Author's Note: Never say I don't love you all—powered through this chapter to give it to you the very next day! If you haven't read Chapter 12, posted Jan 4, make sure you go back and read that first!

This is Edward and Antoinette's story as told through Bella. I'm representing some psychiatric conditions in this chapter—nothing cruel, but obviously the understanding of mental health disorders in this time is pretty sketchy. Just a heads up.

- Chapter 13: Age of Innocence -

"Antoinette is Lizzie's mother."

A strangled noise escaped me, making Edward's eyes narrow.

"You promised," he reminded me.

I bit my lip hard and nodded vigorously, desperate for him to continue.

"It's probably best to start at the beginning…"

- o - o - o -

December 1869

He was 19 when he first saw her, a vision in cream silk. Antoinette Berthe Clement was visiting family in Philadelphia after spending time in France with a maiden aunt, and had really only been invited to the ball as a favor.

Edward had just lost his mother, and his father, Col. Edward Masen, Sr, had been killed at Gettysburg just six years prior. As a result, he'd inherited a respectable sum—not enough to lift him to the highest level of Philadelphia society, but with his good looks and distinguished pedigree, he was considered a very desirable catch.

Antoinette was, perhaps, not the most suitable match. But her wide, innocent eyes drew him in, and with no parents to steer Edward elsewhere, he was quickly hooked.

By the time she boarded the train back to Chicago in the spring, she wore his mother's ring on a chain around her neck, their betrothal a secret until he could follow to ask her father for her hand.

Monsieur Clement, however, refused the suit; Edward was not Catholic, and though he was wealthy, his family was all gone—there was no one to vouch for him.

Edward and Antoinette were just young enough, just reckless enough not to care. With Edward's inheritance, Antoinette didn't see a need for her father's blessing. She convinced him to marry anyway.

They wed in June, days after Antoinette's 18th birthday. The Clements were not in attendance; they never spoke to their daughter again.

Life was good, for a time. But soon, what Edward had regarded as quirks of Antoinette's personality began to intensify. She heard whispers, even in empty rooms. She feared the dark and often woke screaming and thrashing in the night, hammering fists to her own head. Edward would have to hold her arms to her side so tightly he feared she would bruise to stop her from causing worse injury to herself.

But as bad as the nights were, the days were full of sweetness and laughter. And when Antoinette fell pregnant, they were overjoyed.

Her strange neuroses seemed to ease with her pregnancy, and Edward found himself hoping his young wife had turned a corner, that the nightmares and turmoil were merely part of an adjustment period to her new life.

Edward was wrong.

When Elizabeth Delphine Masen was born in 1871, Antoinette's paranoia and terrors returned with a vengeance. She heard the whispers of dark plots in her head, faceless villains planning to harm the baby, steal Edward, kill her.

Every day it seemed worse—she stopped bathing and dressing, lest she step away from Lizzie for one moment and leave her vulnerable. She didn't sleep, barely ate. She muttered under her breath at all times, a constant stream of unintelligible incantations.

Edward was at a loss. Antoinette's parents, who saw their daughter's insanity as a mortifying direct result of an ill-conceived marriage, were no help. And the few others he confided in inevitably advised an asylum.

At first, it seemed an impossibility, a grave betrayal he couldn't bring himself to commit. He feared taking her to doctors, lest they take her away then and there.

But then came the night it all nearly burned to ashes.

The Great Conflagration of October 1871, which would ultimately consume more than three square miles of Chicago, had begun the night before. But it was a different flame that unraveled Edward's life in the dark, early hours of October 10.

He never knew what woke him, but he would be forever grateful that he'd thought to look in on Lizzie when he realized Antoinette was not in bed beside him.

"La flamme nettoie," she whispered to herself in French as she leaned over the sleeping infant, a lit candle in hand. "Yes, ma petite, Maman will burn away the evil."

It took Edward a moment to understand what was before his eyes.

He leapt forward just as Antoinette touched the burning wick to Lizzie's blankets, knocking his poor, mad wife to the ground as he snatched up his daughter before she was harmed.

One tragedy prevented, another just begun.

He took Antoinette to St. Joseph the moment the sun had risen.

The doctor, an odd man with nearly black eyes, was immensely sympathetic. But he confirmed that intensive treatment at an asylum was likely the only way for her to get well.

Antoinette's screams as the orderlies took her away would haunt him for years.

"Please!" she sobbed. "He will take me—they want my power for their own, he sees it, I know it!"

But Edward had no choice—he would not risk his Lizzie's safety, and he held out hope that Antoinette could be helped.

The weeks that followed were a blur as Edward learned to care for his infant daughter on his own, despite his grief. He was forbidden from visiting his wife, the doctor repeating over and over that an early reunion might interrupt her progress.

Until one day, a telegram arrived—Antoinette had escaped and was missing.

Police detectives, private investigators, his own desperate searching—all fruitless. There was no sign of her for more than two years.

Edward had just turned 24 when it happened. The air was heavy with early summer heat, a damp blanket that made the world feel languid. It was twilight, the gas street lamps igniting as he hurried home, where Lizzie was under the watchful eye of the nanny. Her birthday was a few weeks away, and he deep in thought, trying to decide what to get her. And then something caught his eye.

At first, he convinced himself it was a delusion; he had often felt his breath catch at the familiar curve of a neck, the sweep of sooty lashes, a particular swing of a woman's step that echoed his memories. But this time was different: the illusion didn't crumble on a second glance.

It was Antoinette, he was certain.

She was a block ahead of him, dressed in fine clothes with her dark curls fashionably arranged, looking as well as when he'd first met her. She walked with purpose, head held high. He ran to catch her. Panic rose in him as she disappeared around a corner. When he turned down the side street he only just saw a hint of movement—the flick of a skirt disappearing into an alley.

He followed.

"Edward."

It was her voice, but different, changed. Richer, smoother. A sob rose in his throat, and he reached for her, a dim silhouette in the gloom.

And then pain. Indescribable, agonizing, blinding pain.

Every moment was a year, and it was centuries til he clawed his way back to the world outside of the burning.

He woke on a cot in a padded room, the doctor who'd lost Antoinette two years before seated in a chair beside him. The man's eyes, Edward was horrified to see, were now bright red—the color of fresh blood.

Flames erupted in his throat as the word passed through his mind.

Finally—I've never seen a change take so long. I ought to have bitten him again.

"What are you talking about? What's going on? Where's Antoinette?"

The doctor's brows raised. You can hear me?

"Of course I can, you're sitting right next to me!"

Edward. Look at me. Look at my face.

It was then that Edward realized the man's mouth was not moving—it was coming from his mind.

It took hours for the story to unravel, in words and thought. The doctor, Godfrey, was a devotee of the Volturi—he had a gift for finding humans that would prove useful to the guard as vampires.

He had found that psychiatric hospitals were particularly good hunting grounds; upon meeting Antoinette, Godfrey had picked her out as a future talent. So when Edward consented to her commitment to Godfrey's private asylum, he had set her up for her change.

"She's a…vampire?" Edward asked, devastated.

"My boy, so are you," Godfrey replied dismissively.

After Antoinette's change, Godfrey realized he had found a true diamond for his masters. Her gift was madness for a human, but as a vampire, Antoinette could discover schemes and plots against her and those closest to her. When secrets with the potential to disrupt her own desires were spoken aloud, Antoinette heard it as a whisper in her ear—anywhere, anytime.

The Volturi were thrilled. And Antoinette, valued and powerful in her own right for the first time in her life, pledged them her undying allegiance.

But as she gained more control of herself, she thought often of the lover she'd left behind. She saw how her fellow vampires held their mates close, their bond unshakeable. And the more she thought of what it would be like to have an immortal Edward at her side, the harder it became to focus her gift on plots against the Volturi. She heard constant whispers of women in Chicago scheming to snare her husband—her rightful property.

She went to Aro, the defacto leader of the Volturi, to ask him to give her what she desired: Edward, changed, forever tied to her. He saw it all in her mind, and he knew: to keep Antoinette's gift, he must give her what she asked.

The fact that Godfrey thought Edward was likely to have his own gifts was an added bonus.

And I was right, Godfrey thought, smug. Aro will be pleased.

"But he can already read minds," Edward protested, dread filling him. "Why does he need me? Our daughter, she's all alone, there will be no one to care for her—"

Godfrey waved a dismissive hand. "Easily dealt with," he said. "The Volturi have endless resources. We will find her a home."

Edward was up now and pacing—rage and terror coursed through him as he pictured his Lizzie growing up without him. "No, I won't leave her! You must let me go to her!"

It was as though someone switched off his mind, leaving nothing but his animal senses. Instinct gripped him, and he wrenched the massive steel door off its hinges entirely. He could hear himself laughing at his own strength, unreal in its power. Nothing could stop him.

And then he smelled it. Heard it.

Wet, thick, viscous.

A panicked beat that drove him to the brink of madness, his entire being focused on a pulse point.

Blood.

When the red haze dissipated, Edward saw what he had done: he held the corpse of a young woman—a girl, really, no more than 16 or 17, her face forever frozen in terror. Her blood, now cooling, coated his lips and chin and shirt.

"You see? You can't go back."

Godfrey stood in the doorway, watching him dispassionately. Edward saw then that they were in a bedroom, and the girl he'd murdered was still chained to the bed.

He wished he could cry for her, but no tears would come. Instead, he ripped the iron chain in half, freeing her in death.

"Will I always be like this?" he whispered, still looking down at the girl's unseeing blue eyes.

"No," Godfrey replied. "You'll gain control of your thirst—but it will take time. Years, likely. In the meantime, as long as you serve the Volturi, they will make sure your daughter is cared for."

Gently, carefully, Edward laid the girl down on the floor. He stood, stepped back from her body. "All right," he whispered, defeated. "Take me to them."

- o - o - o -

March 1931

"So I went," Edward said, "and left Lizzie. But I could never forgive Antoinette."

I dashed away tears with my free hand—the other clutched Edward's, my grip strong enough to cause pain, were he human.

"How could she?" My voice was raw, tight. "How could a mother ask that, knowing what it would mean for her child?"

Edward's mouth was a grim line, and he stared at our joined hands. "I didn't see it before," he said. "Her selfishness. It was hidden, I think, under her fragility. But she got a taste of power, and she wanted more. Who would get hurt in the process didn't even enter her mind."

I couldn't imagine it, couldn't fathom such an act.

"Where did Lizzie go, then?" I asked, afraid of the answer.

"Aro told me he had Godfrey pay a family to take her in, but Godfrey never did anything at all," he replied bitterly. "Eventually, the nanny couldn't care for her any longer without pay. With both Antoinette and I missing, and her parents having disowned her, she was sent to an orphanage."

I winced; I didn't know exactly what it would be like to live in a Chicago orphanage in the 1870s, but I could imagine it wasn't a nice place.

"So is Antoinette…your mate?"

"No," he said firmly. "She thought it would come, once I was turned, and then she said it would happen after I made it through my newborn phase—but I couldn't even stand to be in the same room as her." He closed his eyes briefly. "Though I suppose, in a way, we are still married. After all, death did not us part."

I didn't know what to say to that—surely that couldn't be true. "Why is she coming for you now?"

Edward sighed, releasing my hand. "I think I told you before, it's difficult to read her mind," he said. "She was never truly right, even after she changed. Carlisle says it's because we're essentially frozen in the state we were in when we're turned. Since she was so unwell when Godfrey bit her…"

"But the Volturi still make use of her," I pointed out.

"Not anymore," he said. "After I left with Carlisle, she eventually became useless to them. She couldn't focus on any plots against the Volturi anymore. I gather they set her loose a few decades ago. I'm not sure what she's been doing since then, but it seems that she believes they'll take her back if she brings me with her. And that's why she attacked you—she thought you would get in the way."

That was it: the final puzzle piece.

"She thinks you love me," I whispered.

"Yes," Edward said.

Author's Note: Postpartum psychosis is a very serious but treatable mental health emergency. Without intervention, it can make the most loving, caring parents do some really dangerous and tragic things to themselves and their babies. It's more common in people with existing mental health conditions—in my mind, Antoinette had some form of schizoaffective disorder as a human. Because she was turned during an episode of psychosis, she was kept in a version of that state as a vampire. So she gets her gift when she's turned, but with a great cost of being mentally unstable (I'm sure SM never intended for vampires to be able to "go mad" but I'm rolling with it).

Footnotes:

La flamme nettoie(I think) means the flame cleanses in French. (French speakers, feel free to tell me I'm wrong!). Antoinette is bilingual—her parents are French but she grew up in the US.

The Great Chicago Fire burned 17,500 buildings, killing 300 and leaving 100k residents homeless.

St Joseph Hospital in Chicago survived the fire and opened its first psychiatric unit the same year (not sure if it was before or after the fire but whatever).

Asylums were unfortunately the only available option for people with all manner of psychiatric ailments in this era—psychotherapy didn't really emerge until the end of the 1800s. Public asylums in big cities by the 1870s were often overcrowded and treatment was what we would consider very inhumane. However, the rich had access to private asylums, which were generally run by individual doctors out of their homes. They offered "moral therapy" for their patients, with regular routine and a pleasant atmosphere, though harsher treatments like electric shock were still common. This is the kind of scenario Edward thought he was sending Antoinette to.

Godfrey was a servant of Antoinette Cosway's late father in Wide Sargasso Sea. There's not really any symbolic meaning there, aside from him being a bit of a dick. I just figured I'd name my doc after another character in that book :)