Dearest Friend
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream…”
By now you have likely wondered—as I once did—what belonged to the waking world, and what belonged only to the labyrinth of my dreaming mind.
I confess, when I first woke beneath the trembling ache of my injury, the veil between nightmare and reality clung to me like wet silk.
The terror felt so near, so intimate, so possible, that part of me believed I had lived it.
The mind, I have learned, is a sly and treacherous thing. It hoards our small fears and great loves alike, then mixes them with memory until dreams become grotesque reflections—half-true, half-mad, yet wholly convincing while their shadow is upon us.
Mine, dear reader, was no exception.
Every piece of that terrible vision had root in my real life.
The secret passages beneath Blackthorn—built not for specters, but for Poe, who prefers to travel unheard.
The scar on my cheek, etched there by childhood clumsiness rather than a mother’s ghost. Lydia, whose hair truly does glint like sunlight through champagne.
Nelly’s feather-soft steps and her habit of appearing precisely when needed.
The heavy volumes of Edgar Allan Poe on my bedside table—stories of doubles, guilt, and rapidly fraying minds—all lying in wait for my sleeping thoughts to devour.
Even my fears were real. The hollow ache when Sylum rides out at dawn, the irrational dread that love, so dear, might vanish with a thunderclap or a single misstep.
My dream merely stole those threads and wove a nightmare.
In truth, nothing in that vision was born from Blackthorn’s walls—it was born from me. My heart provided the terror. My imagination provided the villainy. And my love for Sylum—so fierce it sometimes aches—became the battleground upon which the dream staged its cruel theatrics.
Dreams lie, friend. But they lie with splendid conviction.
Still, when the nightmare broke and the familiar warmth of Sylum’s voice reached me—steady, human, beloved—I saw at last what was real.
I was not mad.
Only frightened. Only dreaming. Only struck, quite literally, upon the head.
If ever during my tale you doubted my sanity, take comfort—I doubted it too. Madness pressed its cheek against mine for a brief, terrible while. And oh, how close I came to believing in a world far darker than the one I woke to.
But daylight arrived. Truth returned. And Sylum—my beloved Sylum—remained exactly where he has always been.
Here. Warm. Real. Mine.
Thank you for keeping company with me in the dark.
Perhaps we shall meet again in another waking world—or perhaps, should you close this book with my name still whispering in your mind, you will find me in one of those “little slices of death” we so tenderly call sleep.
There in your dreams, if you wish it, we may be mad together forevermore.
Yours in sanity and in love,
Lenore Deveroux, Duchess of Blackthorn