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.
