Dawn breaks like a wound across the sky. I haven't slept since Fergus melted back into the shadows and I burnt Elias's letter.
One day. One day to choose between the slow poison of Wintergrave and the quick death that might wait beyond its walls.
The breakfast table stretches before me like a morgue slab. I sit alone—the vampires sleep whilst the sun reigns, however weakly.
Only the human servants move through the halls, and they avoid my eyes as if my indecision might be contagious.
Marjorie brings tea that tastes of nothing. The old cook's hands shake as she pours, and I see decades of survival written in those tremors.
"You've lasted forty years in service here," I say.
Marjorie laughs bitterly. "Lasted, yes. Though what's left of me bears little resemblance to the girl who arrived." She sets the teapot down with deliberate care. "Some chains we choose, my lady."
She leaves me alone with tea growing cold.
I sit there, staring at the untouched breakfast, and a treacherous thought slithers through my mind: I'll miss him.
The shock of it makes me drop my teacup, porcelain shattering against stone. How did this happen? When did the monster wearing my husband's face become something I might mourn?
No. I cannot think this way. Not with freedom waiting at midnight.
The gardens call me when the sun has set. I walk amongst the dead roses, and there, beneath the skeletal arbour, stands Lydia.
Waiting. Always waiting, as if she knows every thought before it forms.
"Planning a stroll?" Lydia's voice drips honey over poison. "How refreshing. Though I'd avoid the borders if I were you. The wild vampires have been... restless lately. Three servants tried to flee last month. We found pieces. Eventually."
She knows, I think, ice flooding my veins. Somehow, she always knows.
"I was admiring the roses," I lie. "How they're beautiful even in death."
"Everything here is beautiful in death." Lydia moves closer. "It's the living things that disturb the aesthetic. The breathing, bleeding, hoping things. They never quite fit, do they?"
Before I can respond, she glides away, keeping to the darkest paths while my mind reels with the weight of warnings.
Night drags me to the one place I shouldn't go—down, always down, into the bowels of Wintergrave where my husband slowly murders himself one sip at a time. The cellar breathes around me, damp and diseased, each step a small betrayal of whatever survival instinct still clings to my bones.
I find him there, not drinking this time but staring at the bottles like they hold answers to questions he's afraid to ask.
He doesn't turn when I enter, but his shoulders tense—that preternatural awareness that makes me wonder if he can hear my heartbeat, my thoughts, my plans.
"You're quieter than usual," he observes. "Contemplation doesn't suit you."
"How would you know what suits me?" The words taste of bile and bitterness. "You've never looked at me long enough to know."
He turns then, and I see it—the way his hands tremble before he clasps them behind his back. The poison is winning.
Good. Let him rot from the inside. Let him taste what mortality feels like.
"I know you're planning something." His voice carries weary certainty. "I can smell it on you. Fear mixed with hope. It's a particular scent of your blood in veins—I've encountered it before."
Isabelle. Her ghost stands between us even here in this tomb of wine bottles.
"Would you stop me?" The question tears from my throat before wisdom can catch it.
He laughs—if you can call that sound laughter. "Stop you?" He tilts his head, studying me with those eyes that have gone dull as old coins. "No, my dear wife. I'd stand at the windows and watch you run. Watch you discover what waits beyond these walls for girls who believe freedom exists anywhere but in the grave."
"You'd let me die."
"Gladly."
No hesitation.
I stand there, frozen in place as surely as if he'd driven a stake through my heart. My body trembles with understanding. He means it. Every syllable. He would watch me die and feel nothing but relief.
He turns back to his bottles, dismissing me as easily as one might dismiss a servant.
"Even your hatred for me is really just love for her," I whisper.
I walk away before he can respond, before I can see if my words found their mark.
Back in my chambers, I stare at the blue walls that were meant to be mercy.
Gladly.
He would watch me die gladly.
My hands won't stop shaking.
Elias offers salvation. Escape. A chance to matter to someone.
But all I can think about is the word gladly falling from Dorian's lips like the only honest thing he's ever said to me.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars, until the pressure becomes something other than this hollow aching in my chest where a heart should be. Where a heart was, before this place, before him, before I became nothing but a ghost haunting my own life.
Enough.
I find Mira in the servants' quarters, pull her into an empty room. Her eyes widen at my appearance.
"My lady?" Her voice carries careful concern, the kind reserved for people who might shatter if handled too roughly.
"I'm ready," I tell her, though the words taste like lies. "Help me prepare."
Her face floods with relief that makes me feel worse. Because I'm not running toward freedom.
I'm running from the terrible realization that I care what happens to the monster in the cellar, drowning himself in pomegranate wine.
Darkness falls. Mira helps me into a dark cloak, tucks practical clothes into a small bag, whispers prayers neither of us believe anymore.
"It's time," Mira breathes as the clock approaches midnight. "Fergus will be waiting."
We slip through servants' passages. Down, down, down to the garden door that promises escape.
"I'll go first," Mira whispers. "Make sure the path is clear."
She slips through the door like a shadow, disappearing into the darkness beyond. I count to ten, then twenty, waiting for her signal that never comes.
Perhaps she's already at the fountain. Perhaps Fergus has her, and they're waiting for me to follow.
The door creaks as I open it wider. Cold air rushes in, carrying the scent of snow and something else—something wild and hungry and patient. I step into the garden.
Take one breath of midnight air. Another. My foot crosses the threshold—
A hand closes around my wrist. Not violent. Not gentle. Inevitable. Dorian stands in the doorway, and in his eyes I see it clearly: He's been waiting here all along.
"Going somewhere, little wife?"