My possible murderer.
And I could not stop wanting him.
If he killed me, then let it be while I was still looking into his eyes.
—L
Chapter 22
Sylum made love to me several more times that night before I pretended to fall asleep.
I knew his pattern now as surely as I knew the rhythm of my own pulse. After midnight, he rose, dressed in silence, and left me behind as though he feared what I might ask of him if he lingered too long.
The mattress dipped. Fabric slipped over skin. His breath hitched once, then steadied into that quiet, purposeful exhale he used when slipping into the dark to commit whatever sin required the moon as witness.
I waited until the door clicked shut before opening my eyes.
The house still thrummed faintly with the echoes of the evening—hurried footsteps, lowered voices, and the unnatural hush that only follows tragedy. Lydia’s body hadbeen taken away hours ago. The coroner’s men shuffled through Blackthorn Manor with their lanterns and muttered superstitions, their boots leaving damp prints across the marble as they carried her out beneath the shroud.
We had all sat for supper afterward, a solemn, grotesque little tableau. Sylum at the head of the table, pale but composed. Isolde beside him, wearing her mourning expression like a piece of expensive jewelry.
And me, his Duchess, smiling softly. Nodding at the appropriate moments, my eyes lowered demurely whenever either of them looked at me too long.
All I had to do was pretend that my mind wasn’t reeling. All I had to do was behave so Sylum wouldn’t suspect me.
They discussed Lydia’s funeral arrangements over roasted pheasant and candied figs, Isolde sighing about propriety while Sylum insisted on covering the expenses. His voice, deep and steady, held the faintest tremor of guilt… or perhaps that was my imagination, sharpening every sound, twisting it into something meaningful and sinister.
Through all of it, I smiled. I agreed. I played the role of the calm, dutiful wife.
But I did not drink.
Not a single drop.
I lifted the wine glass to my lips, tilted it just so—enough to mimic the gesture, enough to ease their eyes away from me—but the liquid never touched my tongue. Icould feel it though, could smell it. Floral undertones and something bitter beneath the sweetness.
No doubt Sylum had poisoned it or perhaps Mrs. Ashby had laced it with Laudanum.
Only once Nelly had escorted me upstairs, loosening my gown and brushing out my hair with trembling hands, did I allow myself the smallest breath of honesty.
“Nelly,” I murmured as she smoothed the last curl over my shoulder, “I should like a cup of tea before bed.”
She froze, just for a moment, her eyes lifting to mine with quiet intrigue.
“Whose tea, Your Grace?” she asked.
“I would like you to make it,” I replied softly. “Only you.”
Relief and fear warred in her expression, but she nodded and slipped from the room.
Now, in Sylum’s bed, his scent still clinging to my skin, the sheets still warmed from his body, I lay awake, staring into the canopy’s velvet dark.
The house creaked and the wind whispered around the eaves as I counted to twenty, giving Sylum time to get ahead of me so I wouldn’t be noticed.
I drew the coverlet closer to me, Poe perched on the footboard like a feathered gargoyle watching over the unraveling of my thoughts.
I was not powerless. Not anymore.
If Sylum was poisoning me—if he was unraveling me thread by thread—then I would slip quietly into the underside of his life and discover the hand behind the blade.
