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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

T eresa teetered on the windowsill of the tower, a wild wind whipping the drapes into lashing wings that would not help her to fly. The scent of smoke tainted the air, but Cyrus could not yet see the thick, dark coils, nor feel the fearsome heat of the blaze.

“Meet me on the other side, my love!” she called out, leaning too far over the edge, wearing a smile so wide that Cyrus’ heart ached to see it. “I shall not be long!”

“No!” Cyrus shouted up from the gardens below, his feet sinking into an ocean of grass, his heart thundering so hard it would surely crack his ribs to escape. “My love, no! Do not move! Do not come to me! Stay away from me, and you will be safe!”

Her laughter cascaded down from that great height, a halo of molten orange suddenly illuminated the peak of the tower. “Stay away from you?” she called down. “Do not be silly, my love. How could I possibly stay away from you? Wait for me, my darling. I am coming to you!”

“No! No, I do not want you to! You cannot, love!” he begged, struggling to get his legs to move. “Please, my love!”

Like a muddy marsh relenting against the strain of a stuck wanderer, the strangely liquid grass let go of Cyrus’ foot. He stumbled at the sudden release, falling onto his hands as smoky black serpents slithered over the lawn toward him, tongues licking.

With Teresa in danger, he scrambled forward, dragging himself on his hands and knees toward a small door at the bottom of the tower.

Gathering all his strength, he crawled to that door, his body pulsing with a pain he could not understand.

He felt broken, yet he did not remember receiving a beating.

Wrenching open the tower door, a spiraling staircase awaited him. He peered up, but could not see the end of those curving steps. Indeed, they might never end, but with Teresa’s voice still calling to him on the wind, he began to run as if his life depended on it.

He took the steps as fast as he could, staggering, stumbling, scraping his legs and arms, determined to make it to the top of that tower before he lost her.

“Stay where you are, Tess!” he shouted, his lungs on fire, his broken body failing him with every step he took.

He ran up and up, the staircase playing tricks on him, continuing on where it should have ended. An unyielding struggle to get to his wife in time.

At the very moment when he thought his body would give up, leaving him crumpled on the stairs while his mind tried to reach Teresa, a door suddenly appeared before him. A door that made no sense, for it was embedded in the wall of the tower. Through it, there could be nothing but empty air.

“Where did you go, my love?” Teresa’s voice cried out, so close that his heart leaped and lurched, all at once. “Are you waiting for me? I shall join you soon!”

He threw himself at the door, fumbling for the handle, turning it with all of his might… but it would not open. It was locked.

“Tess! Tess, my love—stay where you are. Step back from the windowsill.” He slammed his shoulder into the door. “I am coming to you, my love. Stay where you are.”

With inhuman strength, he barged the door again and again, long after his shoulder should have disintegrated. There was pain—he was faintly aware of it—but he did not care as he poured everything he possessed into shattering the last barrier between them.

Just then, a blood-chilling scream cut through the air. A scream he knew. A scream he would never forget, for as long as he lived. A scream that haunted him far more than any fire or ghosts ever could. It was the scream of losing everything, of not getting there in time. It was Teresa’s scream.

At the same instant, the door erupted in an explosion of splinters, sending him sprawling into the impossible room beyond.

Ahead of him, the scorched drapes flapped, but there was no one standing on the windowsill anymore. Smoke slithered up and over the lip, pouring into the room like black water.

Forcing himself to his feet, Cyrus ran to the window… and as he looked down, his own scream filled the night, ricocheting between the curved walls of the tower, shivering downward to the limp and lifeless body that lay crooked on the grass.

I could not save her. I did everything, and I still could not save her.

“You need to wake up now,” a voice said softly from behind him, a gentle hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “This dream is not the truth, my dearest boy. Come now, Cyrus, you must wake up.”

He did not want to turn. “I killed her.”

“No, you did not,” the voice replied. “You would never harm her.”

“But I am cursed,” he said quietly, knowing who belonged to that voice. It had been a long time since she had come into one of his dreams. “I was cursed the day that I was born.”

The hand tightened on his shoulder. “My darling boy, there is no such thing as curses. As for the day you were born—you were my blessing. From the moment I first felt you kick, you were beloved. From that moment on, all I wanted in the world was for you to grow healthy and strong, and for you to find happiness.”

“I cannot have it,” he replied, shaking his head. “If I love her, if I lower my guard, she will be taken from me, just as you were taken from my father.”

“Oh, sweet boy, I died because God decided it,” the voice of his mother urged.

“It was a choice between you and me, one of us destined for heaven, and I decided it was to be me. So, my darling son, do not squander the gift I gave. Do not waste this life of yours being miserable and alone. Wake up, Cyrus. Wake up.”

All of a sudden, the hand upon his shoulder yanked him backward, a strong grip shaking him so hard that his teeth rattled. He twisted his head to get a glimpse of his mother, but the smoke had obscured that dear angel, as her vigorous hands continued to shake him.

His eyes snapped open to find two faces looming over him.

“Wake up!” Silas barked, as Cyrus realized it was not his mother at all who was shaking him, but his friend.

“I think he is awake,” Anthony said, squinting down at Cyrus. “Darnley? Darnley, are you well?”

Cyrus batted away Silas’ hands. “What are you doing, man? Have you gone mad?”

“We were about to ask you the same question,” Anthony replied, frowning. “We knocked, but no one answered, so we broke in. When we did, we found you here, slumped in your chair, and—honestly—feared the worst. It did not sound like you were having a particularly pleasant nap.”

Cyrus shook his head, but it did nothing to clear the haze. He had been drinking for three days, had not slept more than a few hours, and when he did sleep, he had been having such nightmares that only more liquor could soothe him.

It was not my mother. The realization stung, as he leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes.

The voice in his nightmare had been his exhausted, fractured mind, taking pieces from her diary and putting them into the mouth of a figment. Her hand on his shoulder had been Belinda’s hand, on the day that Teresa left Darnley Castle.

He had only found that diary after his father and grandfather had died: a precious old book that he kept in a wooden chest, up in the tower.

He retreated there sometimes, just to read passages from his mother’s life, getting to know her through the words she had written: her joys, her fears, her hopes, her humor, her affection, her kindness.

Teresa is safe. The second thought soothed the sting of the first, freeing him temporarily from the crushing vision of seeing her, lifeless, on the grass.

“I came here to be alone,” he growled at his friends. “The locked door should have been an indication that I do not want company.”

Anthony snorted. “Well, that is your tough luck, because we are not going anywhere.”

Scratching his stubbled jaw, Cyrus raised his gaze and frowned. “How did you even know where to find me? I told no one of my intentions.”

“A worried individual took the liberty of sending for us,” Silas replied, settling down in a nearby armchair. “He informed us of your unexpected… condition and also told us that ‘the townhouse at Bath’ actually means the hunting lodge.”

At once, Cyrus knew who had revealed his location. “Mr. Brewster sent for you?”

“I told you he would guess!” Anthony groaned. “And the poor man swore us to secrecy. Pleaded with us not to tell you that it was him.”

“He is deeply concerned about you, Darnley,” Silas said more firmly. “And after hearing what he had to tell us, so are we.”

“For one thing,” Anthony chimed in, “you have never been able to stomach your liquor. I am astonished you are still breathing if you have imbibed the contents of all these empty bottles.”

Cyrus squinted around him, noting the bottles his friend was referring to, scattered wherever there was room: on side tables, on the floor, on the shelves, on the mantelpiece.

The hunting lodge was a mess, torn apart through bouts of rage and violent grief, as if a terrible storm had blown through it.

“Just because I usually choose not to imbibe to excess does not mean I am not capable of doing so,” he replied crisply, a little embarrassed that his friends were seeing his hunting lodge in such a state.

And him.

He could not even blame Mr. Brewster for summoning his friends.

If he had been in the gardener’s shoes, he would have been worried too.

Indeed, he suspected that his friends might have arrived in the nick of time, for if he had one more of those nightmares, if he woke up one more time without Teresa beside him, he knew he would lose his mind entirely.

Why did you have to come into my life, Tess? Why did you have to make it so that I can no longer be alone?

For his entire life, solitude has been his escape, his comfort. Now, he could not even manage three days, the loneliness like a rock upon his back, getting heavier with each setting and rising of the sun. Soon enough, it would crush him.