“Butsomethinghas caused it!” Julianna cried out, exasperation etching runnels across her forehead.
“We are going in circles, and I am beginning to feel dizzy,” Prudence retorted with a sigh, lounging across the settee.
Teresa raised her hand politely. “It was never meant to be anything but a marriage of convenience. It was a kind gesture that has run its course.” She drew her handkerchief from her sleeve, twisting it in her hands. “And I must consider the possibility that he was… pretending to be a different sort of husband, for my sake, and could not pretend any longer. I am not what he wanted; I am just what fell into his lap.”
She thought of her name, crossed out at the bottom of that awful list, and imagined him taking his quill and drawing a thicker, more definite line through it. A strike of ink so dark it would obscure the entire façade of their marriage, removing it from his mind and any future they might have had together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Teresa 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. Howcould 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 evercould. 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.”
