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.
Recommendobservation 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.
