Chapter Forty-Eight
Sybil
Sybil still could not sleep the following night despite her exhaustion. Edith’s loss that sat heavy in her chest, the emblazoned
new mark of a crescent moon on Sybil’s skin, how such a mark placed Jacinda in grave danger. It was all too much.
“Sybil Brantham,” the guard called.
Her heartbeat staggered to a stop.
What now?
The key clanked in the cage. “Another visitor.” The barrel-chested guard churlishly waved her out, clearly vexed at the interruption
to his day.
Jacinda?
The thought was met with a dizzying rush of hope and fear. Mayhap she had arrived to confess to the spell that marked Sybil’s
arm, to ask how it might be undone.
If the enchantment could be broken, mayhap Jacinda could be spared the loss of her gifts for committing such an egregious enchantment.
But when Sybil was led to the small square room, her visitor was not Jacinda, but a man in dark robes.
The magistrate.
Her breath caught and she stepped back so quickly, she nearly tripped on her shackles.
The door closed and locked, the guard on the other side.
Leaving her alone with him.
Again.
Fear rattled loose in her chest.
She was not strong enough for this.
But then, the man turned, and surprise snatched the air from her lungs.
John Griffin. The man who had ensnared her heart with tender words and pretty promises he could not make good on.
And oh, how she had loved him. That young, unfettered girl she’d been, dreaming of traveling the world at his side, of having
a bevy of children and lying awake every night to talk about everything and nothing.
She had made her love weep when last they’d met. When he vowed to defy his father’s demands to abandon her, choosing love
over legacy.
But Sybil would not have allowed him to exact such a cost on her behalf any more than she could stomach his father seeing
her as filth.
And now…
Her hands fluttered over her face, across the stretch of skin over gaunt cheeks, the patches of dark hair and clumps of scabs
upon her scalp. Though Margery’s shawl embraced her shoulders, her thin shift cast her form in shadow, revealing her skeletal
body.
If she had thought herself vulnerable and exposed at Mrs. Williams’s hands, that degradation was nothing compared to this unexpected moment of standing before John.
She hadn’t a care for Mrs. Williams or her opinions.
But John…
He knew the feel of her supple body in his arms. He knew the silky texture of her hair gliding through his fingers. His lips
had moved over her skin as he whispered poetry that made her feel beautiful.
Standing before him now, his father’s words ravaged her mind.
She was filth. Scarcely a woman. Barely even human.
Worthless.
In that moment, she was drowning in a deluge of shame.
“Sybil.” John whispered her name, soft, tender.
The way he had done so many times in their youth, and she hated the tears welling in her eyes, the painful yearning for that
carefree life, for the simplicity of those girlhood days.
She shook her head, unable to bear his presence.
She had never thought to see John again, had never anticipated he might look at her with such soul-reaching depth. And she
had never expected to be as she was, so broken and withered.
Why had Kat not simply passed on Sybil’s message?
Instinctively Sybil shrank back, curling her shoulders forward, wishing she could bury herself in the indignity and humiliation.
“You should not have come.”