The library drowns in darkness even at noon. Heavy curtains drawn against sunlight, gas lamps turned low. The room exists in perpetual twilight. I've come seeking evidence of murder.
Lydia's words have burrowed beneath my skin like larvae.
He killed her in the library.
I need to see the space, to map the geography of a death so gentle it might have been mistaken for sleep. To understand what I myself court with every breath in this place.
The shelves tower toward a ceiling lost in darkness, books bound in leather that feels obscenely warm beneath my fingertips. The air tastes of decay sweetened with knowledge, the particular rot of paper returning to dust.
I find the reading alcove—a chair positioned to catch light that no longer comes, a table bearing the ghost-weight of books no longer read.
My fingers trace the wood, searching for what? Bloodstains long since scrubbed away? The invisible imprint of a woman's final breath?
"Looking for something specific?"
Dorian materialises between shelves like smoke given form, and I understand he's been here all along, another fixture amongst the dying books.
"I thought you'd be sleeping." My pulse betrays what my voice won't—that quickening rhythm he must hear like a dinner bell. "It's midday."
"Old books require darkness. So do old monsters." He moves into the lamplight. "Besides, sleep brings dreams. I prefer the waking nightmares."
The honesty of it catches me unprepared. I force myself to speak the words that brought me here. "Lydia told me about the French bride. The one who died here."
Something flickers across his face—recognition, perhaps, or the weight of memory settling into place like dust on forgotten shelves.
"Alienor. Third wife." A pause that stretches between us, taut with unspoken truths. "I found her here."
The words hang strangely in the air. "Just... found?"
"Sitting in that very chair." His fingers trail across dusty spines with a gentleness that seems impossible for hands that have torn throats. "As if someone had simply turned her off like a lamp."
The implication settles into my bones with horrible clarity. "Lydia…"
He doesn't deny it. Doesn't confirm.
Simply regards me with those hollow eyes that have seen too many wives become corpses, too many corpses become memories.
"She told me you killed her," I say, needing to test the boundaries of this strange honesty.
"My sister tells many stories. Some of them are even true." He moves to the window, parts the curtain slightly. Light enters like an uninvited guest, illuminating dust motes that dance like souls trapped between worlds. "Alienor was... difficult."
"So Lydia removed the problem?" The words taste bitter.
"Lydia protects what she considers hers."
The curtain falls closed, darkness reclaiming its territory with eager fingers.
"I'm the only family she has left. The only constant in centuries of change. She'd rather see me poisoning myself with wine than risk another Isabelle."
I see him flinch at the name—minute, barely there, but I've learned to read the language of his pain.
"She loved Isabelle once," he continues. "Taught her to dance. Plaited her hair. Called her sister. Then Isabelle became my world. And Lydia became a mere shadow in her own home."
The words paint a picture I don't want to see—Lydia's fierce possessiveness suddenly making terrible sense. "So she hated her."
"She loved her. She hated her. With Lydia, they're often the same thing."
He turns from the window, and for a moment looks almost human.
"When Isabelle died, Lydia wept for days. Then she burned every gift she'd ever given her. Love and destruction, perfectly balanced."
I think of Lydia's burning eyes, her possessive rage, the way she circles Dorian like a beautiful vulture waiting for something to die. "And the other wives? Did she—"
"Some. Not all. I've killed my share." The admission comes without emotion, fact stated like weather. Rain falls. Snow melts. Wives die. "But Lydia... she has a gift for making murder look like an accident."
"You let her." Not a question.
"I let many things happen. Intervention requires caring, and caring requires..."
He trails off, moves to the desk where papers wait like patient graves.
"You should prepare for tonight's ball. The Ashfords expect entertainment."
A dismissal, but I don’t move.
"The Ashfords." I let the name roll off my tongue. "Will Lord Ashford regale us again with his thrilling accounts of tax collection? Or perhaps Lady Ashford will demonstrate another seventeen ways to fold a napkin whilst discussing the servant problem."
Something shifts in his expression—the faintest pull at the corner of his mouth that might, in another life, have been amusement.
"You've endured three of their dinners. Surely you've built immunity by now."
"To tedium? Never." I move closer to the desk, drawn by this unexpected moment of something almost like conversation. "Last week, Lord Ashford spent forty minutes explaining the proper storage of root vegetables. Forty. Minutes. I counted."
"Only forty?" Now there's definitely something like a smile threatening his features, though it seems to surprise him as much as me. "You were fortunate. I once endured a two-hour discourse on the varying qualities of ink."
A laugh escapes me—unexpected, genuine—and his expression shifts again, something flickering in those hollow eyes that looks almost like surprise.
"It's the last one," he says, quieter now. "Before they leave for the season. You'll survive one more evening of their particular brand of torture."
"Voice of experience?"
"Three centuries of experience." The almost-smile fades, reality settling back over his features like frost.
But I know something has shifted, minutely. Some tiny crack in the marble facade where humanity might still exist.
Something in the way he stands now—shoulders still bent beneath invisible weight, but perhaps sharing that weight for just a moment—holds me in place.
I cross the space between us without conscious thought, my body moving before my mind can catalogue all the reasons this is dangerous, foolish, wrong.
I wrap my arms around him from behind as if embracing stone that might shatter. I feel him go rigid beneath my touch.
"I'm sorry you lost her," I whisper against his shoulder, and mean it despite the jealousy that burns like acid in my throat.
For a moment, neither of us breathes—I from choice, he from nature. His hand comes up, covers mine where it rests against his chest that holds no heartbeat.
Not pulling closer, not pushing away. Just... acknowledging.
His fingers are ice against my warmth, but gentle enough to break something inside me I didn't know remained whole.
Then I leave him there amongst the books and shadows, surrounded by the carefully documented deaths of wives who thought they'd found ways to survive him.
But the feeling lingers like frost on skin—his hand over mine.
The doubt follows me through corridors that stretch toward evening like throats waiting to swallow: could he be a monster and a man?