You must understand something before we go further:
I did believe Sylum was killing me. Slowly, tenderly, relentlessly.
And yet—God forgive me—I wanted him. I needed him. I reached for him in every lucid moment as though he were the only thing keeping my body tethered to itself.
I know how this sounds.
What sort of woman turned to the very hands she feared would end her life? What creature seeks solace in the arms of her suspected executioner? What sane woman allows the man she believes is poisoning her to press her against a door and make passionate, desperate love to her?
The answer, dear reader, is simple:
A woman who loves him.
A woman unraveling.
A woman who would burn on the altar of her own longing if it meant he would touch her once more.
I am not proud of it—though perhaps I should admit that pride had very little place left in me.
Because when he touched me—pressed me back against the door, kissed me as though he meant to breathe my soul back into my breaking body—I forgot the poison. The fear. The house whispering my name. Elizabeth’s ghost. Lydia’s lifeless body on the other side…
Everything.
For a few trembling minutes, I remembered only that I was his. And if I am being terribly, horrifyingly honest, I did not feel like a victim in his arms. I felt… saved. Even as he was destroying me.
Edgar Allan Poe would call that a paradox. I call it devotion.
You must promise not to hate me for this next part—but I liked the way he held me. I liked the way he trembled for me. I liked the desperate hunger in him, the kind that feels like worship if you tilt your head just so.
Perhaps that ismadness.
Perhaps that is desire.
Perhaps they are the same thing.
When I looked at him—when I heard the weight of his breath, felt the ghost of his mouth against my throat, or the way he whispered that he would lose himself without me—I knew this terrible truth:
If Sylum was my doom, then I would meet it gladly. If he was my executioner, I would kneel with love in my throat. If he meant to end me, then I wanted to feel his hands on me until the final breath left my body.
Does that make me a masochist?
Yes.
Unquestionably.
But what is a masochist if not a lover whose longing outweighs her fear?
And what is fear, anyway, when held beside love?
Even now—even now—when I recall that night, I feel the tremor of him in my bones, the memory of his weight, the warmth of his breath along my collarbone. These are the pieces of reality I clung to when everything else dissolved.
He was the last solid thing in my world.
My rock.
My anchor.
My beloved.
