The morning after the Duke's visitation was a fragile, hollow thing. The rain had passed, leaving behind a world washed clean, the spring sunlight streaming through the windows of the workshop with a cheerfulness that felt like a cruel mockery.
Isadora had not slept. She had spent the night staring at the two objects in her sewing box, the silver wolf and the obsidian serpent, her mind a chaotic ruin. My way, or Locke's. His ultimatum echoed in the silence, a choice between a gilded cage and a key to the abyss. Ruin, or a different kind of ruin.
She felt stretched thin, a thread pulled taut to the point of snapping. The weight of her secrets—the key, the cufflink, her father's lies, the truth of her mother's connection to Mirewood Hall—was a physical burden, pressing down on her until it was an effort to simply breathe.
"Izzy?"
