Chapter 27 #2
The path sloped upward toward the cliffs. The moonlight shimmered off the wet grass, the sea roaring far below. My lungs burned, every breath tasted of salt.
The world bent and swayed, and the shadows seemed to breathe with us as we struggled onward.
Somewhere ahead, faint through the wind, a voice called my name, distant and desperate.
Sylum.
I tried to call out, but my lips barely moved. My body was no longer my own.
When we finally reached the cliff, Sylum—or perhaps Julien—stared at us, wide-eyed. Wind tore at their coats and moonlight carved them into mirror images. Seeing them together like this made my skin prickle.
“Sylum?” My voice came out, uneasy, unsure which was which.
The man closest to the edge of the cliff took a step forward, holding out his hand. “Lucy… get her out of here!”
It was Sylum. I felt it like a tug in my bones.
Nelly didn’t move. Her laughter came again, bright and cold, her gaze locked on Sylum.
With one swift movement, Nelly swung my arm over her head and shoved me hard. Stone met skull, stars burst behind my eyes. Sylum lunged, but Nelly was faster. Her pistol flashed as she drove the barrel into my temple. “Don’t come any closer!” she shouted over the roar of the sea.
He froze, hands lifted. “Leave her alone,” he said carefully. “Just let her go and you can have me.”
Julien laughed, folding his arms. “I think we already do, dear brother.”
The world tipped and righted. Gravel crackled under approaching boots.
“Did anyone see you?” Julien asked, voice low.
Nelly set a hand to her hip and ground the barrel hard against my skull. “I’m not stupid.” Her pitch went razor-sharp. “Of course no one saw.”
The pistol trembled against my skin. “Get on with it!”
He raked a hand through his hair, gaze going dark and frantic. “I can’t think with your obnoxious voice piercing my skull!”
Nelly’s gasp snapped like a whip. “How dare you? Stop being insane for one moment and get this over with!”
They continued to spar with words, but my focus tunneled onto Sylum, inching closer, silently. I tried to urge him back with my eyes, but he was transfixed by his brother and the pistol.
A twig cracked beneath his heel. Julien spun, the muzzle bit into my temple viciously.
“Please!” The plea tore out of me hoarse and raw as tears slid hot over my cheeks. “Nelly… don’t do this.”
She looked down at me, eyes gleaming like cold steel. She wrinkled her nose and smiled. “Oh dear, do save your strength. You are wasting it on me. I fully intend to become Duchess one way or another.”
Nelly cut Julien a sidelong look. “It’s a shame that he really is insane though…”
“I’ve had enough of this,” she snapped finally, the cool metal abandoning my skin as she leveled the pistol at Sylum. “Julien, subdue your brother so I can shoot him without him moving around so much.”
My heart plunged as the brothers collided. Their movements matched too perfectly, as if fighting a reflection. Nelly’s cheers knifed through the wind.
Rain began to fall, misty and cold at first, then hard and fast as lightning split against the night sky.
I blinked rapidly, trying desperately to see through the blinding sheet of rain. My hair clung to my face, soaked through and heavy.
I had to move. I had to do something. I eased onto one elbow, kept low, and edged a foot behind her heel. With the last strength I owned, I scythed my leg.
She shrieked, stumbling back. Silk tangled at her ankles. The crack of skull to stone was a sickening, final sound. The pistol rolled free from her hand. I dragged myself after it, vision pulsing at the edges, the world swimming in and out of focus as mud seeped through my nightgown.
The brothers careened toward the edge of the cliff. I rolled onto my side, raised the gun with shaking arms, and fired into the sky.
“Stop!” I screamed, holding the pistol firmly between my rain-slick hands.
Silence rushed in behind the shot. Both men froze and turned. Neither spared a glance for Nelly’s crumpled form in a pool of her own blood.
“Sylum?” My voice thinned. “Sylum, I can’t tell who is who. You have to help me!”
One stepped forward. “Lucy… it’s me. I’m Sylum.”
I swung the muzzle to the other. He lifted his hands. “Don’t listen to him, Lucy. You know it’s me.”
Back and forth—my arms trembled, tears and rain blurring them until they bled together. “Please. I don’t know what to do…”
The first one stilled. “Lucy, look at me,” he begged, steady as a prayer. “You know in your heart who is who.”
I turned the gun again. “Lucy,” the other said, shaking his head slowly. “Please… please, you have to believe me. I love you. Don’t listen to him—“
“Stop!” I cried. “I can’t do this. I’m too… I can’t think. I can’t see!”
My hand would not stay still. It trembled as though some invisible thread pulled it taut, tighter and tighter still. The pistol felt impossibly, its cold metal biting into my palm like teeth.
“I’m going to ask a question,” I said, though my voice shook so violently I hardly recognized it. “And you’re both going to answer at the same time.”
They stared. Identical save for the way terror clung to one and hunger to the other.
I swallowed hard, tasting blood and salt. “I will ask,” I shouted, projecting my unsteady voice over the roar of the storm. “And count to three.”
Neither replied. Neither moved. I licked my dry lips, fighting the heaviness in my limbs as I tried to focus.
“What…” My breath shivered, keeping time with the sea crashing far below. “What is my mother’s name?”
A beat. My words counted with the sea.
“One…” The wind clawed at my skirts.
“Two…” My heartbeat fluttered like a trapped bird.
“Three...”
Their voices echoed, tangling with the same cadence and tone.
“Lenore…”
“I don’t know…”
My hand lifted, though I barely felt it. The pistol aligned itself with Julien as though guided by some deeper, ancient instinct. My finger squeezed the trigger.
The night detonated.
The recoil wrenched my arm, ripping a cry from my throat as the gunshot cracked through the cliffs, crashing off the rocks and the sea, and the very bones of the earth.
One figure at the edge of the cliff reeled. A scream ripped from his chest as he pitched backward, vanishing as the cliff swallowed the sound.
I folded onto my back, the cold earth greeting me with a jolt. I took in gasps of cold air. The sky spun—black, silver, then black again—pulsing like a dying heart. I blinked hard, willing the darkness not to take me.
Footsteps thundered toward me.
Warm arms gathered me up, lifting me as if I weighed nothing at all. A familiar scent washed over me. A chest rose beneath my cheek in frantic, uneven breaths.
“Sylum?” The name slipped out, a cracked prayer. I reached up, cupping a beloved cheek with a trembling palm.
“Lucy…” His mouth met mine, fierce and shaking. “You did so well.”
A wrecked laugh tumbled out of me, jagged with pain. “Your brother befriended my mother in the asylum,” I murmured weakly, lips chattering. “But I-I never told you my m-mother’s name… I never told you…”
His hand smoothed my hair back, but something in his expression faltered. His grip tightened and a faint tremor ran through him. “Such an intelligent little Duchess,” he muttered calmly. Too calmly.
No…
My pulse faltered, my lungs constricting as I reached up and brushed trembling fingers through a lock of his hair.
It gleamed black in the moonlight… a shade too dark.
No…
Our gazes locked, his eyes were dark and depthless.
Not warm.
Not amber.
Not Sylum’s.
A smile unfurled across his lips, slow and poisonous, blooming like rot through roses.
“Men have called me mad,” he crooned, his voice slipping into something sinister, “but the question is not yet settled… whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence.”
The quote slithered from his tongue like a snake—Julien’s voice wearing Sylum’s shape.
Ice sluiced through me. I pushed against his chest, but his arms locked like iron.
“No—no, please!“
He nodded slowly, almost indulgently, as though explaining a riddle to a child.
“Ah, but it is true,” he confessed. “I knew precisely what you were doing.” He paused, brushing a tear from my cheek. “And my brother has always been thorough. He likely researched your mother long ago.”
A sob tore itself raw from my chest.
Julien lifted me, gathering me as though I were something despised enough to shatter, but beloved enough to hold tightly during the breaking. He turned toward the manor, his steps steady, deliberate.
“Don’t bother telling anyone,” he said with a smile. “No one will believe you.”
My eyes burned. Tears spilled unchecked, hot trails down my cold cheeks. My body shook with silent, helpless grief.
From the black above, wings beat the air into trembling ripples.
Poe circled, a dark omen etched against the moon, his voice rang out, echoing across cliffs and sea with a mournful shriek.
“Lenore… oh my Lenore. Nameless here forevermore.”
And the wind carried it. Carried it down the cliffs, carried it through the night, carried it into the hollow of my shattering heart…
“Lenore… Lenore… Lenore…”