Page 11 of What Lies Beyond the Veil

As soon as we'd stepped over the threshold onto the polished stone, veined with gold, Loris released me and turned his face downward toward the floor as I stumbled to catch my footing. I lifted my hand to rub at my elbow, the skin blooming with a bruise. Loris watched from the corner of his eye, his face pinching as he witnessed the show of vulnerability for a moment.

The betrayal lingered between us, even knowing what he would choose if forced to decide between his affection for me and his duty to Mistfell. I’d only deceived myself when I tried to convince myself I didn’t care. The hurt made my throat tight, leaving me to swallow against it as I tore my eyes from his and looked around the room I was too familiar with.

"Leave us," Lord Byron barked as he stepped into the room, dismissing the Mist Guard from our presence for what came next. For the punishment that had to follow.

“What do you propose I should do with you for your continued disobedience, Miss Barlowe?” he asked the moment the doors to the library closed behind the retreating guards, sealing me into the room that I’d come to dread more than anything. I’d come to hate this place for the association it bore with my own pain and the depravity of Lord Byron’s actions within those four walls.

Books lined the ornate, wooden shelves. Stacked to the ceiling with generations worth of knowledge that required ladders to access. Knowledge that Lord Byron himself could very rarely be bothered to read; his focus on the present and growing his own power within the Kingdom demanded too much of his time.

His desk sat at the back edge of the room, parchment laid out on top next to his bottle of ink and quill. I’d spent far too many nights bent over the surface, my nails gripping the edge of the smooth, polished wood as I listened to the whistle of his switch cutting through the air, waited for the fire of his strike.

How many nights had I spent reading the texts he assigned to me, filling my head with the chastity of The Mother and the consequences for sin, while he wrote letters to the King in Ineburn City? I’d lost count long ago, and something like desolation made my chest throb.

He moved to the decanter on his desk, calmly pouring himself a glass of red wine. With his back to me, he reached up and unclasped his cloak, draping it over the chair beside his desk. “I would never assume myself worthy of determining my own punishment, my Lord,” I said, biting my tongue to keep from worsening whatever might be coming.

He poured another glass of wine, turning and holding it out to me. “Drink,” he instructed. I stepped forward, confusion furrowing my brow as I closed the distance between us. In all my nights spent in the library with him, he’d never offered me wine. “It will help you relax, and for tonight, I think that is needed.”

It would dull my senses too much, according to him, and vertigo made the room spin as I closed the distance between us and accepted the glass from his hand. What kind of torment did he have planned where this was necessary in his mind?

“I’m sure you must have questions,” he said, leaning back until he rested against his desk with his arms crossed over his chest. I took my first sip of wine, the bitter notes making my face pinch.

I nodded, not lending voice to any of them. I knew better than to assume this was an invitation to question his motives, as if I had any understanding of the games he played.

“Always so curious. Sit,” he said, gesturing to the chair directly in front of him. I obeyed, lowering myself into it as he refilled his glass and took out yet another one to fill. “You get one question, Estrella. That is the extent of my kindness after your behavior today.”

I swallowed, taking another sip of my wine as I met his harsh stare. “Why did you not send me to be trained with the Ladies of the Night? Why didn’t the physician report me as impure?” I asked, catching myself before I could continue on. The urgent thoughts running through my head demanded attention, and perhaps the smartest question to ask would have been about the High Priest’s plans for me in the name of The Father.

But I couldn’t think about that, about the possibility of dying in the same way my father had years ago. Not if I wanted to keep breathing, to keep functioning until the moment of my death arrived.

“That was two questions,” Lord Byron said, raising an eyebrow as he scoffed. “But the answer is the same for them both.” I heaved a sigh of relief, hoping this would mean he wouldn’t penalize me for my impudence. He pulled a small vial out of his pocket, staring at it for a moment in thought before he twisted the cork out of the top and placed it on the desk. “You were always a pretty girl.” He tipped the vial over, pouring the amber liquid into the third glass of wine. The bittersweet aroma of belladonna filled the air as he emptied the vial into the glass, lightening the color of the wine a fraction.

“My Lord,” I murmured, my voice hushed as my body went still. A dose of belladonna like that would be lethal, would make certain I never saw the morning come. He lifted it from the desk, stepping around me and moving toward the library doors. He knocked on them, waiting until a servant pushed them open and accepted the wine from him without a word. She left the library, closing the doors behind her as Byron turned back toward me and stood beside my chair.

“She was meant to die slowly, gradually, over the years so that no one would suspect anything, but it appears we have run out of time,” he said, running the backs of his knuckles over the side of my cheek as I tried to process what he was saying.

I kept my mouth shut, not asking the question that didn’t concern me. Whoever he’d sent that poison to, I couldn’t let my curiosity prevent me from having the answers to what actually mattered to my life.

He waited, smirking down at me when I bit my tongue. “I prevented the physician from reporting you and didn’t send you to train as a Lady of the Night because that would have interfered with a plan that I’ve been working toward for a very long time.” He reached over, capping the vial of poison and depositing it into the waste bin beside his desk. “You would have ruined everything had I not intervened.”

“Lady Jaclen—” I said, snapping my mouth shut before the question could come. My tongue burned with the force of my bite, my hands trembling where I clasped them on my lap.

“Will be dead before morning,” her husband said, leaning back onto his desk once more. He stretched his hand out and caught my chin, leaning forward until his face was only a breath away from mine. “Do you understand now, Estrella?”

I nodded, squeezing my eyes closed as the horror of his intentions took root inside of me. I’d always thought myself safe from that kind of attention, so long as he never discovered I was not a virgin. Another man would take me in that way, but I’d thought myself safe from him, at the very least.

I’d never truly been safe at all.

“Why did you allow it to continue?” I asked, risking the next question.

He grinned, something evil lurking in his eyes, and I knew that whatever came next would horrify me. “Your virginity never mattered to me, though taking it would have been enjoyable. That is the High Priest’s prerogative alone. If anything, your Mist Guard saved me the trouble of listening to you cry during your first time. Now I needn’t worry about any of that nonsense, because he already broke you in. I might have arranged for it to happen myself, in time.”

“But the High Priest said The Father has plans for me. I hardly think any of that matters now,” I argued, trying to push away the image of what might have come. For once, the idea of being sacrificed to the Veil wasn’t the worst horror I could imagine. “You can’t make me your mistress if I’m dead.”

“I wouldn’t need to kill Jaclen for you to become my mistress,” he said, grabbing a cloth off his desk. A bowl of water sat beside it, and he dipped it into the liquid as he lifted one of my shaking hands off my lap. “I need her to die so that you can become my wife.”

I flinched, the agony of those words striking me like a physical blow. I couldn’t be the Lady of Mistfell. I wouldn’t long survive a life with Byron as my husband—my days and nights dominated by his demands and his company.

“I’ve shocked you. Why did you think I brought you here and taught you to read? Why did you think I taught you the decorum of a lady at great expense to myself? My whore would not need to have such abilities,” he said, pressing the cloth into one of the wounds the twilight berries had left me with the day before.

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