It arrived during the rain.
Not the violent, howling rain of the north that clawed at windows and spat through cracks in old stone, but the weary, unceasing drizzle of a London afternoon—soft as silk, cold as regret. The kind of rain that lingered on the skin like a memory.
Julia Harrow stood by the window of her modest flat, a tall, spectral figure half-wreathed in shadow, the charcoal folds of her dress melting into the dimness behind her. Her fingers, long and pale, curled against the cool pane of glass, not for warmth but as though steadying herself against a tremor only she could feel.
Her head throbbed with that dull, insistent ache she had grown to dread—the prelude to a migraine. It sat behind her eyes like a storm cloud, waiting. She had not slept properly in days. Not since the nightmares had returned. No. Not nightmares. Night terrors.
She never spoke of them. Not to the physician, not to Aunt Evelyn, not even in the brittle pages of her journal. What was there to say? That she dreamed of old houses breathing? Of footsteps trailing behind her down endless corridors? That sometimes, she woke gasping with the taste of salt in her mouth and the sound of someone whispering her name?
Last night, the sea had come for her again—vast, red-tinged waves crashing over her head, and Marian's voice rising from beneath the surface. Calling.
Julia's fingers twitched against the window.
The air in the room was still, save for the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. She had always liked this time of afternoon—when the city outside softened into haze, and her rooms felt suspended in something just shy of silence.
And yet—today, the stillness was... different. She couldn't say why. Only that her skin itched in the way it did before one of her spells.
Then, the knock.
Two precise raps against her front door. No hesitation. No follow-up. A stranger's rhythm.
Julia blinked. Her heart, absurdly, gave a small lurch.
She stood motionless for a second longer, listening to the rain trace slow veins down the glass, then turned away from the window and walked down the hallway with the clipped, careful steps of a woman who had learned not to trust her own balance. She reached the door, her hand pausing on the brass knob.
"Miss Harrow?" came a voice—male, muffled. "Telegram for you."
Mr. Barnett. The concierge. Always polite. Always faintly disappointed in her.
Julia opened the door a few inches. Just enough to see his blurred shape, coat damp from the rain, his gloved hand holding out a slim ivory envelope. She took it without a word, murmured something that might have been "thank you," and closed the door again.
The latch clicked into place.
Back in the sitting room, she stood in the center of the faded rug and stared down at the envelope. Her name was typed neatly across the front in sharp, black ink: Miss Julia Harrow. No sender listed.
A strange scent touched the air then—soft and sickly sweet.
Roses.
Her eyes darted to the corner table, to the empty vase. There hadn't been flowers in this flat since... well. Not since Marian's wedding.
Her breath caught. She could feel her pulse in her throat, fast and thin.
She tore the envelope open with a swift motion.
The telegram inside was stiff, the letters imprinted deep into the paper. Her eyes moved over the words—once, twice, three times—before she understood what she was reading.
> REGRET TO INFORM STOP
MARIAN BLACKWOOD DECEASED STOP
SUDDEN FEVER STOP
ALISTAIR REQUESTS PRESENCE AT BLACKWOOD HALL STOP
The paper slipped from her fingers. It floated, absurdly gentle, like a snowflake, to the floor.
Her knees nearly buckled.
But she didn't fall.
Not yet.
Marian.
The name struck Julia like the sudden chill of wind through a closed window. Cold, invisible, and deeply unwelcome.
She had not uttered it aloud in months—not since the last letter had arrived with Marian's elegant, sloping script on the envelope. Not since she had placed it, unopened, into the far right drawer of her writing desk. As if locking it away might silence the unease blooming in her chest like a dark flower.
She had told herself she was too busy. That she would read it later. That a few days—then weeks—then months wouldn't matter.
But they did.
The letter remained there, untouched. Waiting. Like a curse disguised in cream stationery.
Something in her—something primitive and whispering and strangely alive—had warned her not to touch it. A still, small voice that sometimes emerged when the nights grew long and the house creaked like old bones settling.
That same voice had always kept her from leaning too far over balcony railings. That had made her pause before stepping into the street when she couldn't see the carriage. That voice, serpentine and soft, had hissed to her:
Don't open it.
Don't invite it in.
Don't let Marian's ghost into your world.
And now Marian was gone.
Dead.
The word lodged itself somewhere behind Julia's ribs. She hadn't cried. She didn't know how to cry for things that still didn't feel entirely real.
She rose from her narrow chair slowly, with the deliberate grace of a woman trained by illness to move carefully. Her long, pale limbs unfurled like the wings of some cold-blooded creature stirred from slumber. She did not rush. She never rushed. There had always been something performative about the way she moved—like a dancer caught in a perpetual final act. Poised. Controlled. As if to stumble might unravel her completely.
Her head throbbed with a low pulse of migraine pain behind the eyes, the kind that always came when she ignored something for too long.
She approached the desk.
Her study smelled faintly of old paper, lavender oil, and a trace of yesterday's rain. The windows were streaked with it, dull gray light filtering through the glass as if the outside world had grown weary of shining.
She pulled the drawer open with a click.
And there it was.
Untouched. Unchanged. Unopened.
The letter lay where she had left it like a sleeping serpent. The envelope was thick, slightly yellowed at the edges now, and bore Marian's unmistakable handwriting—ornate, too careful, like a girl trying too hard to appear grown. Her cousin had always been too lovely, too fragile, like a porcelain thing that had never been meant for this world.
Julia sat down.
Her fingers hovered over the envelope. She didn't touch it yet.
Instead, her mind was already slipping backward—into memory. Into light and warmth and laughter that seemed as distant as another lifetime.
They had been seventeen.
The summer sun had made the water sparkle like spilled stars. The riverbank was drowsy with the hum of dragonflies, and the smell of crushed grass clung to their skirts. Marian's laughter had been bright and bell-clear as a bell, uncontained and real. They had run barefoot in the shallows, water licking at their ankles, dresses bunched in fists to keep from getting soaked.
Their hands had been sticky with cherry juice, and they'd shared secrets in the reed-thick quiet, like children trying to outpace the inevitable future.
"Do you think we'll ever be like them?" Marian had asked, nodding toward the adults up on the terrace—where Aunt Evelyn's estate looked like something peeled from an oil painting.
The women wore lace and tight smiles. The men leaned back in polished chairs with cigars and brandy. Their voices had blended into the clink of glass, the laughter of people who no longer felt anything worth hiding.
Ghosts. That was what they looked like. Their mothers had died young. Their fathers had disappeared behind ledgers and absinthe and affairs. The whole family was made of haunted echoes.
Julia had followed Marian's gaze and felt a chill that didn't belong to the sun.
"God, I hope not," she had whispered.
Marian had smiled.
But it had not touched her eyes.
The front door slammed shut with a crack so sharp it sliced through the stillness of the drawing room like a blade. Julia barely flinched—her temples throbbed too fiercely to flinch—but the echo seemed to ripple through the walls, unsettling the air.
The scent arrived before the woman did: lavender water, soap, and a cloying trace of rose pomade. Then came Aunt Evelyn, swept in by the wind like a matronly specter draped in mourning gray. Her coat glistened with fine mist, her parasol folded like a weapon in her gloved fist.
Her hair, still thick despite her years, was coiled in an iron crown of steely gray. Her mouth, red as blood against her powdered skin, was set in its usual tight, disdainful line.
"You've received the news, I presume."
No pleasantries. No greetings. Only that cold pronouncement as she stripped off her gloves, her eyes moving across the room like a hunting hawk's.
Julia nodded once, slow and measured. She was seated by the hearth, though the fire had long since dwindled to embers. She hadn't the strength to rise, nor the will to re-light the flames.
Evelyn moved with purpose, seating herself like a monarch surveying a crumbling kingdom. She chose the high-backed armchair opposite Julia, her spine rod-straight, her gloved hands folded in her lap like a judgment waiting to be delivered.
"The Blackwood men are all mad," she said, her tone clipped and absolute. "That house eats its women."
Julia arched a brow. Her arms crossed over her bodice instinctively, a gesture of both defiance and defense. The dress she wore—a charcoal wool trimmed in olive satin—itched at the seams. "You don't know Alistair."
Her aunt let out a breath that wasn't quite a scoff. "Neither did Marian. Not truly. That place changes people. Warps them. It twists what's soft into something sharp."
"She chose him," Julia replied quietly, but there was something strained in her voice even she couldn't quite disguise. "She loved him."
"She loved the idea of him." Evelyn's words were like frost forming on glass—cold, spreading, impossible to stop. "That man was never what he seemed. None of them are. The Blackwoods are a cursed lineage. Their ancestors were bloodletters and woman-breakers. And that house..."
Her eyes, pale and shining like the belly of a dead fish, didn't leave Julia's face. "That house is alive in the worst kind of way."
Julia turned her gaze toward the window, where rain slithered down the panes in silver trails. The city beyond was blurred by fog. She could see the dim outline of gas lamps and the flicker of a hansom cab passing below, but all of it felt too far away to matter.
"She wrote to me once," Evelyn said, voice quieter now. "Before the letters stopped. She was afraid. She said the house was... wrong."
Julia swallowed. The room felt colder, despite the coals. Her hands curled against the sleeves of her dress. A sudden weight in her chest. She didn't want to speak of Marian's final letter. The one still sealed, untouched, hiding in the bottom drawer of her writing desk. The one she couldn't bring herself to read.
She looked away. Couldn't meet Evelyn's stare.
"She's gone now," she said instead. "And he's asked me to help catalogue the art collection she began."
"That man knows exactly how to manipulate guilt," Evelyn hissed. "And you—you always wear yours like a second skin."
Silence followed. Long, aching silence. The kind that stretches and pulses with unspoken truths. Only the ticking of the old French mantel clock broke it, though even that sound seemed too loud. Every tick was like a drip of water in a hollow cave, echoing between Julia's eyes where the migraine had begun to throb again.
Then Evelyn moved.
She stood slowly, her movements deliberate, and opened her satchel with the same solemnity one might use to reveal a coffin's contents. From the depths, she drew out something small wrapped in linen.
She stepped toward Julia. Her shadow fell over the girl like a veil. She reached out and pressed the object into Julia's palm.
A crucifix. Worn. Brass. Cold as stone.
"For protection," she said.
Julia stared at it, felt the edges press against her skin. The metal smelled faintly of salt and time. "You know I don't believe in—"
"Humour me," Evelyn snapped, not harsh but commanding. "You're still fragile. Don't pretend otherwise."
A bitter smile touched Julia's lips. "I'm not fragile."
Evelyn tilted her head, gaze unreadable. "No. You're haunted."
The night before her departure, Julia did not sleep. Sleep, like peace, had become something elusive—something other women still held on to with delicate hands, like embroidered handkerchiefs or pressed flowers. She, on the other hand, had forgotten the last time she closed her eyes without the weight of something unseen pressing at her ribs.
The flat was cloaked in silence, too quiet for London. Outside, the rain had ceased its weeping, but the wind still prowled the narrow alleys, hissing beneath the door like a warning no one had invited. The candle at her desk burned low and unsteady, a single flame dancing as if struggling against breathless anticipation. Shadows stretched across the walls—long, spindly things that seemed to reach toward her spine.
She sat in her nightdress, wrapped in her worn green shawl, the one with the frayed hem she never had the heart to repair. Her auburn hair was loose—an oddity for her, who wore it in a tight chignon even when she was alone—but she could not stand the tension tonight. Her head already pulsed with the familiar ache of an oncoming migraine, a storm gathering behind her eyes.
On the desk before her, the crucifix gleamed faintly in the candlelight. It had been her aunt Evelyn's—pressed into her palm with a trembling hand and a sharp whisper, "Take it. Whether you believe in saints or not, something wicked sleeps in that house."
Julia hadn't believed. Not in saints, nor devils. She believed in fevers, in trauma, in inherited madness. In things doctors tried to name, then dismissed with sighs and laudanum.
But still, she hadn't removed the crucifix. It lay beside her untouched tea, its shadow like a second set of bones across the desk.
And there—between it all—rested the letter.
Marian's last letter.
It was absurd, she told herself, to feel fear over paper. Ink did not bite. Script did not haunt. But her hand hovered above it as though it might lash out, and for a moment, she imagined it breathing. As if the envelope itself were drawing slow, shallow breaths, waiting.
She had found it that morning while searching for gloves. Tucked in the far corner of her desk drawer, still sealed, still whole. Still accusing. She hadn't remembered placing it there.
Now it stared up at her, smug in its silence.
Julia took it in her fingers, cool and soft from the London damp. She turned it over—no return address, only Marian's name in looping, nervous cursive, a style she recognized instantly from childhood birthday cards and apology notes written after trivial fights over books and dresses.
Her mouth was dry. She reached for her tea but found it cold.
Her thumb slid beneath the brittle flap.
The seal cracked.
Slowly, she unfolded the letter. The paper was no longer crisp—it had softened, warped slightly at the edges, as though something had wept into it. Moisture that did not belong. Her skin prickled. The fine hairs on her arms rose.
And then she saw the ink.
Blots. Smears. Entire lines vanished into watermarks, as if erased by unseen fingers. Paragraphs lost to some unknown grief. It was like reading the words of a ghost—half-there, half-gone.
She leaned closer.
The air smelled faintly of roses.
There hadn't been roses in the flat for weeks.
Julia's throat tightened. Her eyes scanned the ruined letter. All of it—blurred, broken. All but one line. One jagged, chilling line that stood untouched, clear as a wound still fresh.
I think Alistair knows. I think he wants me to go mad.
The candle flickered once. The flame dipped low. Then rose, elongated, a hiss escaping as the wax bubbled at its base.
Julia didn't breathe.
She couldn't.
The paper trembled in her grip, not because of a breeze, but because her fingers had begun to shake.
And outside, beneath the hiss of wind, something scratched softly at the windowpanes.