2024 – Crow & Cross Keys (2024)

She hadn’t wanted to go—hadn’t wanted to even leave her couch, with its cushions pressed against her like a lover’s embrace—but Mei had gently pleaded with her, and Bea had threatened to personally haul her ass through the door if she wasn’t outside in ten minutes. So Lilah had pulled herself up, thrown a few haphazard items into a bag, and slumped into the backseat of Bea’s beat-up SUV.

The countryside passed by now in an unfeeling blur of greens and browns, interspersed with the occasional farmhouse or cow herd. Bea and Mei were mercifully not trying to ply her with titillating gossip or sugary pop music, instead chatting quietly about innocuous topics—their work weeks, the latest TV shows, that new restaurant downtown. For the moment, it seemed, they were satisfied with her simply being here.

Lilah leaned her head against the glass and closed her eyes. Her friends meant well, she knew that. But she still resented, in the irrational part of her mind, being forced from the gray, hazy comfort of her wallowing. The sky was too crisp today, she thought, and far too blue. What kind of sky had the audacity to be that bright? What kind of sky would even want to be?

“Oreos, Li?” Mei said from the front seat, twisting around to offer Lilah the package.

So much for leaving her alone. Lilah took the Oreos anyway and murmured her thanks before shoving a cookie whole into her mouth.

“Save some for the Swan Songstress,” Bea said with a wicked grin, her bright brown eyes catching Lilah’s in the rearview mirror.

Mei’s long black braid whipped around as she faced forward again. “You mean Mrs. Emilia Gash, Eltham’s patron saint of broken hearts!”

Bea rolled her eyes. “You’re the only person I know who’d call a vengeful ghost the patron saint of anything.”

“Wouldn’t you be vengeful, too, if you caught your spouse with someone else?”

“Sure, in a burn-all-their-clothes-and-slash-their-tires way. Murder is taking it kind of far, don’t you think?”

“All we know about her is a campfire story,” Mei insisted. “What if she was only defending herself? Or what if she was framed?”

“A ghost hunting trip and conspiracy theories? You spoil me, Mei.”

Mei lightly smacked Bea’s arm before turning around again. “This will be good for you, Lilah. A night away from the city, some local traditions—”

“A few drops of blood in exchange for revenge,” Bea said.

“ —and you’ll feel good as new.” Mei finished like Bea hadn’t spoken. “Or a little better, at least.”

Lilah sighed, reaching for another Oreo. “Isn’t this all a bit ridiculous? You can’t convince me that either of you actually believes in ghosts.”

“That’s not the point.” Mei’s expression softened. “The point is giving your ghosts somewhere else to haunt for a while.”

Lilah could only blink rapidly and look out the window.

They reached Eltham by early evening, making quick work of the town’s single paved street. Its handful of shops were already closing; the owners must know, Lilah thought, what people really came here for on full-moon nights. And that was probably why Gash Manor still stood at all—why the land sales always fell through, why complaints about safety or aesthetics went unheeded, why the tear in the chain link fence remained conveniently unmended. Gash Manor was the only thing tethering this tiny town to existence, a rotting heart that beat in gasps and spasms. But the manor itself, Lilah thought, as the scenery became grasses and trees again, couldn’t limp through its half-life at all without Mrs. Emilia Gash—her legend, her infamy, her song so broken-hearted it could make a man bleed out.

That’s how the story went, anyway.

Bea turned onto a well-worn dirt road, pushing past foliage that couldn’t quite be called overgrown. A few gentle bumps, another turn, and there it was: the old Gash Manor, in all its dilapidated, gothic glory. The three-story structure had long since lost its windows to time and its paint to weather; a handful of shingles clung to the roof like crooked teeth, and what remained of the porch was more rot than wood. The sight stirred nothing in Lilah beyond vague notions of carcasses and husks. If this house was truly haunted, if anything like a soul still dwelt here, it was lost on her.

They parked just off the road and hauled their bags to where the chain link fence surrounding the property was slit top to bottom. Bea slipped through first, a nearly manic giggle bursting from her lips as she surveyed the ruined manor. “Your humble servants have arrived, O Swanful One.”

“Don’t provoke the dead!” Mei snapped in faux-agitation as she followed Bea. “We want her to take vengeance for us, not on us!”

Lilah trudged through the fence last, only half-listening to her friends’ bickering. Despite the eyesore of the manor looming over them, the grounds carried a gentle, worn-out beauty, heightened by the late-summer breeze and lengthening light. The place seemed more melancholy than haunted, Lilah thought, the remnants of an era gone by.

They walked to the manor’s west side, near where the old swan pond sat stinking and stagnant, and began making camp. They weren’t the only ones there, not by a long shot—already groups of students from nearby college towns were well past buzzed and careening towards drunk, the heavy stench of weed choking the air. Later, the darkness would bring out others: curious tourists, self-proclaimed psychics and ghost hunters, an occasional historian panning for the tiniest, gleaming specks of new information.

And the broken hearted, anyone desperate enough to cry out into the void and pretend their echo was a cry back.

They were too grown up for this, Lilah thought, as she helped Mei wrangle poles and fabric into a semblance of shelter. They were too graduated, and too professional, and much too sensible for silly games they should have played years ago if they were going to play them at all. She should be comfortably at home on her couch, glass of wine in one hand and phone in the other, scrolling mindlessly and definitely not thinking about Ben—

“sh*t!” Bea spat, jumping back from the healthy blaze she’d built. At Lilah and Mei’s alarmed looks, she waved a hand. “I’m fine. Just a spark on my arm.”

With the tent finally up and the fire burning strong, Lilah, Bea, and Mei broke out the hotdogs, marshmallows, and beer. If they had to do this, Lilah mused as she spun her hotdog over the flames, at least they were doing it properly.

The night grew both louder and darker. The grounds became more crowded, the solemn chants of spiritualists sometimes mingling with the revelry. “Oh look,” Bea said with a sly smile, “it’s starting.”

Lilah followed her gaze towards the manor. From the front and back doors, individuals and small groups staggered towards the pond, crooning a variety of sad, broken tunes. In the fading light, Lilah couldn’t quite see what happened next, but she could picture it: the pins and pocket knives, the pricked fingers, the drops of blood in the water. Lines from the traditional incantation began overlapping, punctuated by curses and drunken giggles. Swan Songstress, Swan Songstress, bleed me a heart… Sink through the flesh and then tear it apart…

Bea grinned and took a long swig of beer. “Observe carefully, ladies. We’re up as soon as the hammered college kids clear out.”

Unfortunately for Bea, it was hours before the crowd dispersed enough for her liking. Lilah and Mei were slumped against each other, half-asleep before the banked fire, when Bea shook their shoulders. “It’s as quiet as it’s going to get up there. Let’s go.”

Lilah stumbled after her friends, blinking furiously when Bea flipped on a flashlight. The night was briskly cool, the walk vigorous, and by the time they were braving Gash Manor’s decidedly unsound front steps, Lilah was fully awake again.

The door opened the only way it could: ominously, with copious amounts of creaking. How could it not, Lilah thought, when Eltham depended on the manor providing a haunted house experience? That was about as far as the horror movie cliches extended, though. Bea swung the flashlight beam around, revealing a distinct lack of dust, cobwebs, and old-fashioned furniture; the building saw too much foot traffic for significant grime buildup, and anything of actual value had been looted long ago. The littered beer cans and cigarette stubs didn’t do any favors for the ambience, either, Lilah thought, though the sounds of a séance coming from a front room didn’t hurt.

Bea led them through the manor’s many halls, poking her head through doors as they ventured deeper. At one point, she leaped back with a hasty apology, laughing as she hurried Mei and Lilah away. “Ghosts aren’t the only ones moaning around here.”

They picked their way up the staircase—more intact, thankfully, than the steps outside—and repeated their search on the second floor until Bea was satisfied with an unoccupied room that had perhaps once been a parlor, judging by the wide fireplace and broken chairs. She dropped to the ground with flourish, sitting cross-legged and holding the flashlight beneath her chin so that strange shadows scattered through her curls and hollowed out her cheekbones. “Gather round, my darlings, and hear the harrowing tale of Mrs. Emilia Gash… if you dare.”

Lilah rolled her eyes as she sat, but couldn’t help the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Bea was in her element now, commanding a hush like the beat before an orchestra plays.

“It was 1876,” she finally began, “and Ms. Emilia Beaumont was the most eligible young lady in Vermont. It wasn’t just her wealth and lovely face that had gentlemen lining up to court her—it was her singing voice.”

Bea leaned forward, cradling the flashlight like it contained all her secrets. “A voice that blazed with angel fire, people said, and with the ice of stars. A voice to make God himself weep. Swan Songstress, they called her, after the legend that says a swan sings with devastating beauty as it dies. And Emilia Beaumont sang like a swan pierced through the heart.”

Lilah couldn’t help the slight shiver through her skin. She’d worked tech on her fair share of shows, had watched from backstage as actors stretched and released anticipation until audiences laughed or wept on command. But what would it be like to enrapture listeners so profoundly? To wield such vivid, otherworldly skill?

Bea continued. “Then Emilia met Mr. Adam Gash. The only son and inheritor of the family’s estate, Mr. Gash was said to be witty, charming, and outrageously handsome. Emilia was smitten, and before spring became summer, she was Mrs. Emilia Gash.”

Bea’s tone deepened and darkened, like she’d drawn a shadow over it. “But all wasn’t as it seemed. Mr. Gash left the manor for weeks at a time, the servants whispered. When he was home, he didn’t share meals with his wife. And he certainly didn’t visit her bed.

“Emilia reasoned that her husband was simply a busy man. She spent her days at the swan pond he’d installed on the grounds as a wedding present, performing for an audience of birds and waiting for Mr. Gash to join her.

“Months passed, and the rumors became worse. Mr. Gash was accused of everything from drunken brawling to reckless gambling to indiscriminate whoring. Still, Emilia waited and hoped he’d come back to her—until the day she walked into this very room and discovered him entangled with a maid.”

Mei abruptly giggled. “And if we were next door, it would’ve been that very room!”

“Shut it, Mei!” Bea snapped, but she and Lilah were laughing, too. “Yes, it was this very room in which Emilia came upon the shocking scene.”

“And so it was from this room that Mrs. Gash fled?” Mei asked, still grinning. “It was these halls she stumbled through until she reached the front door?”

“Possibly the back door,” Lilah chimed in, despite herself.

Bea rolled her eyes. “My talents are wasted on you two.” She waited until Mei and Lilah’s tittering apologies quieted before continuing. “Who cares if it was this room or another, if it was the front door or the back? The important part is that Emilia left the house and staggered down the hill like a bird shot from the sky, singing with an agony that shattered windows.

“Mr. Gash ran after Emilia and found her at the swan pond, releasing her sorrow to the sky. For the first time, he truly listened to his wife. And her voice damned him so thoroughly that his ears and eyes and mouth filled with blood.

“But the gory sight didn’t shock Emilia into silence or screams—it infuriated her. How dare this man bleed for her, as though he’d beg for her forgiveness? Her song writhed with fire, and then it ripped through her husband. Later, there was no body to recover, only the bloody pulp that had been Mr. Adam Gash.

“Emilia was found with her chest split open and her heart lying beside her, like it had burst through her ribs in rage. Then her swans took up their own songs until the ground shook with grief and they, too, dropped dead one by one.

“Now Emilia’s spirit lingers here, unforgiving of those who abuse another’s love. If your heart’s been broken, seek the Swan Songstress while the full moon’s light thins the veil between the living and dead. Offer three drops of blood at her pond and repeat these words.”

Bea began chanting:

“Swan Songstress, Swan Songstress, bleed me a heart
Sink through the flesh and then tear it apart
Rip through the soul with your unholy song
And damn it to hell for its monstrous wrong
Take vengeance on… Lilah and Mei!”

Bea lunged forward on the last line, startling delighted screams from her friends. Lilah laughed more freely this time; maybe a little ghost story fun wasn’t so bad, after all.

“Well, ladies,” Bea said, twirling the flashlight beam around, “shall we follow in Mrs. Emilia Gash’s last earthly footsteps?”

They left the old parlor and returned downstairs. Bea looked right, left, then right again. “I say it was the back door.”

“The front door was more fitting of her station,” Mei argued.

“But the back door was closer,” Bea said, turning right.

“Sure, if the room you randomly picked really was where she caught her husband and the maid,” Mei grumbled, even as she fell into step beside Bea.

“O ye of little faith! How do you know it was random?”

“Not random, hmm? I suppose you spoke with Mrs. Gash herself to confirm this detail?”

Lilah trailed behind Mei and Bea as they bantered. The air was chiller when they stepped through the back door’s splintered remains, but still refreshing, and it carried the drunken laughter of late-night revelry. From the hilltop, Lilah saw campfires dotting the manor grounds. The swan pond was directly below, slick as an oil spill in the moonlight. As she watched, several people stumbled towards it, singing—with varying success—a number of mournful melodies.

Mei groaned. “Do we really have to do this part?”

In response, Bea winked and screeched a hideously off-key string of notes that could barely be called a tune.

“Oh come on!” Mei complained. “Now you’re just being difficult!”

Lilah giggled. “Keep it up, Bea, and the Swan Songstress will unleash her wrath on you for profaning her pond with such a sound.”

“That’s the spirit!” Bea flung her arms out and launched herself down the hill, deliberately staggering her steps, and sang with terrible relish.

Lilah surprised herself by immediately following. She lurched from side to side, picking up speed as she went, and plucked some minor-keyed song from her memory, pushing it off her tongue between fits of self-conscious laughter. Mei came last, grumbling about blatant disrespect to music, but she was grinning as she joined her voice to theirs. The air in Lilah’s face was sweet, her blood buzzed faintly with pleasure, and for the first time since the breakup—well, not exactly a breakup—she surged with something close to hopefulness.

They stopped at a semi-secluded spot near the pond’s edge, far enough away from the other ghost seekers to grant an illusion of privacy. Bea dug in her pocket, produced a small case, and opened it to extract a gleaming pin. “Who’s first?”

“I’ll go!” Mei took the pin and yelped as she jabbed her finger. Then she squeezed the tiny wound over the water, counting out each drop of blood—“One, two, three”—and began chanting.

“Swan Songstress, Swan Songstress, bleed me a heart
Sink through the flesh and then tear it apart
Rip through the soul with your unholy song
And damn it to hell for its monstrous wrong
Take vengeance on…”

Mei faltered, and Bea nudged her. “C’mon, there’s got to be someone you want shredded to bits, or even just scratched up a little.”

“Umm…” Mei tugged at her braid. “That kid in my first-grade class who said my drawing was stupid because tigers don’t have rainbow stripes?”

Bea huffed. “You’re hopeless. Let me show you how it’s done.” She took a new pin from the case, pricked her finger, and counted out the requisite three drops of blood. But the chant, when it came from her lips, was like fire consuming paper—the edges of her voice curling and smoking, the ashy words scathing her throat.

“Swan Songstress, Swan Songstress, bleed me his heart
Sink through his flesh and then tear him apart
Rip through his soul with your unholy song
And damn him to hell for his monstrous wrong
Take vengeance on… the bastard known as Tyler Knox!”

Bea spat out her ex-boyfriend’s name like it left a particularly bad taste in her mouth. “And may the sonovabitch rot in hell until the sun goes out.”

Mei clapped approvingly. “Hear, hear!”

Bea’s hands shook slightly as she pulled a third pin from the case, the coals in her eyes still smoldering as she handed it to Lilah. “You’re up, Li.”

Lilah took the pin and faced the pond. She’d been having fun, but now that it was her turn to invoke the ghost of Emilia Gash, a knot of uneasiness was gathering in her belly. Maybe it was just the after-effects of Bea’s obvious—and justified—anger? She pricked her finger, wincing, and watched her three drops of blood so briefly stain the water.

“Swan Songstress, Swan Songstress, bleed me a heart…”

Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, but Mei nodded encouragingly, and she continued.

“Sink through the flesh and then tear it apart
Rip through the soul with your unholy song
And damn it to hell for its monstrous wrong
Take vengeance on…”

The pond seemed suddenly very, very still. Lilah opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Then, with such aching quiet that the words were barely born, she whispered his name. “Benjamin Novak.”

The air trembled, or maybe that was just Lilah’s hands. She turned from the water, unable to look at her friends as the hot poker of his name—Benjamin Novak, Benjamin Novak, Benjamin Novak—slowly pierced her gut, again and again. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she rasped.

“Why not?” Mei asked gently, stepping towards her. “Lilah, honey, it’s only a game.”

“Only a game?” Lilah repeated numbly. “Only a game, to wish harm on someone I lo—” She stopped before the damning word was fully out, but the damage was done.

“Li,” Bea said, “he never deserved you. He used you.”

“Did he?” Lilah asked, her voice distant. “Or did we just want different things?”

Bea and Mei were silent, and Lilah wasn’t sure if it signaled tacit agreement or uncertainty. She took a shuddering breath. “How do you do it, Bea?”

Bea frowned. “Do what?”

“Stay angry.” Now it was definitely her hands shaking. “The way you go through the world blazing and screaming—it’s like you’re some kind of avenging, fallen star.” The knot in her throat tightened, nearly strangling her voice. “But I burned through my anger a long time ago, and everything else, too.”

No one spoke for a long moment. Then Bea turned around, shrugged off her jacket, and pulled one shirt sleeve down, revealing the tips of white scars on her back that Lilah knew extended far past what was visible. “I suppose it’s easy to stay angry when I have such obvious reminders of why I should.”

Shame doused Lilah’s insides. “Bea, I’m sorry, I—”

“I know. It’s okay.” She readjusted her sleeve and faced Lilah again. “Anger might get me through the day, Li, but it doesn’t solve my problems, not really. I don’t want to untangle why and how I got trapped in Tyler’s web. I don’t want to mourn what we had. So I look at my back, instead.” She exhaled a sharp, bitter laugh. “And I hate him, and I hate myself, and it’s so much easier than living with everything I’d have to feel if I wasn’t furious. Don’t think I have this all figured out because I’m angry.”

Mei stepped closer and wrapped an arm around Lilah. “You love someone who doesn’t love you, and that’s worthy of your grief. You don’t have to be ashamed of whatever comes with the mourning process.”

Lilah blinked rapidly, her friends blurring over with unshed tears. “Thank you.”

Bea slung her own arm around Lilah. “C’mon. We all need another beer.”

The beer helped, as did all the ways Bea and Mei kept her laughing while they brushed their teeth in the dark and swapped their jeans for sweatpants. But later—when they’d crawled into their tent and shimmied into sleeping bags, when her friends slept soundly on either side of her—Lilah lay hopelessly awake, staring blankly at the darkness.

She couldn’t stop seeing it: the way her own blood kissed her punctured skin, how three jeweled drops fell and, so briefly, moved through the water like gossamer silk. Her voice lingered, too; the sandpaper rasp of it, the scrape of Ben’s name in her throat. Had she truly wished vengeance on him? On the kind, patient man who’d spent countless nights running mics and adjusting lights with her, making her laugh while they built sets and props? On the man who kept her company backstage, who swept her into long, closing night hugs? Vengeance, on the man who’d come into her life as gradually as sunrise, a breeze that stirred thoughts of, Oh, there you are, I’ve been looking for you?

On the man who hadn’t broken her heart as much as fumbled and dropped it, not realizing what he held?

The problem with her heart, Lilah thought, was that it wasn’t fragile. Maybe if it was glass or ceramic, something that broke in clean lines, she could piece it back together, watch it heal with neat scars. But Lilah’s heart was all animal muscle, outrageously willful when it wanted something—and oh, how it wanted Ben. Past reason, past pain, past the moment she’d offered a ghost her blood in an absurd attempt to forget him.

Lilah pushed off her sleeping bag and left the tent. She wasn’t sure what compelled her—a need for closure? For confession?—but she wasn’t surprised when her feet carried her back to the old swan pond.

The manor grounds were silent in the predawn hour; it seemed even the most zealous partygoers had found somewhere to pass out. Lilah approached the waterline, truly alone with the pond in a way she supposed few had been since its legend became infamous. By the full moon’s light, she studied her wavering reflection: the olive skin and black hair, the aquiline nose, the high forehead and the pang of insecurity that came with it—did her huge, stupid forehead make her unattractive to Ben?

Lilah looked away before her thoughts could spiral any further. She started to kneel, then straightened, feeling foolish—she wasn’t supplicating, was she? That would imply she actually believed someone was listening. She cleared her throat, then spoke softly, still unsure what she was doing or why. “Mrs. Emilia Gash… Or whatever haunts this pond… That is, if anything sentient lingers here…” She sighed. “I just want to say that I don’t need you to take vengeance on anyone for me. Coming here was my friends’ idea. They were trying to take my mind off a recent breakup.” She faltered. “Well, I guess you can’t break up with someone you never dated. It just—It just felt like a relationship, in some ways.”

Lilah’s throat became uncomfortably tight. “And it sounds so trite, but I love him. It scares me, sometimes, knowing how much I can feel for someone—how much I feel for him. But when I finally found the nerve to speak up—” She laughed bitterly. “He told me he values our friendship. Like I should’ve thought he wanted friendship when he laid his head in my lap while we talked past 3 a.m.”

Her eyes began stinging, and she rubbed them furiously. “After that, I told him I needed some space. And I don’t know what to do now, I don’t know if I can even show my face to our theater again. Sometimes I wish he hurt me intentionally, because knowing he didn’t—” Lilah’s breath hitched. “It means I’m in love with a good man who wants nothing but my friendship. And I hate how much that hurts.”

Lilah finally succumbed to tears she’d thought long spent. This was the immutable fact she’d been grappling with for weeks: the grass was green, the sky was blue, and Benjamin Novak was her friend. How wonderful, and how terrible.

Still, she choked out the last of what she realized she’d come here to say. “Emilia, Mrs. Gash, whoever you are—maybe you really did sing your husband to shreds, and maybe he deserved it. But Ben hurt me out of ignorance, not malice.” She sniffed, wiping her eyes. “He’s not worthy of your vengeance any more than I am.”

Lilah fell silent and looked out over the water. She didn’t necessarily feel better—her battered heart still beat away—but it seemed right, somehow, giving those words to the open air. A different sort of blood offering, she supposed.

She was turning away from the pond when a white shape appeared on its far side. A swan, Lilah realized, as it drew steadily closer, glowing with something more than moonlight—and with an arrow sunk deep into its breast, a crimson bloom staining its feathers.

Lilah stared, transfixed, as it stopped before her at the water’s edge. Where had it come from? How was it swimming so calmly, let alone breathing? Wasn’t the poor thing in pain?

Then, as she watched, the swan began shifting—plumage elongating, beak shrinking away, form stretching upward until there wasn’t a bird in front of Lilah, but a young woman with long blonde hair, sad blue eyes, and a blossom of blood where the arrow pierced her chest. She wore a soft white dress, and her skin shone with that something more than moonlight.

A corner of Lilah’s mind was aware she should be running away, screaming loud enough to wake even the most wasted revelers; but there was that strange compulsion again, the one that had carried her back here, that was taking a step or two closer now, that was extending a trembling hand and asking, “Emilia? Mrs. Emilia Gash?”

The girl—Emilia, Lilah was sure of it—looked at her with such profound sorrow that Lilah nearly cried out. Then Emilia opened her mouth and began singing.

How to describe such a sound? Lilah gasped, tears pricking her eyes. A voice that blazed with angel fire, Bea had said, and with the ice of stars. A voice to make God himself weep. The air stilled, vibrating only for Emilia’s song; beneath her ribs, Lilah swore her heart turned to crystal and shattered. And in between the music’s devastated keening, Lilah’s consciousness slipped somewhere new.

She stands before Adam, tears coursing in unchecked streams. Months of waiting and wanting and serving her heart up like a delicacy, only to be left out to rot. Her gifts and gestures do not move him. Her gauziest gowns and nightclothes do not entice him. Finally, her denial is corroded beyond repair, and she succumbs to the truth she’s been running from since the day she arrived at Gash Manor:

Adam does not love her. It is that simple, and that terrible.

She swallows some emotion, strings a few words together. “That is all you have to say for yourself, then? You married me only to save your estate?”

Her husband’s brow furrows. “I married you to give my sister a future. I married you to preserve my family’s name and standing. And yes, I married you to save the estate that my father nearly drove into the ground with his excesses. Is that truly so dreadful? Marriages have been founded on less.”

“But you do not love me.” Her voice, the only thing she commands flawlessly, is flat and hard.

“Have I been unkind to you? Unfaithful? Have I ever neglected your needs?”

A harsh laugh thrusts from her throat. “So I am an accessory, a pretty mare you can trot out on occasion to amuse your peers.”

Adam runs an agitated hand through his hair. “Emilia, please. Be reasonable.”

“Is it unreasonable to wish my husband would keep the promises he made during our courtship?” Her breath hitches. “Is it unreasonable to ache for a morsel of the warmth and affection he bestows so freely on others?”

A shadow of guilt passes over Adam’s face. “I did not intend to deceive you.”

“Oh? What did you intend, then, when you said we’d spend our days and nights together and never be parted? When you said you lo—”

“I thought I could come to mean it!” Adam interjects like he can’t bear to hear that word again. “I thought—I thought my feelings would change with time.”

“And yet they have not.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me.” Adam’s expression is stricken. “I do care for your wellbeing, Emilia. And my affections do not lie with another lady.”

“They simply do not lie with me, either.”

“I know it was wrong to court you as I did!” he bursts out. “My estate was near ruin, my sister had no future, and then you were there! So infatuated, so willing, and I could not allow such an opportunity to pass. It was ruthless and mercenary and forgive me, I beg you!” He sighs, weariness settling over his shoulders. “Or do not. I suppose it makes no difference. We can still build a meaningful life together, Emilia. Love is not necessary for happiness.”

In the long silence that follows, Emilia finds she can only blink. Then she abruptly turns and leaves the room.

“Emilia?” Adam says, following her. “Emilia, please.”

She barely hears him, hardly sees the doors and alcoves that pass as she drifts through Gash Manor. Vaguely, she’s aware of tears still staining her cheeks, of servants whispering as she walks by; and she doesn’t quite remember going outside, just knows she’s on the hilltop. She glances at the sky—so stupidly, stunningly blue—and wafts towards her swan pond, the ghost of a song on her lips.

Emilia stops at the water’s edge and sinks to her knees, consciousness returning to focus. Sun shines off the pond’s surface, a breeze stirs the scent of summer flowers. The swans, her only friends during this travesty of a marriage, paddle gently. Here, in her garden of solace, she gathers the notes lingering on her lips. Then she opens her mouth and breathes them into life.

Her voice is quiet at first, haunting the spaces where her love was never returned; then it’s wretched and twisted and dense as a collapsed star, growing claws and jagged teeth, gorging itself on her blood and marrow, and good God, how has she lived with this so long? She’d split her chest open if it would remove this monstrosity of rotting, rejected love, would let it spill at her feet like the guts of an eviscerated animal. Rip her open, kill the infection with fire, just get it out, get it out, she can’t stand it anymore—

“Emilia! Emilia!” Adam is there, she realizes. She wonders how long he’s been shouting her name. Her song fades away and she blinks up at him, startled by his wide eyes and horror-paled face—and then she sees it, lying just feet from her.

A body. Her body, from the gold of her hair to the curve of her nose. The other her wears a white gown, almost wedding-like; and buried in her chest, blood blooming bright around it, is an arrow.

Emilia reels back, repulsed by this dead self that exists despite the heart rioting behind her ribs and the pulse throbbing frantically in her neck. She is wary of asking “how,” prods the question like an animal carcass; too much impossibility lies behind that word. So she stares at the body, at her pale, perfect cheekbones and the tragic arrow in her heart. She wonders what on Earth they’ll do with her macabre double, how they’ll explain it. And then the realization clicks, and just as quickly, she decides.

“What in God’s good name is this?” Adam whispers.

“It is my grief.” Emilia stands, her head high. “And I will use it as I deem fit. I died here today. Understand?”

For a moment, she sincerely wonders if Adam will pass out from shock. “Y-You cannot be in earnest. Come to your senses and—”

“I died here today.” Emilia repeats herself with all the command she’s spent her life mastering. “Say I was in an accident. Say I was attacked. Say I stabbed myself, like Juliet without her Romeo. It makes no difference to me. You have a body to bury. Let me be dead.”

“This is absurd! I will not agree to this!”

Emilia lifts her chin. “I forgive your desperation. I forgive your desire to provide for your sister and preserve your family’s legacy. We fundamentally disagree, however, on the necessary components for happiness, and I will not pay the price for those differences with a lifetime of disappointment.”

“But where will you go? What will you do?”

“Wherever I please and whatever I like.” The thought shoots a thrill through her—she could adopt an alias, travel overseas, perform on stages from London to Paris. “I no longer have parents who would mourn me,” she continues. “Liliana is at school and barely knows me. The public will make a fuss, but they will move on soon enough. And then we will be free of each other.”

The protests are almost visible on Adam’s lips; then his face clears and he looks at her, truly looks at her, for perhaps the first time in their marriage. “Why do you want this?”

“I will not be bound to a man who does not love me, Adam. And I will not apologize for requiring more than you are prepared to give.” She inhales deeply, the knots in her chest loosening. “You can keep the part of my fortune you’ve invested. I’ve seen your ledgers, and if you continue handling the money wisely, you’ll acquire more than enough to provide for yourself and Liliana. You could start over in another state, even change your names if you wish. But I will not stay here, understand? I insist on living.”

Adam considers her for a long moment. Then he nods slowly. “There have been vagrants in town recently. Perhaps one wandered here and tried to poach a swan. Perhaps he was half-blind and drunk, and mistook your dress for feathers.”

Emilia returns the nod. “We’ll go back to the manor and let the household see me. I’ll gather my things and the money in your safe. Have someone with you at all times tonight—your alibi must be solid. Let the servants find this.” She spares one more glance for the unsettling sight of her own dead body, then begins walking towards the manor.

Adam falls into step beside her. “And after you’ve prepared? Then what?”

“I’ll slip out before dinner, walk into town, and hire a carriage. And I swear on my parents’ graves, you’ll never hear from me again.”

Her husband frowns. “How will our neighbors believe you’re dead if they see you hiring a carriage?”

“They will believe it when they see the body.” Emilia smiles ruefully. “Perhaps they will say they saw my ghost going home.”

The memories faded away, Lilah’s senses were her own, but she swayed on her feet, the revelations like waves tossing her mind. Mrs. Emilia Gash was not what Lilah had thought. She wasn’t what anyone thought.

Emilia—or rather, Lilah realized, the remnants of Emilia’s grief, currently taking her form—still hovered over the pond, her voice vivid and crystalline. She drifted closer, and Lilah felt more than heard the word: Live. The music thrummed and burned, vibrating its promises through Lilah. She would return to her theater. She would build sets again, run sound systems and light boards again, and she would survive her unreciprocated love. She would give Ben less of herself, and she would want less in return.

Emilia’s song was slowing now, ebbing into melancholy wisps of sound. Her form began shrinking, her skin glossing over with feathers, and she gave Lilah a sad, knowing smile. Then she was a swan again, paddling back the way she had come.

The world resumed its sound and motion. Lilah watched the swan until it disappeared between blinks. She didn’t move for a long, long time.

Lilah wasn’t sure when she lay down and fell asleep. One moment, she was swathed in night, keeping vigil at the pond; the next, Bea was furiously shaking her awake, demanding an explanation for her idiocy, and Mei was hugging her tight, using words like “missing” and “scared.”

Lilah tried to be contrite, offering the proper apologies as quickly as she could muster them, but her gaze was fixed on the water over Mei’s shoulder. On the far side, just within sight, was a white swan. Its chest was marked by a crimson stain, and it bore an arrow deep through its heart.

photo by Sascha Bosshard (via unsplash)