The rain in Bellmere did not wash things clean; it merely pressed the soot deeper into the cobblestones.
Spring had arrived, but it was a sickly, pale thing, choking on the lingering frost of a winter that refused to die. Inside Mirewood Hall, however, the seasons were irrelevant. The air was always perfectly still, scented with beeswax, old paper, and the metallic, copper tang that Isadora had learned not to think about too deeply.
She stood in the center of the guest suite Caelan had assigned to her—a room larger than the entire ground floor of her father's shop—and listened to the sound of her own ruin.
Music.
It drifted up from the grand salon below, a string quartet playing something light and airy, a direct insult to the storm raging against the leaded glass windows. It was a celebration.
Isadora tightened the sash of her dressing gown, her fingers trembling. Her trunk was packed. It had been packed for an hour.
