His expression, raw with fear and pain, bore no resemblance to the man who had dragged me here only moments before.
“No!” I screamed, scrambling backward, clinging to Mrs. Ashby’s arms with desperate strength. “No! Don’t let him near me! He’s insane!”
Mrs. Ashby stiffened beneath me. Her hand was firm against my cheek as she guided my frantic gaze to hers. She frowned deeply as she looked between me and Sylum, still hovering in the door.
“Your Grace,” she soothed, “it’s alright. Lord Blackthorn isn’t going to hurt you.”
I turned my wild gaze on Sylum then, his features taunt with pity and hurt as he slowly crossed the room.
A lie, I thought. He was playing the part of a doting husband while I knew better.
“He was just here!” I choked out on a harsh sob, squeezing my eyes closed as a wave of dizziness wrecked me. “He… he was here with me… and he pulled me so roughly…“
“Look at me,” she said firmly, cutting me off and forcing my attention back to her.
“Lord Blackthorn was not here,” she assured, each word deliberate like a hammer striking an anvil. “He was with me. We’ve been searching for you for the last hour. He was not here. Do you understand? I swear it.”
Her certainty undid me. My breath hitched. The room spunaround me.
Not real.
Not real.
Not…
But I remembered his breath on my cheek. His voice. His hands. His violence.
“Liar,” I whispered, trembling. “Y-you’re lying. You’re all in on it.”
I tried to pull away, but she held my face with surprising strength, her eyes locking onto mine until the room stopped pitching long enough for her voice to reach me.
“No, Your Grace. It is the truth.”
The doubt, the terrible, suffocating doubt, opened beneath my ribs like a vast pit.
I turned my head sharply to glare at Sylum, who hovered near us now, his hands outstretched but hesitant, his expression wracked with confusion and something deep, aching. Pity.
“I know what I saw,” I spat, my voice cracking. “You were here with me and you hit Poe!”
At that, Poe swooped low, circling above us in ragged arcs. “On this home by horror haunted! Thing of evil! Nevermore!”
Mrs. Ashby flinched.
Sylum’s eyes went wide, not with guilt but with stunned disbelief.
He looked at me as though I’d just driven a blade through his heart.
“Lucy…” His voice was hoarse. “I would never—”
“Don’t!” I shrieked, covering my ears as if that could muffle the pounding in my skull. “Don’t you dare lie!”
Mrs. Ashby pulled me tighter against her. “Your Grace, listen to me,” she said, her tone still calm but sharpened with urgency. “No one has touched you. No one was here. You are… unwell. You’re overwrought. You must breathe.”
Her words melted into my mind like acid.
Unwell.
Overwrought.
