Page 35 of Never Love a Lord
“Oh, what have we done, my daughter?” Amicia whispered bitterly into Sybilla’s hair. “What have we done that we are now so betrayed and alone? He’ll come for us now, unguarded as we are. All these years, to come to this end.”
Sybilla felt as though her body had turned to icy stone. She could not weep, even silently like her mother. She could not comfort Amicia nor be consoled by her. She could not ask how they were betrayed or who was coming for them. She didn’t care.
It was her fault. Morys Foxe was dead and it was somehow entirely her fault.
Sybilla’s eyes snapped open, finally shaking loose the grip of the nightmare, but she made not a sound in her bed.
She was not alone in her chamber.
Sybilla heard the rattle-scrape again, coming from her table beneath the bank of windows, and she strained her eyes to try to make out the wooden surface, awash with the glow of the moon beyond the glass. She thought she saw a glimmer, and then something crashed to the floor.
Her eyes narrowed. She threw the coverlets aside and soundlessly swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, the cold air patrolling the floor like sentries swirling around her bare ankles, investigating her. On the floor just beyond the bedpost, Sybilla could make out the edge of something rounded. With a scrape so quiet she might have mistaken it for her own breath, it started to slip out of sight toward the foot of the bed.
Sybilla’s brows lowered. “I think not, Mother,” she said, and slid off the bed. In three steps she was around the piece of massive furniture, staring down at the miniature portrait Julian Griffin had given her hours ago.
It was stuck against the edge of the thick rug, wiggling in short jerks toward the hearth, where small flames occasionally perked. The shadow covering the center of the rug was dense, inky, rippled around the edge.
Sybilla leaned down and swiped up the miniature with one hand, ready for the ear-splitting wail that followed her action.
“No!” Sybilla shouted. “It’s mine! He gave it to me and you can’t have it!”
The shadow seemed to boil for an instant and then began to roll awkwardly toward her, clumsily gobbling up the space between them. Sybilla turned her back to it and walked to her table, determined to ignore it, even when the mumblings started in her ear.
When Sybilla refused to acknowledge the garbled warnings, the mumbles deteriorated into the screams once more, and Sybilla sat down in her chair, pulling her feet beneath her and pressing her wrists to her ears, her right hand still clutching the portrait of two girls little more than babies.
In a moment though, the screeching ceased, and it was as if the voice had squeezed beneath Sybilla’s wrist to whisper in her ear.
I gave you everything! I gave you Fallstowe! And you are going to hand it over so easily, so prettily, so nicely! Can you not trust me?
Sybilla dropped her hands to curl together between her chest and her drawn-up knees, the portrait resting over her heart. It was pointless to try to block her out.
She stared at the moon-drenched curtain wall in the bailey beyond her window. “Why?” she whispered. “Why, Mother?”
The voice stopped. The chamber fell silent.
“Why would you name me after a woman you hated so? I only did everything you ever asked of me. Have I not kept my promise?”
There was no answer, still.
Sybilla unfolded her hands and dropped her face into them. She had obeyed her mother in everything. Listened intently, performed the duties charged to her. She had kept Amicia’s dreadful secrets, carried her burdens, looked after her other children, retained possession of the castle. All at the expense of her own soul. She could call no one friend save her two sisters and old Graves. She was wanted by the Crown, and Sybilla knew now that she could not win that trial. Even the Foxe Ring had failed her.
And still her mother’s ghost drove her like a dumb beast.
Maman, what does my name mean?
Why, it means little Sybil, of course.
Sybil de Lairne had loved Amicia like a sister. The family had thought enough of the child to have her portrait made with their blood daughter. She had been raised with the manners and lessons of the nobility. And still, Amicia had hated Sybil de Lairne enough to try to destroy the entire family.
Maman, what does my name mean?
Why, it means little Sybil, of course.
She was not my sister!
Sybilla raised her face from her hands. “After all I have done,” she whispered aloud, wonderingly. “After all you have made me do, all I have forsaken for you. How could you hate me so when I was only a baby?”
Sybilla felt a hot track on her cheek and she reached up with a frown. Wet. She was crying.
