Julia didn't scream. The sound was trapped in her throat, a choked, silent horror. She slammed the wardrobe door shut, her back hitting the solid wood as if to keep the grotesque image contained. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped thing, much like the robin.
You, too, can be made to sleep.
The message was not in ink, but it was as clear as the bloodstained note in the library. This was Alistair. This was his answer to her prying. It was a promise.
Her hands shook violently as she forced herself to move. She couldn't leave it there. She couldn't let Elsie or another maid find it. With a piece of scrap paper from her writing desk, she scooped up the small, broken body. It was feather-light, its death a weightless tragedy that felt heavier than stone in her hand. Avoiding the gaze of the portraits in the hall, she slipped out to a remote part of the garden and buried the bird beneath the roots of an old, gnarled oak, marking its grave with a single white stone.
The rest of the day passed in a haze of suffocating dread. Every creak of the floorboards, every shadow that shifted in her periphery, was Alistair. The house was no longer a place of secrets, but an active, breathing predator, and she was its chosen prey.
She skipped luncheon, claiming a migraine—a lie that felt perilously close to the truth, as a dull ache had begun to throb behind her eyes. The thought of facing Alistair across the table, of seeing his polite, handsome face and knowing the cruelty that lay beneath, was more than she could bear.
But she could not avoid him forever.
Evening descended like a shroud, and with it, dinner. The dining room was an echo chamber of unspoken tension. Alistair was the perfect host, speaking of mundane matters—the weather, a tenant's request, a book he'd recently acquired. Julia said nothing, pushing her food around her plate, the image of the dead robin superimposed over the roasted squab. The lie of Alistair's civility was a poison, and she could feel it seeping into her, making her sick.
After the meal, she sought refuge in the green parlor, hoping to lose herself in the dim, quiet space. The room was cast in shades of emerald and moss, the fading twilight painting long, eerie shadows on the walls. It had been one of Marian's favorite rooms. Julia could almost feel the ghost of her presence here, a faint scent of lavender and regret.
She was standing by the cold fireplace when the door clicked softly shut behind her.
"I was hoping I might find you here."
Alistair's voice was smooth, intimate. It curled around her like smoke. Julia didn't turn. She kept her eyes fixed on the empty grate, her hands clenched at her sides.
"This was Marian's sanctuary," he continued, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet as he moved closer. "She would come here to read. She loved the way the evening light fell upon the pages." He stopped just behind her. She could feel the heat of his body, smell the faint, clean scent of his cologne. "You seem distressed, Miss Harrow. Is something amiss?"
"I am merely tired, my lord," she said, her voice tight.
"Are you?" He moved to stand beside her, his handsome profile sharp in the gloom. His piercing blue eyes scanned her face with an unnerving intensity. "I think it is more than that. I have seen the way you look at him. At Silas Corwin."
Julia's blood ran cold.
"You think he loves you?" Alistair's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, a blade wrapped in velvet. He leaned closer, his breath warm against her ear. "He is very convincing, isn't he? All that fire, that poetry. That righteous fury."
He paused, letting the words hang in the air.
"He loved Marian, too. Desperately."
Julia flinched as if struck. She tried to step away, but he moved with her, cornering her against the cold marble of the mantelpiece.
"He loved her so much he could not bear to see her happy with me," Alistair murmured, his smile a chilling, predatory curve. "He couldn't stand that she chose this life, this house, over a life of poverty with him. His love became… an obsession. It soured."
His gaze held hers, triumphant and cruel.
"You should ask him how she died, Julia. Go on. Ask the penniless poet what happened when his love was not returned. Ask him how it all ended."
The implication was monstrous, a venomous seed planted directly in the fresh wound of her fear. He was twisting everything, turning Silas's grief into a weapon, painting him as a scorned, violent lover.
Julia felt a wave of nausea. She shoved past him, her only thought to flee, to put as much distance as possible between herself and his poison. His soft, chilling laughter followed her out of the room.
She ran.
Down corridors that seemed to stretch into infinite darkness, past portraits whose eyes followed her flight. She didn't know where she was going, only that she needed sanctuary. Her feet, acting on some instinct she didn't know she possessed, carried her down the cold stone steps to the Blackwood family chapel.
The air inside was frigid and smelled of stone dust and old, decaying hymnals. Moonlight streamed through a high, stained-glass window, casting a ghostly blue light over the stone altar and the empty pews. It was a place of ghosts, but for the first time, she felt they were preferable to the living.
She sank onto the front pew, her body trembling uncontrollably. The dead bird. The bloodstained note. Alistair's whisper. It was all a maelstrom in her mind, tearing her apart. Could it be true? Could Silas's fury at Alistair be a mask for his own guilt? The man who had kissed her with such fierce tenderness… could he be capable of such a thing?
"Julia?"
His voice cut through the darkness. Silas stood at the entrance to the chapel, a silhouette against the dim light of the hall. He must have followed her.
He walked towards her slowly, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. "I saw you run. What did he do? What did he say to you?"
She looked up at him, her vision blurred by unshed tears. The moonlight caught the sharp planes of his face, the worried furrow of his brow. She saw the man who had held her, who had vowed to protect her. But now, Alistair's poison was at work. She also saw a man obsessed with a dead woman.
"Tell me about Marian," she whispered, her voice cracking.
Silas froze, his expression hardening. "What about her?"
"How did she die?" Julia's voice gained a sliver of strength, fueled by desperation. "Alistair said… he said I should ask you."
The name was a curse. A muscle ticked in Silas's jaw. He closed the distance between them in two long strides, kneeling before her on the cold stone floor. He reached for her hands, but she pulled away.
"Julia, listen to me," he said, his voice low and urgent, laced with that familiar, raw fury. "Whatever that monster whispered in your ear is a lie designed to tear you apart. To isolate you. That is what he does."
"Then tell me the truth!" she cried, the sound swallowed by the chapel's oppressive silence. "You knew about 'O.' You knew, and you didn't tell me. You warned me away. What are you hiding, Silas?"
For a moment, he looked utterly defeated. The fury in his eyes was replaced by a profound, haunting grief. "I hide it because I failed," he confessed, his voice rough with emotion. "I failed her."
He finally took her hands, his grip firm, desperate. "Yes, I loved her. Before Alistair, before all of this. I was a fool with nothing but ink-stained fingers and rhymes to offer her. And he… he offered her the world."
His gaze was searing, pleading for her to believe him.
"She wrote to me, months before she died. She was miserable. Terrified. He wasn't just a husband, Julia, he was a jailer. She wanted out. She wanted to run. We made a plan." He swallowed hard, the memory clearly agonizing. "I was to meet her. We were going to disappear. But she never came. The next thing I heard, she was dead. A fever, they said. I knew it was a lie."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a tormented whisper. "I only ever wanted to save her, Julia. And I was too late. I have spent every day since wondering what I could have done differently. That is my truth. I swear it."
He held her gaze, and in his eyes, she saw not the guilt of a murderer, but the unending agony of a man who blamed himself for not stopping one. The fierce protectiveness she'd seen before was there, raw and exposed.
"He is trying to do the same to you," Silas murmured, his thumbs stroking the backs of her hands. "To possess you, to lock you away. But we still have a chance. A chance I never had with her. We can leave, Julia. Tonight. Right now. We can walk out of this house and never look back."
The offer was a lifeline. Freedom. A world away from the dead birds and the whispering threats. Julia looked at him, at the desperate hope in his eyes, and for the first time since opening the wardrobe door, she felt a flicker of that hope herself. She opened her mouth to answer, to say yes, to take his hand and run.
But the word was strangled by a sound from outside.
A scream.
It was high-pitched, piercing, and ragged with pure terror. It sliced through the night, echoing off the stone walls of the chapel, sharp and clear and utterly horrifying.
They both froze, their heads snapping toward the door. Another shout followed, then the sound of running feet, of panicked voices rising from the direction of the main courtyard.
Silas was on his feet in an instant, pulling her with him. "Stay behind me."
They raced from the chapel, the fragile intimacy of their moment shattered. The cold night air hit them as they emerged into the west wing corridor. Servants were rushing past, their faces pale with shock, all heading for the front of the house.
They burst out into the grand entrance hall, following the chaos into the main courtyard. The wrought-iron gates were thrown wide open. Rain had begun to fall, a cold, miserable drizzle that slicked the cobblestones, and in the distance, thunder rumbled a low, ominous warning.
In the center of the courtyard, illuminated by the frantic, swinging lanterns of the stable hands, a man stood.
He was drenched, his fine clothes soaked through and clinging to his frame. And he was covered in something dark that wasn't just rainwater. It glistened black on his coat, smeared across his face and dripped from his hands. Blood.
He threw his head back and laughed, a wild, unhinged sound that rose above the rising storm.
It was Lucien Blackwood, arrived days ahead of schedule.
And the horrors of Blackwood Hall had just been given a new, terrifying name.