Chapter 23
The small chamber smelled faintly of rosemary and something sweeter. Violets, perhaps. The bed was neatly made, the pillow fluffed, blankets tucked with precise corners. A pair of worn slippers waited beside it.
Nothing looked disturbed. Nothing looked as though its owner had been murdered only hours before.
It appeared, like most rooms in the manor, to be neat, tidy, and completely ordinary.
But then my eyes fell upon the vanity.
The top drawer was slightly open.
Poe landed upon the cracked mirror’s edge, tapping once with his beak.
Tap.
I swallowed, a pooling dread filling my stomach.
With trembling hands, I pulled the drawer fully open. Inside, wrapped in a scrap of muslin cloth, lay a small silver locket, its surface tarnished, but lovingly polished in spots as though touched often.
My pulse roared in my ears as I opened it.
Inside lay a single coil of hair—not Lydia’s golden locks, but a thick, ribbon bound, bundle of jet-black hair that curled slightly at the ends.
I knew that hair.
I had touched it. Kissed it. Had it tangled between my fingers in the dark only hours ago.
It was nearly identical to Sylum’s.
Could it be?
My breath caught as I stared at it, twisting the strand between my fingers.
“Why would she have this? Unless…“
Something rattled behind me.
I spun.
The bed had shifted. Perhaps only an inch, but enough that its wooden foot scraped across the floorboards.
And that’s when I heard it.
Th-thump
My vision tunneled as the room began to swell and contract with each sound. “Stop,” I pleaded. “Please stop.”
But the sound only grew louder.
Thump-thump, thump-thump
I could feel it vibrating through the soles of my feet. Just like Lydia’s body earlier. Just like the shrouded sheet rising and falling. Just like the heart that refused to stop.
“Stop it!” I cried, not sure if I was speaking to the sound, or myself, or whatever phantom haunted this house. “Stop it! Stop it!”
Poe circled wildly, crying out above me.
“Darkness there and nothing more! NOTHING MORE!”
His voice broke into frantic caws as he tried to calm me, but I couldn’t focus on his words. The room began to bend until it felt that I was falling.
The heartbeat pounded. The crying returned, louder, closer, like someone sobbing against my ear.
My feet moved before my thoughts could catch up.
I stumbled as I tore through the corridor, my breath slicing in ragged bursts, the locket clutched so firmly in my hand that the metal dug crescents into my skin.
The walls pitched and swayed with every step, my vision smearing like wet paint.
Poe fluttered frantically above my shoulder, croaking warnings in broken verse.
“Thing of evil! Thing of evil! Two shadows! One bone! One bone!”
I should have listened to his warning, but fear had devoured all reason. I simply kept running. The manor twisted under my feet, long and endless, until I rounded a corner too sharply and slammed into something solid.
Hands steadied my elbows roughly as if inconvenienced.
“Lucy?”
My heart lurched violently.
Sylum.
He stood before me in the dim light of the corridor, dressed in his usual dark coat, hair slightly mussed, eyes shadowed. But the way he looked at me…
Too still.
Too sharp.
Too close to the edge of something unspoken.
I didn’t register the wrongness. Or perhaps I did, but the panic drowned it out.
Without giving him a chance to say another word, I thrust the locket into his chest, anger and fear gripping me.
“What is this, Sylum?!” I demanded, my voice cracking. “Why did Lydia have a locket of your hair?! Why?!”
He looked down at the locket, his expression unreadable. Slowly, he curled his fingers around it. His jaw clenched once, twice, so tightly the sinew trembled at the hinge. When he lifted his gaze again, the darkness in his eyes felt as if I stared into a void.
The air seemed to constrict around us.
“Lucy,” he crooned, but his voice lacked the steady warmth I was used to. It was taut. Coiled. “Why must you always meddle where you shouldn’t?”
My breath hitched as a shiver ran down my spine. “W-what?”
He grabbed my upper arm with swift, startling force, digging his fingers into my skin.
Poe screamed above us, feathers exploding into a flurry.
“Thing of evil! Two shadows. One bone!”
Sylum’s hand snapped up, swatting at the raven until Poe was forced to vault upward into the rafters, beating his wings against the beams.
I recoiled, fury and shock rippling through me as I tried to shove against him, desperate to help Poe.
“Sylum stop! What are you—?!”
“Why couldn’t you simply behave?” he muttered, dragging me forward with terrifying ease. “Why couldn’t you follow the rules? It would have all been so… easy.”
His grip was bruising. His movements were unrestrained. Nothing like the man who kissed me with shaking tenderness only hours before.
I clawed at his arm, stumbling as the hall lurched again. “You’re hurting me! Please stop!”
But he didn’t stop until we reached the south wing—dark, unused, the air stale with dust and abandonment. He shoved a door open with his shoulder and thrust me inside before Poe could swoop down again.
The raven shrieked from the other side of the door as it slammed shut. “Lenore! Lenore!”
Inside the room, dust motes drifted through the air like falling ash. White sheets draped forgotten furniture, shapeless ghosts in the gloom.
Sylum released me abruptly. I stumbled backward, catching myself on the draped chair for balance just as another wave of dizziness slapped my vision sideways.
He straightened his coat, fixed his hair, and smoothed his expression with careful, almost calculated movements.
When he looked at me again, he was calm.
Too calm.
“Lucy,” he scoffed. Almost soothingly. “Have you been drinking your tea?”
“The… tea?” I repeated, voice small and lost. The room spun again, my knees wobbled. I pressed a hand to my temple. “W-why are you asking me that? Sylum… what’s in the tea?”
He took a slow step forward.
I took one back.
My voice cracked, raw, terrified, and desperate. “Don’t touch me!”
His face contorted in the moonlight, the shadow splitting him into two silhouettes for a heartbeat. Two versions of him standing in the same skin.
I blinked, shaking my head.
He held out his hand. “Lucy… you’re not well. You must calm yourself.”
“No,” I cried, staggering sideways. “No, you made me think I was mad. You… you all did. I was right. I was right all along.” I pressed my hands to the sides of my head, nails curling into my scalp. “The tea… Sylum, the tea is poisoned, isn’t it?!”
His expression twitched.
Not with guilt.
With irritation… perhaps something almost akin to amusement.
“You’re unwell,” he repeated, making my mind spin.
I choked on a sob. “You’re trying to kill me.”
His smile was soft. Wrong.
“Lucy… come here.”
I shook my head violently. “No—no, stay away—”
My vision doubled, a veil of black creeping in from the corners. The walls seemed to melt around me and my knees buckled. The room spun faster and faster as I collapsed to the floor.
Poe’s muffled cry pierced the thick wood of the door. “Two shadows! Two shadows! One bone!”
A warm hand brushed my cheek. A silhouette bent close. Broad shoulders, familiar scent, and breath warm against my skin.
“My poor, sweet Lucy,” he murmured, voice trembling with something feverishly hungry. “So full of fantastic terror. I can hear your heart beating… and it thrills me—”
His words cut off abruptly as he straightened suddenly. His head snapped toward the door, a muttered curse seething from his lips.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall.
Poe’s panicked shrieks carried through the door once more. “My Lenore!”
Sylum rose swiftly, crossing the room in two strides. My sluggish gaze followed him as he slipped behind a large armoire draped in white linen. The drape fluttered once before settling.
The room bled sideways again. A black fog pressed in around my eyes. I squeezed them shut, fighting the pull of unconsciousness… of whatever had been done to me.
The door burst open, swinging wide as someone stepped inside. Poe swooped in behind them, screeching as he dove around the room wildly.
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Ashby, clad in her robe and carrying a small lantern, knelt beside me, setting the lantern aside before gently cradling my head in her lap.
“Your Grace!” She bellowed over her shoulder, her voice directed toward the door. “She’s in here!”
Moments passed, as she murmured soothing words I couldn’t quite make out, before another set of footsteps sounded beyond the door.
Sylum appeared in the doorway—breathless, wide-eyed, hair askew, and coat gone, white shirt half-unbuttoned as though he had dressed in haste. Panic carved deep lines into his face the instant his gaze landed on me sprawled on the floor.
His expression, raw with fear and pain, bore no resemblance to the man who had dragged me here only moments before.
“No!” I screamed, scrambling backward, clinging to Mrs. Ashby’s arms with desperate strength. “No! Don’t let him near me! He’s insane!”
Mrs. Ashby stiffened beneath me. Her hand was firm against my cheek as she guided my frantic gaze to hers. She frowned deeply as she looked between me and Sylum, still hovering in the door.
“Your Grace,” she soothed, “it’s alright. Lord Blackthorn isn’t going to hurt you.”
I turned my wild gaze on Sylum then, his features taunt with pity and hurt as he slowly crossed the room.
A lie, I thought. He was playing the part of a doting husband while I knew better.
“He was just here!” I choked out on a harsh sob, squeezing my eyes closed as a wave of dizziness wrecked me. “He… he was here with me… and he pulled me so roughly…“
“Look at me,” she said firmly, cutting me off and forcing my attention back to her.
“Lord Blackthorn was not here,” she assured, each word deliberate like a hammer striking an anvil. “He was with me. We’ve been searching for you for the last hour. He was not here. Do you understand? I swear it.”
Her certainty undid me. My breath hitched. The room spun around me.
Not real.
Not real.
Not…
But I remembered his breath on my cheek. His voice. His hands. His violence.
“Liar,” I whispered, trembling. “Y-you’re lying. You’re all in on it.”
I tried to pull away, but she held my face with surprising strength, her eyes locking onto mine until the room stopped pitching long enough for her voice to reach me.
“No, Your Grace. It is the truth.”
The doubt, the terrible, suffocating doubt, opened beneath my ribs like a vast pit.
I turned my head sharply to glare at Sylum, who hovered near us now, his hands outstretched but hesitant, his expression wracked with confusion and something deep, aching. Pity.
“I know what I saw,” I spat, my voice cracking. “You were here with me and you hit Poe!”
At that, Poe swooped low, circling above us in ragged arcs. “On this home by horror haunted! Thing of evil! Nevermore!”
Mrs. Ashby flinched.
Sylum’s eyes went wide, not with guilt but with stunned disbelief.
He looked at me as though I’d just driven a blade through his heart.
“Lucy…” His voice was hoarse. “I would never—”
“Don’t!” I shrieked, covering my ears as if that could muffle the pounding in my skull. “Don’t you dare lie!”
Mrs. Ashby pulled me tighter against her. “Your Grace, listen to me,” she said, her tone still calm but sharpened with urgency. “No one has touched you. No one was here. You are… unwell. You’re overwrought. You must breathe.”
Her words melted into my mind like acid.
Unwell.
Overwrought.
MAD. MAD. MAD.
Just like my mother…
“No,” I breathed, shaking violently. “NO!”
I turned to Sylum again, tears blurring my vision. “Make her stop lying,” I pleaded, my voice breaking. “Please… please just tell the truth.”
But he only stared at me, devastated and helpless.
And that hurt worst of all.