The Duke's personal carriage was a silent, opulent tomb. It moved through the darkened streets of Bellmere with an unnatural speed and silence, the raven and rose crest on its lacquered door a silent, damning brand. Isadora sat rigid on the plush velvet seat, a world away from the driver, who was a featureless silhouette behind a glass partition. She was a prisoner being escorted back to her cell, a wild bird being returned to its cage, its wings clipped by a protection she had never asked for.
Every jolt of the carriage was a fresh wave of misery. The argument in his study replayed in her mind, a dizzying carousel of anger and confusion. His cold refusal to take back the cufflink was an assertion of power she could not fight. It is a piece of my world that now belongs in yours. The silver wolf's head in her pocket felt heavy, a cursed talisman, a chain that bound her to him whether she wished it or not.
She clutched the stolen letter, the parchment a secret, brittle promise in her hand. Viregate Prison. The name was a dark whisper, a potential key to a lock she didn't understand. It was all she had. That, and the chilling, final words Seraphyne had delivered like a death sentence: Obedient pet.
The carriage slowed, coming to a stop before the darkened facade of Wren & Co. The silence of the street was a stark contrast to the storm raging inside her. The driver, one of the Duke's impassive servants, opened the door for her, his movements economical and precise. He escorted her to the shop door, unlocked it with a key she hadn't realized was missing, and then, with a curt, shallow bow, he melted back into the carriage and vanished into the night.
Stepping inside her home brought no relief. The shop was cold and dark, the familiar scents of silk, dye, and her father's pipe conspicuously absent. The air was stale with sorrow. It felt hollowed out, a home with its heart torn away. The silence was an accusation.
As she began the slow, weary climb up the narrow stairs to their small apartment, she heard it. A soft, choked sound, almost too quiet to be real. A sob.
Her own exhaustion fell away, replaced by a surge of adrenaline. "Bram?" she whispered, her voice a raw crack in the darkness.
She found him in their small sitting room, curled into a tight ball on the worn armchair by the cold hearth. His small shoulders were shaking, his face tear-streaked and blotchy in the faint moonlight filtering through the window. He was alone.
"Izzy?" he whimpered, his voice thick with sleep and tears. He launched himself from the chair and into her arms, clinging to her with a desperate strength. "You came back."
"Of course I came back," she murmured, her throat tight, stroking his tangled hair. She sank to her knees, holding him close, the solid, warm weight of him the only anchor in her spinning world. "What is it? Where is Father?"
"He didn't come home," Bram sobbed into her shoulder. "He left this morning, and he… he never came back. I waited and waited. The shop was so dark."
He had been alone all day. While she had been a prisoner in a gilded cage, her twelve-year-old brother had been here, alone in the dark, terrified. The guilt was a physical blow, knocking the air from her lungs. This was her fault. All of it.
"It's all right now," she whispered, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Her own grief would have to wait. Bram needed her. She led him into the kitchen, her movements gentle and sure, a sister's love a powerful, instinctual force. She heated milk on the stove, her hands steady despite the tremor in her soul. She sat with him at the small kitchen table, listening as he recounted his lonely, terrifying day in halting whispers.
She tucked him into his small bed, the sheets cool against his feverish skin. She hummed the lullaby their mother used to sing, a simple, sweet melody of starlight and moonbeams. The tune was a painful echo from a life that felt a world away, a life before monsters wore the faces of men and shadows had teeth. He clung to her hand, his grip tight, until his ragged breathing finally softened into the deep, even rhythm of an exhausted, fitful sleep.
Isadora sat beside him for a long time, watching his sleeping face in the moonlight. The rage at her father, a cold, hard stone in her chest, warred with a new, sharp fear for his safety. Elias Wren was a man of quiet habits and unshakeable routine. To abandon his shop, to abandon Bram… it was a sign of a man utterly broken. A man who had lost his way in the darkness.
She knew she couldn't wait until morning. The knot of fear in her stomach told her something was terribly wrong. She knew where he would be. In the seven years since her mother had vanished, there had been a few nights when the grief had become too much for him to bear. On those nights, he would disappear, always ending up in the one place in Bellmere designed to swallow broken men whole.
The Spice Quarter.
She rose from the chair, her movements silent. She pulled on a heavy, dark cloak, pulling the hood low to shadow her face. The silver cufflink in her pocket was a cold, heavy weight. She left it on the kitchen table, a silent promise to Bram that she would return.
The late-night streets of the Merchant Quarter were deserted, the cobblestones slick with a fine mist. But as she moved toward the river, toward the oldest, most derelict part of the city, the silence gave way to a low, discordant hum of noise.
The Spice Quarter was Bellmere's festering wound, a maze of narrow, winding alleys that smelled of cheap gin, unwashed bodies, stale perfume, and a pervasive, cloying sweetness that failed to mask the scent of despair. Raucous, drunken laughter spilled from the open doors of taverns and gin-houses, mingling with the hushed, furtive whispers of illicit bargains being struck in shadowy doorways. It was no place for a woman, let alone a respectable young seamstress. But respectability was a luxury she had lost two nights ago.
She moved through the shadows, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She peered into the grimy windows of one tavern after another, her eyes scanning the crowds of leering, drunken men. The Stag's Head. The Rusty Anchor. The Gilded Cage. Each one was a circle of hell, filled with lost souls.
She found him in the dingiest, most wretched gin-house of them all, a place called The Serpent's Coil. The air inside was thick with smoke and the stench of spilled liquor. He was slumped over a rickety table in the corner, his usually immaculate clothes rumpled and stained, his hair a mess, his face slack with drink. He was arguing, his voice a pathetic, slurring parody of his usual crisp tones, with a large, bull-necked tavern keeper.
"I'm good for it, I tell you," he was saying, gesturing at a small pile of coins on the table. "Just one more."
"Your coin's spent, Wren," the tavern keeper grunted, his arms crossed over his massive chest. "And your credit's no good here. Pay your tab or get out."
Isadora's heart broke. This broken, pathetic man was her father. The precise, proud man who had taught her how to hold a needle, how to read a ledger, how to be strong. He was gone.
She took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows. "Father."
Elias looked up, his eyes struggling to focus. When he saw her, his expression did not soften with relief. It hardened with a drunken, misplaced rage.
"Well, well," he slurred, his voice loud enough to draw the attention of the entire sordid room. "Look what the cat dragged in. If it isn't my fine daughter. The Duchess of Wren & Co. Come to slum it with the common folk?"
"Father, please," she whispered, her face burning with shame. "Let's go home."
"Home?" he laughed, a bitter, ugly sound. "What home? The home you brought monsters to? The home where my Clara is gone because you wanted to play princess for a night?" He swayed to his feet, pointing a trembling finger at her. "Look at her, all of you!" he shouted to the leering patrons. "This is the girl who dances with the Duke! This is the girl who thinks she's better than us! But she comes crawling back to the gutter, doesn't she?"
The humiliation was a physical blow. She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him toward the door. "That's enough. We're leaving."
"I'm not leaving until I've had another drink!" he roared, trying to shrug her off.
As she struggled with her drunken, shouting father, wrestling him toward the door, she felt a pair of eyes on her. A cold, prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She risked a glance over her shoulder.
In a dark corner of the tavern, half-hidden in shadow, a man sat alone. He was elegantly dressed, a stark contrast to the other patrons. He wore a mask, a simple, beautifully crafted thing of polished silver, shaped into the cruel, clever face of a fox. He was watching her. And as their eyes met, he smiled, a slow, predatory curving of his lips that held no warmth, only a chilling, possessive interest. It was the man from the ball. The fox who had been about to pounce before she'd fled.
At that same moment, the bull-necked tavern keeper leaned over the bar to his wife, his voice a low grumble she could just barely overhear. "That's Elias Wren. He owes a fortune to the collectors from the Hill. Word is, his time is up."
Isadora's blood ran cold. The collectors from the Hill. That meant only one thing. Her father wasn't just drinking himself into a stupor. He was in debt. Deeply in debt.
To them.
The fox-masked vampire's smile widened, as if he could hear her thoughts. He raised his glass to her in a silent, mocking toast. The trap was not a single thread, but a vast, intricate web. And she had just walked her entire family right into its center.