I haven't slept. How could I, with Dorian's shadow burnt into my retinas from where he stood in the storm, watching?
Mira sleeps curled in a chair by the dying fire, exhaustion finally claiming her. Dark circles bloom beneath her eyes like bruises.
I rise, bones aching from a night spent rigid with fear. The wedding dress lies discarded on the floor like shed skin. I dress in the simplest gown I can find—dark blue wool, high-necked, long-sleeved. Armour against whatever this day brings.
The manor feels different in daylight. Not safer—nothing here could ever be safe—but revealed. I can see the stains now, rust-brown on ancient stone, trailing down walls like the building itself has wept blood.
I explore because stillness is death here. Movement, at least, creates the illusion of agency. The first locked door I find is on the second floor. Heavy oak, iron-bound, with scratches on the wood as if something tried to claw its way out. Or in.
"Best not to linger there, Your Grace."
Vassier materialises from shadow. His milky eyes fix on me with something that might be amusement.
"What's behind the door?"
"Nothing that concerns the living." He glides past me. "If you wish to explore, might I suggest the portrait gallery? Lady Lydia often takes morning refreshment there."
It's not a suggestion.
The gallery stretches the length of the east wing, tall windows alternating with portraits in heavy gold frames. But the windows are wrong—covered with something that isn't quite glass, something that moves like a membrane when I look too closely. The light that filters through is sickly, jaundiced, turning everything the colour of old bone.
Lydia stands before a particular set of portraits, a goblet of blood in her hand. She doesn't turn when I enter.
"Come to see your predecessors?"
The portraits are all young women. All beautiful. All dead.
"The brides," I say. Not a question.
"Some of them." Lydia moves to the first portrait. The woman inside has golden hair, laughing eyes frozen forever in oils. "This was Catherine. Sweet little Cat. Lasted three months. Found her in the wine cellar, trying to drink herself to death on that pomegranate swill."
Lydia's smile is sharp as glass. "The wine didn't kill her, of course. But what came after..."
She moves to the next. A dark-haired beauty with sad eyes. "Margaret. My little Magpie—always chattering, always trying to befriend everyone. Six weeks. The isolation broke her. Started seeing things that weren't there."
Another portrait. Red hair like flame. "Elizabeth. Lizzie the Bold. Actually tried to stake my brother whilst he slept. Can you imagine? As if he ever truly sleeps. Two weeks. The shortest yet."
"You killed them." The words escape before I can think.
Lydia turns, and her eyes burn with something terrible. "Killed? Such a crude word. I merely... hastened what was always inevitable. They were weak, all of them. Human." She spits the word like profanity. "They contaminated this place with their mortality, their fear, their pathetic hope."
She approaches me. "Do you know what your kind is to us? You're not even food. You're entertainment. Brief little flames that burn out so prettily."
"Then why take brides at all?"
"Politics. Treaties. The tedious games powerful men play." Lydia circles me, predator-slow. "But also... can you imagine the exquisite torture for my brother? To want something so badly, yet be bound by duty not to take it?"
She stops behind me, whispers against my ear.
"He drank you yesterday. Do you know what that means? Now he knows exactly how you taste. And now he craves you specifically. Not just blood—your blood. And he'll deny himself until it drives him half-mad, because that's what Dorian does. He denies and controls and pretends he's not the monster we all know he is."
"Why tell me this?"
"Because I want you to understand how this ends." Lydia moves to the last portrait—a blank canvas in an ornate frame. "This one's for you. I've already commissioned the artist. I'm thinking something in crimson, to match your wedding dress. You'll look lovely next to the others."
Footsteps echo in the corridor. Dorian appears in the doorway. His eyes are darker today, hungrier. He looks at the portraits, at Lydia, at me.
"Sister," he says, voice soft as velvet over steel. "You're again frightening my wife?"
"Your wife should be frightened." Lydia doesn't back down, meets his gaze with defiance that borders on worship. "Or have you forgotten what happened to the last one? And the one before? And the one—"
"Enough." One word, but it carries such weight that even Lydia falls silent. She drains her goblet, sets it aside with deliberate slowness.
"I'll leave you to your... conversation." She glides from the room, leaving me alone with Dorian and the gallery of dead brides. He doesn't move from the doorway, just watches me with those hollow eyes.
"She's lying," I say, though I don't believe it.
"No." He steps into the gallery, and the shadows seem to follow him, pooling at his feet like obedient hounds. "She's not."
He moves closer, not quite human in his grace, and I see the hunger burning beneath his composure. His eyes linger on my throat where my pulse hammers against skin.
"This one..." He pauses before Elizabeth’s portrait. "She was brave. Foolish, but brave. She deserved better than what she found here."
"And what did she find?"
"Me."
My stomach turns, bile rising. "You're telling me I'm going to die."
"Every bride who enters this house dies." He turns to face me. "Some quickly, some slowly. But they all die."
"Then why continue this farce?"
"Because the alternative is war." His laugh is hollow, bitter. "Your father knew exactly what he was doing when he signed your life away."
The rage rises then, hot and sudden. "My father—"
"Sold you." His hand moves, fast as thought, fingers ghosting along my jaw without quite touching. "Traded you for peace."
I pull away, back hitting the wall between two portraits.
"I understand now," I whisper. "The wine wasn't to protect me. It's to prolong the torment."
Something shifts in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or recognition.
"Clever girl." He backs away, putting distance between us. "You'll make an interesting addition to the gallery."
He turns to leave, pauses at the doorway without looking back.
"Your portrait will be different from the others. I'll make sure of that. You deserve something that captures the way you look at me—all that beautiful hatred burning in your eyes. It's the most honest thing in this entire cursed house."
The door closes behind him, and I'm left alone with the dead brides, their painted eyes full of warnings I'm only beginning to understand. The blank canvas waits, patient as a grave, already measuring me for oils and eternity.