Belladonna

“I will paint, and travel, and wander the halls at night so that I may sleep until the afternoon should I desire. I will have a hound, or three, and I’ll spend my mornings riding horseback with no one to care for but myself. There are no limits to what I might do, for I will be wholly in charge.”

Her uncle’s love life proved to be too fruitful in the end, however—at the age of thirty, he died from a disease he’d contracted from one of his many partners. Signa had hoped to be taken in by Charlotte’s family after that, only to discover that her friend’s mother had passed from the very same disease.

You’re not breathing. Death’s voice was hard and icy. Why aren’t you breathing, Signa?

Lillian is dead and Mr. Hawthorne’s daughter, Blythe, is sick.

I’m Sylas Thorly, and I’m here on behalf of Mr. Elijah Hawthorne

Just as the night had begun with the cry of a baby, it ended with one. Only this time, no one was around to hear it

Once more he tried to claim her, yet his touch did not show him flashes of the life this young child had led. It showed him instead something he’d never before seen—glimpses of her future.

A brilliant, impossible future

Death was suffocating, and he was ice

But Death did not need to be seen; he was to be felt. He was a weight upon the chest, or a collar buttoned too tight. A fall into frigid, lethal waters

One by one they fell like stars, only the lucky few who’d not yet tasted the wine able to make their escape