White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-17

The air in the hallway felt suddenly electrified, a suffocating pressure that seemed to draw the very oxygen from the corridor. Lucy stood just outside the library, her silhouette framed by the flickering candlelight, her eyes burning with an unholy, ancient fire. Alice had gone back to the party with a sweet, endearing parting kiss from her now husband, as soon as she was in the parlor Lucy appeared from the shadows.

"Tell her, Cornelius," she hissed, her voice a serpent’s coil. "Tell her about the nights in the dark, about the sweat and the shame of us. If you don't confess your sins, I will take everything. I will dismantle every brick of your dream. In this life, in the next, and in every wretched circle of hell between, I will be the shadow that strangles your happiness until you are nothing but dust."

Cornelius didn’t hesitate, he was done. He emerged from the library, his face twisting into a mask of pure, primal rage. He moved with the speed of a striking viper, his hand clamping around Lucy’s throat and slamming her backward into the stone wall with a thud that echoed through the hall.

His fingers tightened, his knuckles white with the force of his fury. "Listen to me, you pathetic, withered thing," he growled, his voice a low, terrifying vibration against her skin. "If I hear a single syllable pass your lips toward my wife—if I catch even a whisper of your poison reaching her ears—I will end your miserable existence myself. You have no idea what devotion is. You are a footnote; she is the entire book. Cross me again, and you will learn exactly how much I am willing to burn to keep her safe."

He shoved her away, disgusted, and turned back to the room where his bride waited, unaware that his own web of deception was already being unraveled by forces far darker than a jilted sister’s spite.

For Cornelius was not merely a rake; he was a master con artist, a man who had gambled with fate itself. Weeks prior, he had sought out a clandestine medium, paying a fortune in blood and coin to bind his soul to Alice’s. He had wanted an eternal tether, a mystical lock that would ensure they were never apart, in this life or the next. His possession knew no bounds. He thought he had trapped her in his love forever.

But he had underestimated the rot in the house, the rot that was his sister in law.

Lucy, driven to the brink of madness, had not merely been brooding; she had been practicing. She had spent the last month scouring forbidden grimoires, tapping into the dark, Victorian occultism that thrived in the shadows of London. She had cast a curse, a virulent, invisible miasma designed to turn his own obsession against him.

She smiled as he tightened his grip on her throat and then finally released her. She knew what would befall poor, handsome Cornelius. Lucy snapped her fingers and chanted her words, she sliced her palm open and chanted faster as she sealed the deal she made.

That night, as the house fell into a heavy, unnatural slumber, the spell took hold.

I lay in the four-poster bed, the silk cool against my skin, waiting for Cornelius, my husband. When he entered, the air in the room seemed to drop by twenty degrees. He didn't look like the man who had whispered of children and sanctuaries only hours before. His eyes were wide, vacant, and shimmering with an oily, unnatural haze.

He didn't speak. He didn't smile. He simply drifted toward the bed, his movements jerky, like a marionette guided by unseen, malevolent wires. She hadn’t seen him since the library, not really.

"Cornelius?" I whispered, a prickle of dread tracing my spine.

He didn't answer. His hands reached out, moving with a strength that was not his own. When they closed around my throat, there was no recognition in his gaze—only the cold, programmed directive of a curse that had been fed on jealousy and blood. As the life began to drain from my lungs, the last thing I saw was the shadow of Lucy standing in the doorway, a victor in a war I never knew I was fighting, watching as the man I loved turned into the instrument of my end. Taking away my breath, my heart beat slowing. The heart beat of our dying child, slowing. As I looked into his eyes, I saw tears. Cornelius was crying, he was repeating over and over “NO! NO!” But his hands never left my throat. The pressure never subsided. His tears dropped onto my face, hot and wet.

I reached up and caressed his face, I knew Lucy was behind it but I didn’t know why. What had I done to deserve this. As the black started taking over, my had fell from Cornelius face. His eyes widened, his tears heavier, his chanting and pleasing now sounding like a high pitch whistle. Then black was all I knew.