A cold weight settled in my stomach.
“It seems…” the valet continued, clearing his throat, “…it seems she fell from the third-floor landing. The bannister was broken.”
The footman beside him made the sign of the cross.
For a long, terrible moment, no one breathed.
I looked from each face, my gaze landing on Sylum.
His jaw worked, the muscle ticking. “Who?” he asked quietly, though there was already dread in his tone, as if some part of him knew the answer before it came.
The footman hesitated, then met his gaze. “It was Lydia, Your Grace.”
For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. The name hung in the air sending my pulse into a frenzy.
“Lydia,” Mrs. Ashby repeated, voice breaking on the second syllable.
Something in me went cold.
Lydia.
The maid’s pale face flashed behind my eyes, those downcast lashes, the quiet tension that had lived between us from the very beginning.
Sylum was already moving, his footsteps determined as he crossed to the door connecting to his room. He reached for the handle, turning back to me for one brief moment.
“Stay here,” he ordered, his tone clipped. “Do not leave this room.”
“Sylum…”
He didn’t look back, disappearing on the other side, the door closing firmly.
The silence he left behind pressed heavy and suffocating.
Mrs. Ashby, ever dutiful, ushered the others away, even Nelly. “I must tend to her ladyship. Everyone out.”
One by one, they disappeared down the corridor, the sound of Sylum’s bedchamber door following them.
I sat frozen, my pulse pounding so loudly I thought I might faint.
Lydia. The east wing…
The east wing… where I had been the night before. Or believed I had been. Dreaming, walking, drugged—God, I didn’t know.
My stomach twisted violently.
I pressed a trembling hand to my lips, the bile already rising.
Could it have been sleepwalking? Or… something worse?
No no no.
The golden-haired woman beside Sylum in the corridor. The one who had held me. The one who laughed. The one I had hit while thrashing…
Had it been Lydia?
Mrs. Ashby moved about my room, prepping my bath, but I scarcely noticed.
She said nothing as I allowed her to wash the crusted blood from my skin.
