She stood there for a long time, her body trembling, her mind a maelstrom of fractured memories and terrifying new possibilities. The way her mother used to hum a tune Isadora had never heard anywhere else. The silver locket her mother never took off, the one that was gone when she vanished. The stories of her beauty, of a radiance that had always seemed too bright for their small world.
Was it possible? Had her mother been entangled with the Duke himself? Was that the transgression Seraphyne's letter had alluded to? He remembers your every transgression. Was Prisoner 817 someone who had known her mother? Someone who had tried to help her?
The questions were a flood, and she was drowning in them.
The rest of the day passed in a thick, suffocating haze. She heard Bram get up, and she forced a smile, made him breakfast, and deflected his questions about their father with vague answers. She sent him out on an errand to the baker, desperate for a few moments of solitude, of silence.
But the silence was no comfort. It was filled with the ghosts of her father's lies.
She went downstairs to the workshop, thinking the familiar routine of work might ground her. On her design table, laid out on a piece of fresh parchment, were the charcoal sketches for Lady Seraphyne's new gowns. The measurements she had taken in that cold, opulent room at Mirewood Hall were noted in the margins. The width of a waist, the length of an arm belonging to a creature who spoke of torture as if it were gossip.
She picked up a pencil, her fingers clumsy. She looked at the design for an evening gown of blood-red silk, its lines elegant and severe, just like its intended wearer. She was supposed to create beauty for the beast who held her sister captive. A beast whose family may have murdered her mother.
The pencil snapped in her fingers.
She couldn't do it. She couldn't sit here and sew for them while her world fell apart. The work was a violation. Every stitch would be a betrayal of Clara, of her mother, of herself.
She pushed the sketches away, a wave of nausea rolling through her. She spent the afternoon in a stupor, moving through the hollowed-out rooms of her home, touching familiar objects that now felt alien. The family portrait on the mantel, her mother's painted smile now looking like a mask. The worn armchair where her father had collapsed, which now seemed to hold the imprint of his despair.
The sun began to set, painting the sky in lurid shades of orange and purple. The day was ending, and she had no answers, only more questions that festered in the dark. Bram was in his room, reading by candlelight. Her father had not emerged from his. The house was quiet. Too quiet.
As dusk settled fully over Bellmere, casting long shadows into the Merchant Quarter, she heard it.
A soft, scraping sound from the front of the shop. Furtive. Quick.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She froze, every muscle tensed, straining her ears. It was the sound of paper being pushed under the shop's front door.
She waited, her breath held, for the sound of footsteps receding, but there were none. Whoever had delivered it was as silent as a ghost.
Slowly, she crept down the stairs, her feet making no sound on the old wood. The workshop was dark, the only light a pale rectangle on the floor from the streetlamp outside. And there, lying half in the light and half in the shadow, was a folded piece of paper.
It was not a formal letter. It was a simple, unmarked square of parchment.
Dread, cold and heavy, settled in her stomach. This was not a bill from a vendor. This was not a note from a client. This was a secret.
She knelt on the floor, her fingers trembling as she reached for it. The paper was thick, expensive. She unfolded it. The script inside was jagged, written in a hurried, aggressive hand. There was no salutation. No signature. Only a few, terrifying lines.
Stop asking questions about Elenora Wren.
Some debts are not paid in coin. Your sister is a down payment.
Do you want your brother to be the balance?
***
The parchment slipped from Isadora's numb fingers, fluttering to the dark floorboards like a dead leaf. The air rushed from her lungs, leaving a hollow, aching void.
Bram.
The threat was not a vague possibility; it was a promise. A simple, brutal calculation.Your sister is a down payment. Do you want your brother to be the balance?
Ice, colder and sharper than any winter frost, flooded her veins. She was no longer just fighting for Clara's memory, but for Bram's life. She knelt there, frozen in the gloom of the workshop, the silence of the house pressing down on her, heavy as a shroud.
A soft click echoed from the front door.
It wasn't the sound of the latch being lifted from the inside. It was the sound of the lock turning from the outside. The bell above the door, meant to announce every customer, remained deathly silent.
A shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness near the towering bolts of silk. It moved with a liquid grace that was utterly soundless, a sliver of nightshade given form.
It was him. The man from the tavern. He wore the same elegant evening clothes, a stark contrast to the rustic workshop, and the same mask: a simple, beautifully crafted thing of polished silver, shaped into the cruel, clever face of a fox.
"I do hope I'm not interrupting," the fox-masked man purred. His voice was silk and poison, a cultured, melodic sound that made her skin crawl. "You looked as if you'd received some distressing news."
He knew. Of course, he knew. He was the one who had delivered the note. He had watched her read it.
Fear was a useless luxury. Rage was a weapon. She rose slowly to her feet, her spine straight, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She would not show him the terror that was clawing at her throat.
"The shop is closed," she said, her voice tight but steady.
"Oh, I'm not a customer," he replied, taking another fluid step closer. The silver mask gleamed in the single shaft of moonlight, its empty eyes seeming to drink the light from the room. "Think of me as… an interested party. A connoisseur of desperate situations. And yours, little seamstress, is rapidly becoming a masterpiece."
He stopped just a few feet from her, close enough that she could smell the faint, clean scent of night air and something else, something metallic and sharp, clinging to his fine wool coat.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
He chuckled, a low, intimate sound. "Impatient. I like that. The Duke of Ravenshade must find it terribly confusing. He so prefers quiet, contemplative things." The visible contempt in his voice when he spoke the Duke's title was a palpable force. "He gives you pretty, silent trinkets. I, on the other hand, believe in conversation."
With a slow, deliberate movement, he reached up and removed the mask.
Isadora's breath caught. The man in the tavern had been half-hidden in shadow, but now, in the stark moonlight, his face was revealed. He was beautiful. Not the cold, statuesque beauty of the Duke, but a sharp, predatory beauty, all high cheekbones, a cruel slash of a mouth, and eyes the color of molten gold. They glittered with ancient malice and a terrifying, vibrant intelligence. He was the Bone-Reaper. She knew it with a certainty that chilled her to the marrow.
"My name," he said, his smile not reaching his golden eyes, "is Kasien. A name you would do well to remember."
He saw the flicker of recognition in her eyes, the dawning horror, and his smile widened. "Ah. You've heard the whispers in the dark. The stories they tell to frighten children and debtors. It's always so disappointing when the reality lives up to the reputation, isn't it?"
"You work for Lady Valestra," she stated, the words tasting like ash.
"I am a contractor," he corrected smoothly. "A purveyor of services. Lady Valestra has a need. I provide a solution. It is a simple, elegant arrangement. Much cleaner than your father's."
He took another step, closing the distance between them. "You see, your father's debt is so… messy. You think it's about coin, don't you? You think he borrowed money to save this charmingly rustic little business."
He gestured around the workshop, his gaze dismissive. "That was part of it, of course. But Elias Wren is a sentimentalist. He made another deal. A trade."
"What trade?" she whispered, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
Kasien leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "He traded a future for a past. He swore an oath, you see. An oath to a very powerful man, long ago. In exchange for his silence, his family would be left alone. But then the money ran out, and he had to make a new deal with a new power. He had to offer new collateral." His golden eyes gleamed. "He offered a daughter."
Isadora felt the floor sway. Clara. Her father hadn't just let Clara be taken. He had offered her. She was the price.
"He offered Clara to pay his debt to Valestra," she clarified, her voice numb.
Kasien gave a theatrical sigh. "Details, details. The point is, your sister is now in Viregate. A truly dreadful place. I've been there. The acoustics in the lower levels are superb. You can hear a man's bones breaking from three corridors away."
He watched her, gauging her reaction, a scientist observing a specimen. "But," he said, his voice turning bright and helpful, "what if I told you that its doors are not all locked from the outside? What if I told you there was a way in?"