Read Chapter 18: The Lie Unravels

The summons came not as a note but as a shriek—Agnes, the Dowager’s lady’s maid, her face the color of curdled milk, gripping Cordelia’s arm in the morning hall. “My lady, she’s fallen. The Dowager—she won’t wake.”

Cordelia did not stop for a bonnet. She ran through the east corridor with her skirts gathered, her heart hammering against the memory of her grandmother’s cool, knowing hand on her cheek the day of the wedding. Whatever the old woman had done, whatever bargains she had struck in shadow, she was still flesh and blood. Still the last anchor of the Ashworth name.

The Dowager lay propped on lace pillows in her darkened chamber, her skin a sickly wax, her breath a shallow flutter. The physician—old Dr. Pettigrew, who had delivered half the parish—stood at the bedside, shaking his head.

“A wasting fever,” he murmured. “But there is something… strange. Her pulse races, then ceases. As if her very spirit fights a weight upon it.”

Cordelia knelt at the bedside, taking the Dowager’s cold, liver-spotted hand. The old woman’s lips moved, a whisper too faint to catch. Cordelia leaned closer.

“…tincture,” the Dowager breathed. “The tincture… I took it again.”

Cordelia’s blood went cold. Mother Vetch’s words rang in her ears: *Your grandmother stole it. Used it on herself.* The tincture that erases memory. The tincture that steals the self to save it.

“How much?” Cordelia demanded of Agnes.

The maid wrung her apron. “She’s been taking it for weeks, my lady. A drop each night. But last night… she doubled the dose. Said she had a terrible dream of a girl with yellow hair, and she could not bear to remember her.”

*A girl with yellow hair.* The miniature. Emmeline Marlowe’s daughter.

Cordelia pressed her brow to her grandmother’s cold hand. “Why did you do it, Grandmother? What could you not bear to remember?”

The Dowager’s eyes flew open—milky, unfocused, but suddenly alert with a fever-bright terror. Her grip on Cordelia’s wrist was startling in its strength.

“Cordelia.” The name came out like a confession. “You used it. On your husband.” It was not a question.

Cordelia hesitated only a breath. She had told everyone the opposite—that she had tried and failed, that the Earl was immune. But here, at the edge of her grandmother’s life, the lie tasted like ash. She shook her head. “I did not.”

The Dowager’s eyes narrowed. “Liar. You think I cannot smell it on you? The traces of the gift, spent. You used your power on him, Cordelia. You used it to bind him that first night in the garden.” Her voice cracked. “I have made a hundred such bargains. I know the scent of a broken vow.”

Cordelia’s throat tightened. It was true. In the first weeks of the marriage, desperate and furious, she had attempted the old Ashworth charm on him—a small weave of desire, meant to soften his coldness. It had failed; he had been immune, as he was to all magic. She had told herself it did not count because it did not work. But she had *tried*. She had bent her gift toward love.

“It was only once,” Cordelia said, her voice small. “And it failed. He is immune, Grandmother. It did not touch him.”

The Dowager’s laugh was a hollow, terrible thing. “Oh, my dear. The curse does not care whether it touches him. It cares only that you *tried*.”

A cold dread pooled in Cordelia’s belly. “What curse?”

The Dowager’s face contorted, and for a moment she was not the iron matriarch but a frightened girl. “You think I stole the tincture to forget some petty crime? I stole it to forget *my own daughter*.”

Cordelia’s breath stopped. Her mother had died when she was six—a quiet death, a lingering illness, or so she had been told.

“Your mother,” the Dowager rasped, “was not ill. She was cursed. She loved your father with all her heart, and she was too proud to ask me how to walk the path safely. She used her gift to make him love her back.” The old woman’s eyes squeezed shut. “And when her first child was born—a girl, a perfect little girl—the child did not draw breath. The curse took it. The curse takes what we love most when we use magic for love.”

Cordelia’s mind reeled. A dead sister. A firstborn taken.

“But I was born,” Cordelia whispered. “I lived.”

“You were her second. She had learned her lesson. She begged me for guidance, and I told her the only truth I knew: never use the gift in love, and you may keep what love you find.” The Dowager’s hand shook. “Your father never knew. He thought the first child was a stillbirth, a tragedy of nature. And when your mother died—she was not ill, Cordelia. She chose the tincture. She chose to forget your father, to forget loving him, because the grief of the first child was killing her. But a love that is erased is not a love that is safe. The curse followed her, even into forgetting.”

Cordelia felt the world tilt. Her mother—the gentle, distracted woman of her childhood—had erased her own love. Had chosen oblivion over a living heart.

“And my marriage,” Cordelia breathed, her voice raw. “You arranged it. You knew I would be tempted to use my gift. You knew he was immune.”

The Dowager’s eyes blazed with feverish intensity. “I knew he was the only man in England who could not be enchanted. The only man whose love, if it ever came, would be *honest*. I wanted you to live, Cordelia. I wanted you to love without the curse ever finding purchase.”

Tears slid down Cordelia’s face. “But I tried. I tried and it failed and I thought that meant I was safe.”

The Dowager’s grip tightened. “The curse does not care about success, child. It cares about intent.” Her eyes dropped to Cordelia’s belly, and what Cordelia saw there made her blood freeze. “You are sick in the mornings, are you not?”

Cordelia’s breath stopped. She had been sick. Every dawn, for three weeks now. She had blamed the foul water at the Earl’s country seat, the rich food, the stress of the investigation.

The Dowager saw the answer on her face. A low, desolate moan escaped her lips.

“It is too late,” the Dowager whispered. “The child is already quick inside you. And the curse will take it, as it took your mother’s first. Unless…”

The old woman’s eyes rolled back. Her grip slackened. Dr. Pettigrew rushed forward, pressing salts to her nose, and for a moment Cordelia was forgotten, dismissed, a broken vessel in a room that no longer had room for her grief.

The word hung in the air like an unfinished spell.

*Unless.*