Page 125 of Summer of Sacrifice

“Please, Seleste. Please tell me you don’t think that it’s me.”

“I don’t,” she finally answered, and Cal sagged with relief. He opened his mouth, presumably to question again what her stony demeanour was concerning, but she silenced him by walking toward the asylum.

They were greeted by more screams. Some of pain, others of madness, and still others of despair. It was a place of nightmares. Yet, someone had to care for the poor souls. Didn’t they? It was not their fault their minds were fractured.

Cal strode with all the decorum dropped on him at his birth toward the front desk and its lopsided, woebegone attendant. The woman looked up at him with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

“Inspector Henry Shelby,” Cal said, thrusting his forged inspector’s paper in her face by way of greeting and tossing a thumb in Seleste’s direction. “And this is my assistant, Nadine.”

The woman eyed Seleste up and down with barely concealed disgust but turned back to Cal.

“We need to speak with Lord Nicolas Fontaine.”

Her eyes widened with alarm. “I’m afraid Lord Nicolas has…passed on to be with the goddess.”

“Correct.” Cal’s response only further distressed her. “I find it curious word has not yet spread of his demise, Madame…”

“Durand,” she answered around a gulp.

Their plan relied on the news not having been leaked to the rest of the peerage, a fact they’d spent most of the day proving while they’d had Cal’s inspector papers forged.

“Madame Durand, who could we speak to about Lord Nicolas’ unfortunate end, hm?”

“Doctor Auclair. I— I’ll go and retrieve him for you,” the woman stuttered.

“Please see that you do.”

As soon as she was out of sight, Cal turned to Seleste with a child-like grin. “Convincing, yes?”

He waggled his eyebrows and Seleste couldn’t help but chuckle, pushing away a modicum of her bitterness and worry. “Yes,” she whispered. “Now stay in character.”

He cleared his throat, a scowl sliding over his face as he straightened his waistcoat and jacket.

Madame Durand bustled back to the front long enough to wave them forward. “Dr. Auclair will see you.”

They followed the woman down a long corridor, the moans and wails of the asylum’s patients as their ballad. Chills pebbled Seleste’s skin, shame coating her. It truly was not their fault they were broken. Their medical care was something untouched by Society, a sector of science most refused to deal with, let alone study in order to treat it more effectively.

Passing the first room that had no noise emitting from it, Seleste couldn’t help but peer in the small window as she walked, catching brief sight of a woman with neatly combed tawny hair, her head bent peacefully over a book. She looked up as they passed, her eyes blue and clear.

Seleste’s shame for being uncomfortable around these patients morphed into seething anger. There was a time when witches were shoved into asylums, particularly the one she walked the eerie corridors of before they were sent to hang from the trees. Still, over a century later, women were locked away for having minds and ambitions of their own, labelled mad by the men in their lives, for it was easier than dealing with them.

Witches or not, Sorscha and Aggie would have been imprisoned in an asylum for their headstrong ways, had anyone been able to hold them long enough to shackle them.

Her cunning pulled her from her disturbing thoughts when she noticed Madame Durand suddenly quicken her pace. Cal must have noticed it as well, for he turned to give Seleste a quick look of confusion.

A THUD jarred all three of them.

“Keep walking” Madame Durand urged, picking up her speed even more.

THUD, THUD, THUD

Just before the corridor cut off into another, the last door was rattling on its hinges with each thud.

“Hurry now,” Madame Durand urged as she rounded the corner, Cal following.

Realising Seleste had paused in front of the suddenly still and silent door, he turned back. “Seleste,” he pleaded, “don’t stop.”

But she couldn’t move. Something in that room waited for her.

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