The new chambers drown in grey—stone and silk and shadows that pool in corners like old blood gone black. I stand at the window and listen to the servants whisper in the corridor beyond.
"The lady might yet tame the beast."
The words slither through the keyhole, through the cracks beneath the door, through the very walls that breathe with Wintergrave's terrible life.
They speak in hushed, hopeful tones—as if I'm some miracle waiting to happen, some saint who might gentle the monster with virtue, beauty, mysterious feminine power.
I want to laugh. Want to scream.
Want to tell them the truth—that I've tamed nothing, that the beast simply chooses when to bare his teeth, that what they mistake for control is merely mutual destruction performed with excruciating slowness.
Five days since he almost bit me. Five days since I destroyed my room in hysterical fury.
Five days of dreadful silence that presses against my skin like grave dirt.
Mira enters with tea that will grow cold untouched, the scratches on her cheek now permanent accusations written in flesh.
My violence made manifest, my loss of control carved into the one person who still cares whether I live or die.
"They're saying things," Mira murmurs, setting the tray down with hands that tremble. Always trembling now, both of us, as if the manor's poison has seeped into our bones, turned us brittle from within. "The servants. About you and the Prince."
"I know." The words taste of ash, of things burnt beyond recognition.
"They think you've performed some miracle to stay alive this long." Mira's laugh carries no humour, only the hollow echo of understanding too terrible to speak aloud. "Marjorie actually blessed herself when she said your name this morning. As if you're a saint."
Saints don't beg monsters to kill them. Saints don't feel hunger when fangs graze their throats. Saints don't lie awake replaying that almost-bite, wondering if the disappointment of survival will eventually drive them mad.
The thought circles through my mind again, that endless loop of shame and desire that has become my constant companion these past five days.
The door opens without announcement—only one person in Wintergrave possesses such terrible privilege. Lydia glides in wearing white today, the colour obscene against her vitality, her barely contained rage.
She looks like a bride herself, or perhaps like what brides become in this place—beautiful and wrong and hungry for things that shouldn't be desired.
"Sister dear," she says, and the endearment cuts sharper than any blade. "How lovely to find you conscious. I was beginning to wonder if you'd taken to your bed permanently. Like a proper Victorian lady with the vapours."
"What do you want, Lydia?" Though I already know. She wants what she always wants—to witness my deterioration, to catalogue each stage of my unravelling for her own dark pleasure.
"Want? Nothing. I've come to observe your progress."
She circles the room, fingers trailing across surfaces like she's marking territory, claiming even this grey sanctuary as part of her domain.
"The servants are quite convinced you might accomplish the impossible. That you could be the one to finally tame my brother. Make him something less than monstrous."
The lie tastes like copper in my mouth. Like blood. Like the memory of his fangs almost breaking skin. I can still feel the ghost of them against my throat, can still feel the terrible disappointment when he tore himself away.
"If only they knew," Lydia continues, voice dropping to silk-wrapped poison. "How you practically begged him to drain you on that table."
Of course she knows. Of course she's always watching, always listening, always cataloguing our mutual destruction for her own terrible purposes.
This manor keeps no secrets from those who know how to listen to its whispers.
"He wanted it too," I say, though the words feel like betrayal. Of what, I cannot say. Of him? Of myself? Of this careful dance we perform around each other's hungers?
"Of course he did." Lydia's laugh sounds like glass breaking in a tomb. "That's what makes it so delicious. You're both destroying yourselves in slow motion, and the servants think it might become love. They whisper that maybe—just maybe—you'll be the one. The one who finds the secret to surviving him."
She stops at the window, stands beside me, our reflections wavering in frost-kissed glass like ghosts of who we might have been in some other story. In her white dress, she looks like the bride I was supposed to be.
In my grey mourning clothes, I look like what I've become—something caught between life and death, neither fully one nor the other.
"There was a bride who 'tamed' him. Beautiful little thing. French. Lasted six months. She convinced herself his restraint meant care. The servants whispered the same things then—how she'd gentled the beast, how she'd saved him."
Lydia doesn't wait for permission to continue. She never does. Permission implies power, and she recognises none but her own.
"She started believing it herself."
Lydia's reflection smiles, all teeth and terrible knowledge.
"Started thinking she might actually have power over him. Started testing boundaries. Making small demands. Changes to the household. Letters to her family. Little freedoms she thought she might be earning through his growing restraint."
The pause stretches, taut as the moment before a neck snaps. I can feel the story's ending approaching like footsteps in a dark corridor, inevitable and terrifying.
"He killed her in the library between one breath and the next."
Lydia turns, meets my eyes directly, and I see my future reflected in her dark gaze.
"The servants found her still holding her book, looking almost peaceful, as if she'd simply fallen asleep. But we knew better. We could smell it—the moment he decided she'd forgotten what he was."
The warning hangs between us like a noose, waiting for me to slip my neck through its embrace.
"I haven't forgotten," I say, but the words sound hollow even to my own ears.
"Haven't you?"
Lydia's smile sharpens into something that could cut glass.
"You think because he drinks poison instead of your blood, he might be sparing you. You hope his restraint could become love. But darling, restraint is just delayed violence. And Dorian has always been so very patient with his meals."
She leaves then, but her words remain, poisoning the air, seeping into my lungs with every breath. Alone again, I stare at my reflection in the frosted window.
The girl looking back seems translucent, fading, as if she's already half-ghost.
The lady might yet tame the beast.
The servants' whispers mock me from beyond the door. They don't understand. I haven't tamed anything—not yet, perhaps not ever. I've simply become another bride in a long line of women who thought they might be different.
But I'm not special. I'm just another girl learning that in Wintergrave, even hope is poison.