Page 419 of Flirting with Darkness

Asylum!

My pulse thuds in my neck. “Father! Please. I am not ill. I am not mad. You must listen to me. It was a fae king our family trapped all those years ago.”

He nods, a sadness growing in his gaze. “Yes, my dear. You’ve said that already.”

“Father, please. I know what I experienced. I know it like I know the scripture.” My fists ball in the folds of my skirt. “Please, you must believe me. I—I’m not mad.”

He grimaces before coming to me and taking both my hands in his. “Sweet girl, I think maybe it’s best if we go down to the cellar together and look for ourselves. How does that sound?”

“I can’t say I appreciate your patronizing tone, but I’ll be happy to go down there and prove you wrong.”

He nods, sadness still etched in every line of his face as he helps me off the small sofa in his study.

The trek through the manor and to the cellar door is like a death march but so much worse than the one through the fae woods. That was just my life.

This?

This is my father’s respect. His faith in me.

I know what I’ll see. The boards splayed on the ground, the lock opened, and the chains in the dirt. Exactly as it was before breakfast.

Or like my dress and the scratches on my face, the chest may well be as it had been before, locked and solid.

Whatever it is, I have to see it for myself.

“After you, dear,” he says when he opens the cellar door.

One careful step after the other, I descend to the packed dirt cellar and stop short in front of the intact chest.

I don’t know how long I stand there staring at it, but it’s Father’s gentle voice that breaks the spell the twelve-sided chest boards have me in.

“See, my sweet girl? Everything is as it should be.”

He stands next to me, hand on my shoulder, as he too stares at the chest. “I’m so sorry I didn’t see the signs sooner. I should have known this duty was wearing on you. Eating at your mind. The fastidiousness. The routine. It was all to keep the demon’s will at bay, wasn’t it?”

I shake my head, blonde waves falling in my eyes.

He’s not wrong.

But he’s not right either.

“I’m not crazy, Father. Please, I desperately need you to believe me.”

“Sweet girl, how can I believe it when the evidence to the contrary is right before us?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping, willing this awful nightmare to end.

But when I open them, my father stands before me, heartache all over his face. And the chest remains intact.

“You believe in the scriptures without proof. With no physical evidence to support them. You believe the Mother and in her holy sacrament. But you weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”

“Yes, but that’s different, Liesl.”

“How? How is it different, Father?”

“Faith, daughter. It’s faith.”

“And that is what I’m asking of you right now. Have faith in the woman you’ve known her whole life. The daughter you taught to be a Keeper. Have faith that I’d know when and if my mind turned against me.”

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