The silence that followed his departure was a living thing.
It pressed in on Isadora from all sides, heavy and suffocating. A moment ago, she had been the center of his world, wrapped in a dance that felt like a secret. Now, she was an exhibit, stranded alone on an island of polished marble while a sea of predators watched from the shore.
Her gaze was fixed on the far side of the ballroom, where he knelt beside the fallen woman. The Duke's back was a wall of black wool, shielding the gruesome scene from the room. He did not shout for a doctor. He did not panic. He simply knelt, a figure of chilling calm amidst the chaos he had so recently abandoned her to.
Servants appeared, materializing from the shadows with an unnatural swiftness. They were tall, silent figures who moved with the same eerie grace as their master. They erected ornate privacy screens around the area, their movements so practiced and efficient it was clear this was a procedure, not a reaction. An incident to be managed. An inconvenience to be erased.
The music did not resume. The whispers grew, a low, venomous hum. Isadora felt the eyes of the court on her, their gazes stripping away the borrowed lavender gown, seeing her for what she was: a commoner who had overstepped. A mouse who had danced with the hawk.
Through a gap in the screens, she saw it. The woman in the yellow dress was lifted. Not gently, not with the care one affords the injured, but swiftly. Two of the silent servants carried her away, her head lolling back, her face slack and unnaturally pale. They didn't take her toward the main doors, but down a dark, narrow corridor Isadora hadn't noticed before, a service passage that likely led to the bowels of the estate.
The woman vanished into the darkness. The servants followed, and then the screens were whisked away. A maid appeared with a mop and bucket, and within a minute, the blood was gone. The marble was pristine, gleaming under the red candlelight as if nothing had ever happened.
As if the woman in yellow had never existed.
A cold dread, far deeper and more potent than her earlier fear, washed over Isadora. This was the world her mother had stepped into. A world where people could simply be… tidied away.
A new presence slid into her peripheral vision. A nobleman, his mask a cruel, sneering caricature of a fox, began to detach himself from the crowd. His eyes, dark and hungry, were locked on her. He took a deliberate step in her direction, a slow smile spreading across his lips. He saw her as the Duke's leftover, a morsel to be claimed.
That was her cue.
Her limbs, which had been frozen, unlocked. She could not run; that would be an invitation. With a composure she scraped together from the very depths of her soul, she turned. She kept her back straight, her head high, and walked.
Each step was an act of will. She did not look at the fox-masked nobleman. She did not look at any of them. She focused on the grand double doors at the far end of the hall, a distant beacon of escape. The air felt thick with unspoken threats, and the silence seemed to mock her retreat. She could feel the stares on her back, a hundred invisible hands reaching to pull her back into the gilded cage.
Her hand was still tingling where he had held it. The ghost of his touch was a brand, marking her as his. She had stolen a dance, and in this world, such debts were paid in blood.
She reached the doors without being stopped. The same footman who had let her in pulled the heavy door open, his own mask revealing nothing. The cool night air hit her like a blessing, clean and sharp after the cloying, perfumed atmosphere of the hall. She did not look back.
She found her hired carriage waiting in the shadows, a humble pumpkin amidst a fleet of black and silver chariots. "The Merchant Quarter," she told the driver, her voice barely a whisper, and sank back against the worn leather seat as the carriage lurched into motion.
The journey back was a descent from a nightmare. As the carriage rolled down from the cold, silent heights of Upper Bellmere, the oppressive grandeur of the manors gave way to the familiar, comforting sight of sleeping row houses. Chimneys puffed lazy streams of smoke into the moonlit sky. Here, the world was real. The fears were simpler: a poor harvest, a sick child, a harsh winter. Not men who moved like shadows and women who vanished from ballroom floors.
When she slipped back into the quiet shop, the scent of sawdust and her father's pipe tobacco was the most welcoming fragrance she had ever known. A single lamp was left burning for her, casting a soft, golden glow over the familiar bolts of fabric and wooden spools of thread.
Clara was asleep in her small cot in the back, her breathing soft and even. Isadora didn't have the heart to wake her, to confess the beautiful, terrifying mess she had made. This secret was hers alone now.
First, the dress. In the faint lamplight, she saw that the hem was soiled with dirt and gravel from the driveway. With a wet cloth and a small brush, she knelt on the cold floor of the workroom and began to scrub the lavender silk. The methodical motion was calming, an anchor in the storm raging inside her. With each stroke, she tried to scrub away the feel of his gloved hand, the sound of his low voice, the chilling image of the woman in yellow.
But the memories were stitched to her now, more tightly than any thread. She had gone looking for answers about her mother and had found only more terrifying questions.
She carefully folded the cleaned gown and hid it at the very bottom of Clara's large mending chest, beneath a pile of discarded linen and old patterns. A place of forgotten things. She prayed the dress would be one of them.
The next morning, the sun rose, as it always did, but the light that filtered through the shop's large front window felt different. It seemed weaker, unable to penetrate the new shadows that lingered in the corners of Isadora's world.
The shop was too quiet. The usual morning bustle of apprentices and delivery boys was muted, subdued. An unspoken tension hung in the air, as thick as the morning mist rising from the Vale River.
Her father was silent through their morning meal of bread and jam. Elias Wren was a man of few words on the best of days, but today his silence was a heavy, brittle thing. He polished his spectacles with a painful precision, his knuckles white. He knew. He didn't know how, or what, but he knew something had shifted in the night.
Her brother, Bram, knew too. He sat across from her, pushing crumbs around his plate, his twelve-year-old face uncharacteristically solemn. He didn't ask where she had been, didn't tease her as he normally would. He just watched her, his gaze steady and filled with a worry that made her heart ache. He saw the new lines of exhaustion around her eyes, the tremor she couldn't quite hide in her hands.
Business was unnervingly slow. A few customers came and went, purchasing small items—a spool of thread, a length of ribbon. They spoke in hushed tones, their eyes darting to Isadora when they thought she wasn't looking before quickly glancing away. The whispers followed her like a haunting. The story was out. The seamstress who had danced with the Iron Duke.
Around midday, Lady Albright, a portly noblewoman with a penchant for gossip, bustled in, ostensibly to match a shade of lace. She chattered endlessly about the weather, her pug's delicate constitution, anything but the masquerade. As she paid, she fumbled with her coin purse, "accidentally" dropping a small, folded piece of her lace onto the counter.
"Oh, clumsy me," she tittered, gathering her things. "Keep it, my dear. A trifle."
She hurried out before Isadora could protest. Isadora's fingers, cold and numb, unfolded the lace. Tucked inside was a tiny, tightly rolled piece of paper. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she unrolled it.
Two words were scrawled in elegant, spidery script.
You were seen.
The air left her lungs in a rush. It was no longer gossip. It was a warning. The cage she had flown into last night had long bars, and they were closing in around her.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of mounting dread. With every jingle of the bell above the door, her stomach clenched. Every passing carriage on the street outside made her jump. She felt exposed, a specimen under glass.
As dusk began to settle, painting the cobbled street outside in shades of lavender and gray, her father finally broke his silence. She was tidying the counter, her movements stiff and automatic, when he placed a hand gently on her arm.
"Isadora," he said, his voice rough with an emotion he rarely showed. "Leave that. Come."
He led her to the large cutting table in the center of the workroom and pulled out a stool for her, then one for himself. The fading light cast long shadows across his face, carving deep lines of sorrow and regret into his familiar features.
He took a deep, shaky breath, and the sound was so foreign, so unlike her composed, precise father, that it terrified her more than the warning in the lace.
"There are things I should have told you long ago," he began, his gaze fixed on his hands, clasped tightly on the scarred wood of the table. "Things about your mother."
Isadora froze, her blood turning to ice.
"She was like you," he said, his voice a raw whisper. "Full of life. A light that was too bright. She thought their world was beautiful. A fairy tale of music and gowns." He finally looked up, and the anguish in his eyes was a physical blow. "She went to a ball at a noble's estate. Just once. A masquerade, much like the one last night."
He let the words hang in the air, a confession and an accusation all in one.
"She came back different," he continued, his voice cracking. "Pale. Quiet. The light in her was… gone. She wouldn't speak of what happened. A week later, she walked out of this shop to deliver an order to an address in Upper Bellmere."
He paused, swallowing hard. "She never returned. No one ever searched. No one ever asked. You don't ask questions of the nobility, Isadora. You just… accept."
A tear traced a path down his weathered cheek. "I was a coward. I let them take her from me because I was afraid. I see that same light in you, my girl. And I see that they have noticed it, too. I will not be a coward again."
The bell above the shop door jingled, a sharp, cheerful sound that was utterly obscene in the heavy silence of the room.
Neither of them moved. It was too late for customers.
Bram appeared at the door to the workroom, his young face pale. In his hand, he held a small, flat box wrapped in plain brown paper, sealed with a dollop of familiar silver wax. The raven and the rose. Mirewood Hall.
"This just came," Bram whispered, holding it out as if it were a venomous snake. "A messenger left it. For Isadora."