Chapter 26 #2
“Shut up!” Sylum snapped. His tone sent a violent shiver down my spine. There was a scuffle then a sharp crack, skin against skin.
Silence followed. Heavy and suffocating.
Then, the slow scrape of a chair.
Footsteps.
Coming closer.
Panic surged through me. I darted back down the tunnel, the candle danced wildly. The sconces blurred past. I turned the corner just as the door behind me creaked open.
Light spilled into the passage, chasing after me like a nightmare come to life.
My lungs burned as I tore through the narrow corridor. The shadows behind me shifted, moving fast. I didn’t dare look back.
I ran harder. The walls seemed to close in, the air thick and damp as the passage forked into two identical paths. My chest heaved as I spun in place, desperate for any sign of where to go.
The sound was closer now. Someone or something was moving with purpose.
Panic surged through me. I chose the nearest panel and pressed hard. It gave way with a groan, and I stumbled through, slamming it shut behind me just as footsteps reached the other side.
I turned, heart hammering. The room was dark, the air warmer here, familiar somehow. My eyes adjusted slowly, as I held the candle aloft, to the outline of rich drapery and the faint gleam of brass instruments on a desk.
Sylum’s study.
I leaned against the closed panel, breath ragged. Behind me, the wall was silent once more. Whoever, or whatever, had followed me hadn’t pursued.
Through the door at the front of the room came the low murmur of voices. Servants, still awake. I could make out Mrs. Ashby’s stern tone, the clatter of trays, the creak of the floorboards outside the study door. There was no way to slip past them without being seen.
My only option was to wait.
I sank into the chair by the fire, rubbing my arms as the minutes stretched painfully long.
The house eventually quieted, but my mind did not.
Every word I’d overheard in the hidden corridors echoed through my thoughts.
There had to be something here. Some clue to what was happening inside these walls.
My eyes drifted to Sylum’s desk.
Perhaps there was.
I rose quietly, the floorboards sighing beneath my bare feet. My fingers brushed over the polished mahogany surface before I pulled open the top drawer. Ledgers. Receipts. Harmless things. I checked the next—stationery, ink, correspondence. The third—maps of the estate, folded neatly.
The final drawer didn’t budge.
Locked.
Frustration prickled my skin. I rifled through the other drawers again, searching for a key. Nothing. Not in the compartments, not under the papers. The key was nowhere.
With a defeated sigh, I slumped into Sylum’s chair. My head fell into my hands. My heart still thundered from my escape, but now… there was only exhaustion.
Then my knee brushed against something beneath the desk.
I froze.
Leaning down, I felt along the underside until my fingers caught the edge of a hidden seam. A small latch clicked. A shallow drawer slid out silently.
My pulse quickened.
Inside, a single key glinted in the candlelight.
My breath hitched as I grasped it, hands shaking. The metal was cold against my palm. I slipped it into the locked drawer, the click loud as thunder in the stillness.
The drawer opened with a slow groan.
Inside lay a thin file.
My blood ran cold.
The wax seal on the front bore a familiar crest—thorned vines winding around a crowned heart. My stomach twisted violently.
Briarwood Asylum for the Insane.
Hands trembling, I opened it. Inside were brittle, yellowed pages of medical records, treatment notes, and at the very top, a faded portrait of a woman I knew too well.
My mother.
The words blurred as I scanned the first page, my pulse hammering in my throat. Her name. Her date of admission. Her symptoms—hallucinations, emotional instability, hysteria.
My fingers clenched around the paper, smudging the ink.
The next line froze the breath in my lungs.
Family History: Hereditary Affliction Suspected.
Recommend observation of daughter.
The candlelight flared violently, the flame bowing under an unseen breath, as if reacting to the surge of panic inside me.
Why did Sylum have this file? When had he requested it?
Before our marriage or after?
Had he been watching me all along, studying me like one of his estate ledgers? Was he trying to drive me mad like some morbid experiment as I had suspected?
Or had he been preparing… to send me away? To bury me beside my mother in the same asylum walls?
Before my thoughts could form into something coherent, the door creaked open behind me.
I froze.
Sylum stepped into the room, his figure haloed by the candlelight. But there was something wrong in his expression. His eyes gleamed too sharply, too hungrily, his lips stretched into a sinister smile as he toyed with something small in his hand.
“Oh, my sweet little Duchess,” he murmured, voice rich and dark as molasses. He closed the door behind him, the latch sliding with a finality that made my stomach twist. He moved toward me with unhurried grace. “You’ve been a very… naughty girl.”
I rose quickly, clutching the file to my chest. “I’m sorry,” I stammered, backing toward the far wall. “I didn’t mean to snoop—”
His eyes flicked to the file in my hands. Annoyance flashed, then vanished as he exhaled a slow, deliberate sigh. “Oh, I don’t care about that.” His smile widened. “What I care about is you ruining everything.”
The candlelight caught on the thing in his hand, smooth tarnished silver glinted as he dangled it in front of his face as if to inspect it.
I recognized it instantly.
Lydia’s locket.
My pulse stumbled. “Sylum… I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
He laughed then, a sharp, manic sound that made my blood run cold. “You still don’t see it, do you?”
He brushed a hand along the edge of the desk, his fingers gliding over the wood like a lover’s touch.
“It should have been mine,” he sighed, his tone softening, almost wistful. “All of it.”
“Sylum,” I whispered, “please.”
Before I could finish, he lunged forward. The file was ripped from my grasp, tossed into the fire before I could react. Flames devoured it instantly. His arm coiled around my waist, yanking me against him with brutal force.
The locket fell to the floor, the metal clinking against wood.
“Why do you have that?” I asked, my voice trembling as realization dawned on me.
“Because it’s mine,” he replied with a shrug. “Like all of this.”
He gestured around the room before his gaze locked onto me again.
I shook my head, slowly. “It was real… it was all real…”
“Shut up,” he demanded. “You just couldn’t follow the plan!”
I gasped, struggling against his chest, but his hold was unyielding.
“Please,” I begged, my voice breaking.
He tilted his head, studying me with eyes that looked familiar but wrong, empty and ravenous all at once. “You’re soft everywhere,” he murmured, his tone suddenly gentling as his breath ghosted against my cheek. “I had hoped to keep you a little longer.”
A shudder coursed through me.
“Perhaps I will just keep your heart in a jar after all,” he whispered, smiling faintly.
My throat went dry, those same words coming back to me from a memory of when I first arrived at Blackthorn. “What…?”
His eyes darkened, his voice dropping to a low growl. “You just couldn’t stop being sane, could you?”
My stomach plummeted. “What are you talking about?”
His hand clamped over my mouth, the pressure bruising.
“It’s too late, my little Duchess,” he crooned, his tone both mocking and affectionate. “No more words. It’s time to go.”
Panic flooded my veins. I twisted and fought, my muffled cries smothered against his palm. He dragged me across the room into the hall with terrifying strength, the heels of my slippers scraping against the floor.
“What are you doing?!” A soft, feminine voice demanded.
I managed to turn my head away just enough to see Nelly standing by the foot of the stairs. Tears welled in my eyes as I screamed behind his hand. Relief washed over me as Nelly started towards us, determination on her face.
But then she stopped suddenly just short of where we stood. Her eyes flicked between us then once again, staying on Sylum, studying him intently with a slight tilt of her head. She frowned, gaze narrowing as she planted her hands on her hips.
“Julien?” She gritted out, her genteel accent slipping into something harsh and unfamiliar. “What the hell are you doing?!”
Julien?
The man’s grip tightened on me, his hand trembling against my skin. I craned my neck, searching his face in the dim light. The same jaw, the same mouth, the same eyes, but sharper somehow, colder… and hair just a touch darker than Sylum’s…
My breath caught.
Nelly’s voice dropped to a sharp hiss. “Lord Blackthorn is still awake! He knows she’s missing!”
I blinked hard, my pulse thundering in my ears. Realization settled over me in a wash of pure terror.
Poe’s voice echoed in my mind. The way he’d reacted to the story of William Wilson and his doppelg?nger… all along he’d been trying to warn me.
Two shadows. One bone.
Sylum had a twin.
Every strange, unexplainable moment, every contradiction—Sylum in two places at once. The whispers. The man in the garden with Lydia… no perhaps not Lydia after all.
I looked at Nelly. My sweet, timid Nelly. The only one I’d trusted. But she didn’t look timid now. Her face was calculating and cold. I studied her closely, frowning behind Julien’s hand.
Her hair was brown. A mousy color, that was too dull to even catch light. The woman I had seen so many times had strands of gold that shimmered softly…
Confusion coiled around my stomach and I felt like I was going to be sick.
Was there someone else? Had Lydia been helping them? To what end?
Julien’s voice cut through my thoughts, wild and unsteady. “I had to,” he snarled. “She found the passageways.”
He jerked me closer, his breath ragged. “Stop talking!” he hissed, though his eyes weren’t on me or Nelly, but somewhere beyond, as if arguing with unseen ghosts.
“There’s no one there,” Nelly groaned, her tone flat, almost bored. “You really are mad.”
Julien turned on her, his voice cracking. “Shut up! Shut up!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head violently, muttering to himself.
Nelly sighed, the sound weary and annoyed. Her slippers tapped softly against the floor as she moved closer. “I swear I have to do everything,” she muttered. “All this work, and you nearly ruin it.”
She pulled something from her apron pocket—a small amber vial.
My stomach turned.
Laudanum perhaps, or something worse.
She uncorked it with a practiced flick. “Hold her still.”
Julien hesitated, but obeyed. His hand shifted from my mouth to my jaw, pinching cruelly until my lips parted.
“No!”
The word barely escaped before Nelly tipped the vial, forcing the bitter liquid down my throat. It burned like poison.
I coughed, sputtered, tried to spit it out, but Julien’s hand clamped back over my mouth. I thrashed, kicking and twisting, but his grip was iron.
Pushing with everything I had left, I slammed my elbow into his ribs. He grunted, staggering just enough for me to shove Nelly.
She stumbled back, her feet tangling as she tried to regain her balance. The collision knocked her cap askew.
A lock of golden hair fell loose.
For a single heartbeat, everything froze.
Nelly had blonde hair…
She glared at me, then calmly, lifted the edge of her wig and tucked the strand back into place.
My blood turned to ice.
Julien grabbed me again, hauling me against him. My head spun, the world blurring around the edges. Whatever she’d given me was already seeping through my veins.
“Please,” I begged, my voice slurring, eyes closing.
“Hurry,” Nelly hissed, glancing down the hall.
The last thing I felt was Julien lifting me into his arms, my head lolling against his chest, my body limp.
The walls swayed and shifted as Nelly ushered him back through the door and into the passages. The sconces blurred into streaks of orange and shadow.
The manor seemed to breathe around me, then mercifully, darkness claimed me.