“Go on,” he teased.
“Well,” I sighed, “I did marry you, but your twin tricked me at a masquerade. He meant to drive me mad and kill you to take your title.”
“That does sound dreadful,” he said with mock gravity.
“Quite. And Nelly was working with your twin, drugging me with Laudanum and Nightshade. I thought youwere trying to drive me insane because they made me think you were evil… but really it was your twin…”
I hesitated, the memory of the end of the nightmare choking me with dread. “I killed you…”
A tear slipped down my cheek as I saw him fall from the cliff in my mind.
Sylum was silent for a long moment before his hand caressed my cheek. “It wasn’t you. It was all in your mind. Just a dream.”
I took a deep breath, managing a small laugh. “Poe was the only one trying to warn me.”
“Of course he was,” Sylum muttered, rolling his eyes. “Even in your dreams, you think more highly of that bird than me.”
“That’s not true!” I protested. “I love you more than anything in this world.”
“Not more than Poe, I’m certain.”
I laughed softly. “Don’t be silly.”
He hummed, entwining our fingers. “A twin, huh? An evil one at that?”
He glanced toward the bedside table stacked with my beloved books—Poe’s collected works, The Tale of William Wilson on top.
“I can’t imagine where you could have possibly come by an idea like that,” he murmured dryly, tracing the faint scar along my cheek—the scar not caused by a mentally unstable mother, but rather a tumble downthe stairs as a young child.
Just then, a flutter of blue-black wings startled the air. Poe burst from the hidden wall panel—a winding network of passages I’d had built through the manor for him alone.
I laughed as he landed squarely on Sylum’s chest, glaring at him with those familiar beady eyes before nuzzling against my cheek.
“Oh, my Lenore,” he crooned.
Sylum groaned.
“Poe, my sweet angel,” I whispered, kissing his soft head. “Did you miss me?”
The bird burrowed against me with a happy trill.
“I think that’s my cue,” Sylum said dryly, sliding out from beneath Poe’s wings. He leaned down to kiss me, but Poe blocked his mouth, feathers brushing my lips. I laughed, the sound muffled by his silky wings.
Sylum only sighed, catching my hand instead. He kissed each finger gently. “Rest, my love. I’ll fetch you a tray. You must be ravenous.”
I smiled, watching him linger a moment before he finally turned toward the door.
Poe swooped to the bedside table, pecking at the book. The one I had been reading to him before my fall.
William Wilson.
“Two shadows. One bone,” he croaked, almost tenderly.
I smiled, coaxing him back into my lap as I opened the book to our place. The candlelight trembled across the pages as I began to read aloud.
“You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward, art thou also dead—dead to the world, to Heaven, to hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterlythou hast murdered thyself.”
Dearest friend,
