Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through the thick, cloying air of The Serpent's Coil. The fox-masked vampire's smile was a slash of white in the shadows, a promise of a hunt she had just become the quarry of. His gaze was a physical weight, pinning her in place.
But her father was a heavier weight, swaying on his feet, his drunken fury a beacon in the wretched tavern. "Crawling back to the gutter," he'd spat, and the words were acid, dissolving what little composure she had left.
"We are leaving," she said, her voice a low, desperate command. It was not a request.
She hooked her arm through his, digging her fingers into the coarse wool of his coat. He was all dead weight and slurring protests, a mockery of the proud, precise man who had raised her. The room, filled with the city's dregs, watched with glinting, predatory amusement. Their leers felt like hands on her skin.
"Let go of me, girl," Elias roared, trying to yank his arm free. His struggle was clumsy, uncoordinated, but fueled by gin-soaked rage. He stumbled, nearly taking them both down into the filth of the floor.
Laughter erupted around them, a coarse, ugly bark that echoed Isadora's humiliation.
"Having trouble with your old man, Duchess?" a grimy patron called out, raising his tankard.
Her face burned with a shame so hot it brought tears to her eyes. She ignored him, ignored them all. She had to. She hauled with all her might, her muscles screaming in protest, dragging her father toward the door like a sack of blighted grain.
Each step was a battle. He was a stranger. This broken, shouting man was not her father. He was a ghost wearing her father's face, haunted by grief and drowned in spirits.
As she wrestled him through the doorway and into the damp, narrow alley, the fox-masked man's smile was the last thing she saw. It wasn't a smile of mirth. It was a smile of ownership, a chilling acknowledgment of a bargain she hadn't known was struck. A toast to the trap she had just discovered.
The night air was a shock of cold, smelling of river damp and rot. It did little to clear her head. Her father stumbled against the slick cobblestones, his tirade softening into pathetic, choked sobs.
"They took my Clara," he mumbled, his head lolling against the cold brick wall. "You let them."
The accusation, even slurred and nonsensical, was a fresh wound. She bit down on her lip, tasting blood. "No one is taking anyone," she lied, her voice shaking. "We're going home."
She pulled him along, her focus narrowed to the single, desperate task of putting one foot in front of the other. The sounds of the tavern faded behind them, replaced by the furtive whispers of the Spice Quarter. Figures huddled in darkened doorways, their faces lost to shadow, their voices like the rustling of rats in the walls.
As she passed a narrow alcove, she caught a sliver of conversation, not meant for her ears.
"—Wren's tab is bigger than his shop," a raspy voice hissed. "Heard Valestra's own have come to collect."
Isadora's blood turned to ice in her veins. She slowed, pretending to adjust her grip on her father, straining to hear more.
"Not just any collector," another voice, lower and more cautious, replied. "They sent the one from Viregate. The one they call the Bone-Reaper."
Viregate.
The name struck her with the force of a physical blow. The secret letter clutched in her pocket suddenly felt like it was burning through the fabric of her cloak. A letter from Seraphyne, addressed to a lord in Viregate. Her father, in debt to Lady Valestra. A collector from that very same prison.
These were not separate threads. They were a knot, tightening around her family's throat.
"He's finished," the first voice cackled softly. "Once the Reaper marks you, you either pay in coin or you pay in bone."
Isadora didn't wait to hear more. She hauled her father away from the whispering shadows, her heart hammering a frantic, terrified rhythm against her ribs. The Collector from Viregate. The name was a death sentence.
The journey home was a blur of misery. The Merchant Quarter was a ghost town, its familiar, comforting storefronts now looming like silent accusers in the moonlight. Her own home, Wren & Co., was a darkened tomb waiting to receive them.
Getting her father up the narrow stairs was an ordeal that scraped raw what was left of her strength and spirit. He was a boneless weight, murmuring incoherently, his breath a foul cloud of gin and sorrow. She half-dragged, half-carried him, her arms aching, her back screaming.
She managed to get him into their small sitting room, the same room where she had found Bram curled in fear only an hour before. It felt like a lifetime ago. He collapsed into the armchair by the cold hearth, his body slumping into the worn velvet like a discarded puppet.
His eyes, glassy and unfocused, flickered open. They were filled with a terrible, swimming grief.
"Elenora," he whispered, the name a ragged, broken sound. He was looking right at Isadora, but he was seeing a ghost from seven years ago. He was seeing her mother.
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he was gone, passed out into the black, merciful oblivion of drink. For a moment, she just stood there, breathing heavily, her body trembling with exhaustion and a rage so profound it left her feeling hollow.
Rage at him, for his weakness. Rage at the nobles who played with lives like they were game pieces. Rage at herself, for wearing that gown, for going to that ball, for wanting, just for one night, to be someone else.
Look where it had gotten them.
She knelt beside him, her movements stiff. Gently, she eased off his muddy boots, her fingers fumbling with the laces. His fine wool coat was stained with something dark and sticky from the tavern floor. The proud Elias Wren, who would spend an hour ensuring the crease in his trousers was perfectly sharp, was gone.
As she worked, he murmured in his stupor, his words thick and slurred, but one rose from the jumble with chilling clarity.
"Clara..." he groaned, his head tossing against the back of the chair. "Must get Clara... from Viregate..."
Isadora froze, her hands stilled on his boot.
There it was again. The confirmation. The final piece of the puzzle slotting into its dreadful place. Her father's debt wasn't just about money. It was about Clara. Lady Valestra had taken her sister not just as punishment for a stolen invitation, but as collateral. And her father had known. He had known and he had said nothing.
The lie of it, the sheer weight of his silence, was staggering.
She finished her task in a daze, her mind reeling. She pulled a thick woolen blanket from the chest by the door and draped it over him. He wouldn't make it to his bed tonight. Perhaps it was better this way. Let him wake up in the cold, with the consequences of his actions stiff in his bones.
Her own grief, her own terror, would have to wait. She was the only one left standing. The only one who could see the full shape of the web they were caught in.
She walked on numb legs into the small, dark kitchen. The silver cufflink she'd left on the table seemed to glow in the faint moonlight filtering through the window. A piece of my world that now belongs in yours. The Duke's words echoed in her mind, no longer a seductive promise, but a brand. He had marked her, and in doing so, had marked her entire family for disaster.
She stared at the cufflink, the intricately carved wolf's head a symbol of a power so vast and cold it was incomprehensible. A power that saw her family's ruin as little more than a Tuesday. He had sent her home in his carriage, a gesture that seemed like protection but was, in fact, a proclamation. This one is mine.
Did he know about her father's debt? Did he know about Valestra's collectors? Or was his world so far removed from theirs that a merchant's debt was beneath his notice?
A fresh wave of anger, sharp and clean, cut through her exhaustion. It was an anger directed at him. At Caelan Virellion. For his casual cruelty, for his infuriatingly calm possession of her, for the cage of his protection that was proving to be more dangerous than any threat it was meant to ward off.
She reached into her pocket, her fingers closing around the brittle parchment of Seraphyne's letter. Her only weapon. Her only secret. A letter to a lord in a place that was now the nexus of all her fears.
She had to know what it said.
Her hands trembled as she carefully broke the wax seal, the emblem of House Virellion crumbling under her thumb. The paper was fine, expensive, and filled with a tight, elegant script. She angled it toward the moonlight, her eyes scanning the words, her heart pounding.
It was not a long letter. It was cold, precise, and utterly terrifying.