The memory, if it was a memory, clung to me like a bruise. Elizabeth’s ghost. Sylum’s face above mine, emptied of warmth. The woman beside him, laughing softly.
It couldn’t have been real.
And yet my body remembered.
My limbs were heavy. My mouth tasted faintly metallic and my head throbbed with a dull, insistent ache that pulsed behind my eyes.
I rolled onto my side, the room tilting sharply with the movement. A wave of dizziness surged, and I squeezed my eyes shut until it passed.
Poe’s gaze met mine at once.
He had hopped closer on the nightstand, his black eyes unblinking, uncomfortably aware. I reached for him with shaking fingers, burying them in the slick warmth of his blue-black feathers.
“Have I been dreaming?” I wondered aloud.
He nuzzled into my hand, chattering softly, then lifted his head, throat bobbing.
“For the moon never beams,” he crooned, voice low and reverent, “without bringing me dreams.”
I exhaled a shaky breath and rolled onto my back, staring up at the canopy. The silky fabric above me seemed to ripple subtly, bending shadows in ways that made my stomach queasy. My thoughts folded in on themselves, looping until memory and imagination became indistinguishable.
I had to know.
Before fear could reason with me, before sense could intervene, I shoved the coverlet aside and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.
My heart stopped.
Blood.
Thick, dark, and copper-bright in the moonlight.
It soaked the front of my nightgown, streaking downward in ugly, uneven rivulets. My breath left me in a sharp, strangled gasp as I looked down further.
My legs were coated in it.
“No,” I cried. “No, no, no!”
I leapt from the bed with a scream that tore itself raw from my lungs, clawing at my gown, my blood-slick hands shaking uncontrollably.
“I’m bleeding… please, someone help!”
The room spun violently. My knees buckled, and I stumbled back, slipping on the rug as terror overtook me completely. I screamed again, raw and wordless, my body locked in the certainty that something inside me had broken beyond repair.
The connecting door flew open.
“Lucy!”
Sylum burst into the room in only his robe, hair disheveled, eyes wild with sleep and sudden horror. He froze for half a heartbeat—just long enough to take in the sight of me, blood-streaked and sobbing—then he was by my side.
“My God,” he breathed. “Lucy!”
He crossed the room in two strides, grasping my shoulders, forcing me gently but firmly to still.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded, panic roughening his voice. “Where is it coming from? Lucy, tell me!”
I couldn’t speak.
I shook violently, sobs wracking my chest as he searched me with frantic hands, checking my arms, my waist, my sides. He dropped to his knees, lifting the hem of my gown with shaking fingers, scanning my legs for wounds.
