My heart lurched violently.
Sylum.
He stood before me in the dim light of the corridor, dressed in his usual dark coat, hair slightly mussed, eyes shadowed. But the way he looked at me…
Too still.
Too sharp.
Too close to the edge of something unspoken.
I didn’t register the wrongness. Or perhaps I did, but the panic drowned it out.
Without giving him a chance to say another word, I thrust the locket into his chest, anger and fear gripping me.
“What is this, Sylum?!” I demanded, my voice cracking. “Why did Lydia have a locket of your hair?! Why?!”
He looked down at the locket, his expression unreadable. Slowly, he curled his fingers around it. His jaw clenched once, twice, so tightly the sinew trembled at the hinge. When he lifted his gaze again, the darkness in his eyes felt as if I stared into a void.
The air seemed to constrict around us.
“Lucy,” he crooned, but his voice lacked the steady warmth I was used to. It was taut. Coiled. “Why must you always meddle where you shouldn’t?”
My breath hitched as a shiver ran down my spine. “W-what?”
He grabbed my upper arm with swift, startling force, digginghis fingers into my skin.
Poe screamed above us, feathers exploding into a flurry.
“Thing of evil! Two shadows. One bone!”
Sylum’s hand snapped up, swatting at the raven until Poe was forced to vault upward into the rafters, beating his wings against the beams.
I recoiled, fury and shock rippling through me as I tried to shove against him, desperate to help Poe.
“Sylum stop! What are you—?!”
“Why couldn’t you simply behave?” he muttered, dragging me forward with terrifying ease. “Why couldn’t you follow the rules? It would have all been so… easy.”
His grip was bruising. His movements were unrestrained. Nothing like the man who kissed me with shaking tenderness only hours before.
I clawed at his arm, stumbling as the hall lurched again. “You’re hurting me! Please stop!”
But he didn’t stop until we reached the south wing—dark, unused, the air stale with dust and abandonment. He shoved a door open with his shoulder and thrust me inside before Poe could swoop down again.
The raven shrieked from the other side of the door as it slammed shut. “Lenore! Lenore!”
Inside the room, dust motes drifted through the air like falling ash. White sheets draped forgotten furniture, shapeless ghosts in the gloom.
Sylum released me abruptly. I stumbled backward, catching myself on the draped chair for balance just as another wave of dizziness slapped my vision sideways.
He straightened his coat, fixed his hair, and smoothed his expression with careful, almost calculated movements.
When he looked at me again, he was calm.
Too calm.
“Lucy,” he scoffed. Almost soothingly. “Have you been drinking your tea?”
