His words did not answer her question. They swallowed it whole.
They hung in the air between them, a shroud of silk and ice, and Julia felt the fury in her chest curdle into something colder, something far more dreadful. He wasn't denying it. He was defining it. He was taking her terror, her violation, and polishing it like a family heirloom.
"You're becoming what this house remembers."
A possession. A ghost given flesh. A story he was writing on her skin.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to claw at that perfect, handsome face until she found the monster she knew was lurking just beneath the surface. But her throat was tight, her limbs heavy with a sudden, profound exhaustion. The fire of her rage had burned itself out, leaving only ash.
"You won't get away with this," she finally managed, the words a thin, brittle whisper.
Alistair's faint, sad smile never wavered. It was the smile of a god watching a child rage against the tide. "My dear Julia," he said, his voice a low, hypnotic murmur. "It's already been gotten away with."
He stepped back, a gesture of finality, and moved toward his desk. He was dismissing her. The audience was over.
She stood frozen for a moment longer, the silence of the study pressing in on her. The chaos from the kitchens had faded, replaced by the suffocating quiet of the house. A house that remembered. A house that wanted her to remember, too.
She turned and walked out, her back straight, her head held high. She would not let him see her crumble. Not yet.
***
Silas found her in her room, staring into the flames he had built earlier. He had dealt with Finch, handing the weeping, broken man over to two stern-faced groundsmen who looked as if they were escorting a lunatic to Bedlam.
He came to her side, his presence a solid, welcome warmth. He didn't speak, just knelt before her chair and took her cold hands in his. His touch was an anchor. Real.
"He admitted it," she said, her voice hollow. "Not in words. But he did."
Silas's jaw tightened, a muscle feathering along his cheek. "What did he say?"
She told him. The words felt like poison on her tongue. When she finished, Silas let out a harsh, bitter laugh that held no humor.
"Of course," he snarled, his grip on her hands tightening. "It's not murder if it's art. It's not madness if it's a legacy. He's a poet of decay, that man." He looked up at her, his eyes burning with a protective fire that momentarily warmed the chill in her bones. "We're leaving, Julia. Tonight. We pack what we can and we walk away from this tomb."
She shook her head, a slow, weary gesture. "And go where, Silas? Back to London? To my aunt, who will see this as proof that the Harrow madness has finally claimed me? The clause in the will…"
"Damn the will! Damn the money!" he bit out, his voice raw. "I'll work. I'll write. I'll shovel coal if I have to. I will not let him have you."
The conviction in his voice was a balm to her frayed soul. But a dark, stubborn thing was taking root inside her. A refusal. An unwillingness to be the frightened victim, the madwoman in the attic.
"If I run, he wins," she whispered. "He'll have me declared unfit, just as Evelyn planned. He and Howard will get everything. They will have successfully erased me, just like they erased Marian." She met his gaze, her own hardening. "No. I won't run from him. I can't."
Before Silas could argue further, a sharp, authoritative knock echoed at the door. They both started. Silas rose to his feet, positioning himself between Julia and the entrance like a guard dog.
"What is it?" he called out.
It was Miss Thorne's voice, thin and sharp as a needle. "Lord Blackwood requests Miss Harrow's presence in the grand hall. He has an announcement."
An announcement. The words felt like a death sentence.
***
The announcement was for a ball. A masquerade.
Alistair stood before the great hearth in the grand hall, a picture of solemn grace. Howard, Cordelia, and Lucien were arranged around him like vultures waiting for a feast. The remaining staff stood stiffly by the walls.
"In two nights' time," Alistair said, his voice resonating with false sorrow, "we will mark the six-month anniversary of my beloved Marian's passing. It would not do to let such an occasion pass in morbid silence. She adored life. She adored beauty." His gaze swept the room and landed, with unnerving precision, on Julia. "So we will celebrate her memory. A masquerade, just as she would have wished. A final, beautiful farewell."
The air thickened with hypocrisy. A ball. In a house of mourning. After the morning's violent, mad theatrics. It was a performance, and Julia was to be the star attraction.
Cordelia clapped her hands together, her face alight with a cruel, greedy excitement. "Oh, a party! How wonderful, Alistair. It's been so dreadfully dull."
Silas stepped forward, his body radiating contempt. "You can't be serious. This is grotesque."
Alistair's eyes, cold as a winter sky, shifted to him. "Mr. Corwin. You are, of course, a guest here. But only a guest. This is a family matter." The threat was clear: know your place.
He then turned his attention back to Julia, a charming, dangerous smile playing on his lips. "I trust you will join us, Julia. It would mean so much. To honor your cousin."
It was not a request. It was a command, wrapped in the silk of social propriety. To refuse would be to cause a scene, to appear unstable, ungrateful. To accept was to walk willingly into his trap.
She felt the eyes of everyone in the room on her. Waiting. Judging.
"Of course," she said, her voice steady, betraying none of the turmoil within. "I would be honored to celebrate Marian."
Alistair's smile widened. He had won the first move.
***
"He's going to kill you."
The words were stark, brutal, spoken in the desperate quiet of her bedroom. The door was locked, bolted, a futile gesture against the evil that seeped through the very walls of the house.
Silas was pacing again, a caged tiger. "This isn't a party, Julia. It's a stage. He's going to parade you in front of his influential friends, have you faint or scream or see another one of his manufactured ghosts. He will have a dozen witnesses to your 'instability.' By dawn, he'll have the doctors signing the papers."
She knew he was right. She felt it in her marrow. Yet, the stubborn refusal held fast. "And what is the alternative? To run, be caught, and have him tell the same story? That my grief drove me to delusion and I fled in the night? Either way, the story ends the same. At least this way, I face him."
He stopped pacing and came to her, his hands gripping her shoulders. His face was a mask of fear and desperate love. "Then we fight. We expose him."
"How?" she asked, the single word full of hopelessness. "With the word of a penniless poet and a woman he is already painting as mad? Finch is his creature. The staff are terrified of him. We have no proof. Only his word against ours."
Silas's shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of him, replaced by a deep, aching sorrow. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. He just held her, his body a shield against the encroaching darkness.
"I am so sorry, Julia," he murmured into her hair. "I am so sorry I ever let you come here."
"It's not your fault," she whispered into his shirt. "I had to know what happened to her."
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his thumbs gently stroking her cheeks. "I know." His expression was soft, full of a pain that mirrored her own. "But I cannot lose you, too."
He leaned in and kissed her. It was not a kiss of passion, but of desperation. A frantic, searching kiss that spoke of fear and the need to affirm life in a place so steeped in death. She kissed him back with equal fervor, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer.
The world outside this room, outside this embrace, ceased to exist. There was no Alistair, no Finch, no ghosts. There was only Silas. His warmth. The solid, real feel of his body against hers.
His hands slid from her face, down her neck, tracing the line of her collarbone. A shiver traced its way down her spine, a feeling so exquisitely alive it was almost painful. He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers, his breathing ragged.
"Let me stay," he whispered, his voice thick. "Tonight. Don't be alone."
She didn't answer with words. She couldn't. She simply guided him toward the bed, a silent consent. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach, but for a few hours, she wanted to forget it. She wanted to be held. She wanted to feel something other than terror.
He undressed her slowly, reverently, his eyes never leaving hers. The thin cotton of her nightgown pooled at her feet, leaving her bare in the flickering firelight. He looked at her not with lust, but with a kind of awe, as if she were something precious he was afraid to break.
He laid her down on the cool sheets, his body covering hers like a warm blanket. His lips found hers again, deeper this time, more demanding. His hands began a slow exploration, learning the landscape of her body, igniting small fires everywhere he touched.
He moved lower, his kisses trailing down her throat, across her chest, to the gentle swell of her stomach. She gasped as his fingers found her, slipping inside her with an easy confidence.
The world narrowed to a single point of pleasure. It was a feeling so intense, so overpowering, it blotted out everything else. He moved his fingers with a practiced, steady rhythm, watching her face, his eyes dark with concentration. The cold knot of fear in her stomach began to unravel, replaced by a coiling heat.
She arched against his hand, a soft cry escaping her lips. The feeling was building, a wave of sensation that threatened to pull her under. It was too much. It was not enough.
"Silas," she breathed, her voice a plea.
He leaned up and silenced her with a kiss, his tongue tangling with hers as his fingers moved faster, firmer. He pushed her higher, relentlessly, toward the peak. She clung to him, her nails digging into his shoulders, her body trembling on the verge of release.
And then, the wave crashed.
A blinding, shattering pleasure washed over her, so potent it stole her breath. Her body went taut, then boneless, a cry of pure, unadulterated release torn from her throat. It echoed in the quiet room, a sound of life, of defiance.
As the last tremor faded, she lay panting beneath him, her body slick with sweat, her mind blissfully, beautifully empty. He collapsed beside her, pulling her into the curve of his body, wrapping his arms around her.
He held her as she drifted into a sleep born not of drugged oblivion, but of sheer, physical release. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she felt safe. She felt real.
But even in sleep, in the warm circle of his arms, a sliver of ice remained deep within her. The masquerade was coming. And she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the soul, that she would be dancing with a monster.