.” His tone was clipped, decisive.
“And remind them that Lydia’s death was a tragic accident.”
A lie. A lie delivered so casually my own throat burned with it.
Mrs. Ashby hesitated. “Yes, Your Grace… though I’m not certain they will believe it.”
His jaw tightened. “They will if you say it.”
The housekeeper nodded once, resigned, but her face remained troubled.
Silence pooled thickly before she spoke again.
“And… the tower, Your Grace?”
My heart lurched violently, slamming against my ribs so hard I thought Sylum might hear it through the door.
Sylum straightened. “Is it prepared?”
She swallowed. “Yes. Cleaned and Furnished. Just as you asked.”
He nodded once, but something flickered across his features. Guilt? Determination?
Then Mrs. Ashby’s voice softened, trembling. “But… are you quite sure this is wise? Is it… secure enough?”
My throat closed. Secure? For what? For whom?
Sylum stepped closer to the fire, the orange glow cutting harsh angles across his face.
“It will be,” he replied. “I have someone coming tomorrow to reinforce the door locks. And bar the windows.”
Bar. The. Windows.
They were going to lock me away. They were preparing a cell.
A cage.
My mother’s fate was repeating…
Poe stiffened on my shoulder, his wings half-spread, feathers bristling. “Lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb,” he croaked quietly against my ear. “Darkness there and nothing more.”
I clamped a shaking hand over his beak before the sound could betray me. “Those are two separate tales, Poe,” I said in a hushed voice, shooting him a look.
His dead eyes stared back at me as if he didn’t care for my critique.
Inside the study, Mrs. Ashby bowed her head. “As you say, Your Grace.”
“Good. You may go.”
She exited swiftly. I shrank deeper into the alcove as she passed, praying she would go the opposite direction. Only when her footsteps disappeared did Sylum emerge from the study.
But I did not see him leave.
A sudden, brutal wave of dizziness crashed over me so forceful my knees nearly buckled. The corridor tilted sideways, stretching, warping like melting glass. I pressed a hand to the wall, the cold stone biting my palm, but the manor kept swaying.
Too much. Too loud. Too bright.
Poe fluttered anxiously, clinging to my shoulder.
“Oh my Lenore,” he murmured, voice strangely soft.
I tried to steady my breathing, but panic clawed through me like a wild animal.
They’re going to lock me in the tower… they’re going to lock me away like my mother…
My vision blurred. The lanterns along the corridor guttered, bending shadows into reaching fingers. My head throbbed, each pulse a knife.
Then the crying started.
Soft at first, then sorrowful.
A woman’s voice, thin and distant, as though carried upward from the manor’s bones. The same weeping I had followed before. The same voice that had led me into the darkness.
My blood ran cold.
“No,” I breathed, stumbling backward. “Not again… please… not again…”
The wailing rose, echoing through the beams and the air itself.
Poe’s feathers fluffed, his pupils narrowing to black pinpoints. He clicked sharply in warning, but the crying only grew louder, muffling his sounds.
My hand pressed to the wall for balance as another wave of dizziness swept over me, darkening the edges of my vision. My stomach lurched in protest as bile filled my throat.
Panic, I told myself, swallowing hard. Only panic.
You’re not drugged. You are not losing your mind.
But panic did not usually make the walls breathe.
Poe dug his talons gently into my shoulder again, steadying himself as my legs wobbled beneath me.
That was when I heard it again. A thin, strangled sob. It was distant and muffled like someone crying into their own hands.
My breath stalled.
Despite knowing I should run away, hide in my room under the coverlet, I couldn’t stop myself from following it.
This time, it did not pull me toward the east wing. It drew me down.
Down the narrow servant’s staircase. Down where the air was colder, the ceilings lower, the walls damp with old tears.
Poe leapt from my shoulder as I descended, gliding silently ahead of me. His wings cast fractured shadows along the walls.
I continued to follow the sound though each step felt like a descent into a nightmare I had only half-escaped before.
The servants’ quarters were smaller than I’d guessed. Cramped. Close. A faint draft of coal dust and lavender soap lingered in the air.
And the crying was louder here. So loud that I wondered how no one else heard it.
Poe landed before a door near the end of the corridor. His head cocked sharply, eyes gleaming.
There were flowers by the threshold and a mourning wreath someone must have made for her.
“That,” I guessed, my breath trembling, “must be Lydia’s room.”
My fingers hovered above the knob, without touching, but the door eased open on its own, as though someone inside had been waiting for me.
A chill skittered up my spine.
“Is someone in there?” My voice barely carried.
Silence answered as I stepped inside.