Chapter One: The Letter
The envelope was pressed with a wax seal the color of dried blood.
Evelyn Roth turned it over in her gloved hands, noting the lack of a return address, the unfamiliar script curling like ivy across the thick parchment. Her name-just her name-had been inked in a slanted, almost romantic hand. No title. No location. Not even "Miss" or "Madam." Just:
Evelyn Roth
-as if whoever had written it knew precisely who she was, and knew she would come.
She broke the seal with her letter opener, careful not to tear the paper. A single sheet folded inside, crisp and clean, smelling faintly of sandalwood and age.
> You are formally invited to Silkenmoor Manor to undertake the restoration of a private collection of vintage gowns. All travel arrangements have been made. Compensation will be generous. Discretion is required. You will find a train ticket enclosed.
Silkenmoor waits.
No signature. No date. No details on how she'd been found-or why she'd been chosen. Just that name again: Silkenmoor.
Evelyn sat back in her worn armchair, the letter trembling slightly in her grasp. Outside the rain skittered against her attic window like restless fingers. Her kettle whistled in the kitchen, forgotten. She didn't move.
The name stirred something in her. Not a memory, exactly, but a sensation-like the ache of a bruise you don't recall getting. Silkenmoor. She'd heard it spoken once, years ago, in hushed tones at a gallery party in South Kensington, passed between two antique dealers who shared smirks over crystal glasses. The place was mythic among collectors and curators. A manor by the sea. A recluse lord. Gowns so rare and storied, they were said to bleed history when touched.
She stood, then, and crossed to the small box on her worktable where her father's tailor's shears rested beside a faded photograph of her mother, laughing in the summer light. Her life had grown so small in recent years-reduced to fabric, thread, and the silence of old things. She restored for museums, collectors, sometimes even theater companies. But this? This was something else.
A challenge.
A mystery.
A way out.
Evelyn folded the letter and packed a small bag before the tea even cooled.
---
The train wound through countryside lost in fog, the windows frosted and breathless. Evelyn watched as civilization thinned into marshes and thickets, each mile carrying her further from the echoing streets of London. She wore her mother's wool coat and a scarf dyed with cochineal. Her fingers itched with anticipation-or maybe it was dread. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.
The station where she arrived had no nameplate. Just a platform with cracked stone tiles and a single man waiting beneath an iron gas lamp.
"Miss Roth?" he asked, voice sharp with the sea. He wore a driver's cap and a coat too fine for a common servant.
"Yes," she said.
"This way."
The car that awaited was long, dark, and gleaming, like something out of a noir film. Inside, the seats smelled of leather and salt. They drove for nearly an hour, winding up cliffs that rose like jagged teeth along the edge of the sea.
When Silkenmoor finally appeared through the mist, Evelyn gasped.
It was a cathedral disguised as a house. A gothic fever dream, perched at the very edge of the world. Iron turrets pierced the sky. Crimson silk banners-torn by time-fluttered from stone balconies. The windows were tall and narrow, glowing faintly behind velvet drapes. It looked not built, but summoned.
The driver said nothing as he pulled into the arched courtyard and opened her door.
A man stood at the entrance.
Evelyn knew it was Lord Alaric Thorne before he spoke. His presence was unmistakable. Immaculate in black, with silver-threaded cuffs and a face carved from something colder than marble. Handsome didn't begin to describe him-he was haunting.
"Miss Roth," he said, voice low and precise. "You've arrived."
"I wasn't given much of a choice," she said, before she could stop herself.
One of his eyebrows twitched, as if mildly amused. "Choices are overrated."
He turned and entered the manor. Evelyn followed.
Inside, the air was thick with secrets. Every surface gleamed in candlelight. The floors were blackwood, the walls hung with tapestries and portraits so lifelike they seemed to blink when she passed. But what drew her breath away was the staircase-a double helix of iron and carved mahogany, wrapped around a glass chandelier shaped like a blooming rose. It was terrifyingly beautiful.
"You'll find everything you need in the east wing," Alaric said, not looking back. "The dressing room is sealed. Only you will have access."
"And the gowns?" she asked.
"You'll see."
He stopped at the foot of a door carved with ivy and opened it to reveal a room lined with mannequins. Dozens of them. All draped in silence and dust. And in the center-beneath a glass dome-stood a single gown, untouched by time.
Evelyn stepped forward. Her throat went dry.
It was... perfection.
Ivory silk, hand-embroidered with metallic thread that shimmered like moonlight. The waist was narrow, the bodice structured with antique boning, and at the hem, tiny rubies had been stitched like drops of blood. A scent rose from it-jasmine, maybe, or something older. Familiar.
"Lady Isadora's favorite," Alaric said from behind her. "She wore it the night she died."
Evelyn turned. "You're giving me her death gown?"
"I'm giving you the truth," he said, eyes unreadable. "What you do with it is your
Days passed in a strange rhythm. The manor did not follow time as Evelyn knew it. Meals arrived without being ordered. Candles never seemed to melt. She worked in near silence, pulling dresses from their protective glass, laying them on velvet tables, and coaxing life from the silk.
It was on the third day that she found the first note.
Hidden in the lining of a velvet coat.
A scrap of parchment, folded tightly, stained with something brown and flaked.
> He said if I spoke, he'd bury me in the walls. I think he already has.
Evelyn's blood chilled. She read it again. And again.
Who had written it? Isadora? A maid? A lover? Was it a joke-or a warning?
She checked the rest of the coat. In the sleeve lining: another scrap.
> The gowns remember. They always do.
---
From that point, Evelyn couldn't stop.
She examined every hem, every stitch. In one corset she found a tiny locket, sealed shut with wax. In a capelet, a needle rusted dark with age. The clues were minute, but they built a picture-obsession, secrecy, betrayal. And all of it orbiting Isadora Thorne.
The lady of the house had been more than a socialite. She had been watching. Waiting. Writing her truth into silk and satin, into thread no one else had noticed-until now.
And Evelyn couldn't shake the feeling that the house was beginning to notice her back.
---