The first invitation arrived with the morning post.
A heavy cream envelope, edges gilded, Aurora's name written in a hand too elegant for the city clerk's office. Mrs. Greene slit it open with her letter knife, frowning even before she read the words aloud.
Miss Aurora Randall is cordially invited to present her poetry at the Beaumont Cultural Society, this coming Saturday evening, at Beaumont Hall.
At the bottom: Beaumont's signature, bold and fluid, the ink dark as blood.
The dining hall went still. Margaret gasped. Ruth muttered a curse. Aurora pressed trembling fingers to her mouth.
"He wants me," she whispered.
"No," Luxe said, voice like stone. "He wants to own you." She snatched the letter and fed it into the stove before anyone else could speak. The flames licked gold ink into ash.
The letter was only the beginning.
By noon, a florist arrived with a wagon of roses so red they looked wet. Mrs. Greene ordered them dumped in the alley.
An hour later, a boy delivered a velvet box containing pearl earrings. Luxe snapped it shut and dropped it down the well behind the Y.
By evening, a crate arrived marked For the Lamp. Inside: silk dresses, perfume bottles, a pair of ivory-handled hairbrushes.
Aurora's breath caught. "They're beautiful."
"They're chains," Luxe said, flinging the lid shut. "Velvet ones. Don't touch them."
Mrs. Greene called Grace, and together they dragged the crate into the courtyard and burned it. The perfume bottles hissed in the fire, the scent sickly-sweet and cloying.
Aurora watched, cheeks pale, eyes torn between awe and horror. Luxe squeezed her hand until her fingers steadied.
The next day, Daniels arrived with city inspectors. This time it wasn't a raid — it was "routine sanitation checks."
The officers poked at the kitchen, sniffed at the linens, ran fingers along windowsills. One made a show of coughing in the hall, muttering about "unsanitary female lodgings."
Mrs. Greene kept her tone clipped. "This house has passed every inspection since it opened. You'll find nothing."
Daniels smirked. "Then we'll keep looking. Every week, if we must."
Ruby stormed in halfway through, brandishing the latest newspaper. "Then we'll keep writing. Every day, if we must." She slapped the paper down on the counter. Aurora's poem filled the front page of the culture section.
Daniels' smirk faltered. Luxe saw it, memorized it.
That night, the writing circle was divided. Margaret was giddy, whispering about the Society and how grand it must be. Ruth hissed that they were courting danger. Helen only smiled, her needle flashing in and out of fabric as she murmured, "Some cages are gilded. Some birds sing anyway."
Aurora looked torn, her pencil tapping against her notebook. Luxe finally slammed her palm against the table. "He's not inviting you to sing. He's inviting you to kneel. And I'll break his hand before I let you kneel."
The room fell silent. Aurora lowered her pencil, shame and relief warring on her face.
Ruby convened the coalition again, this time in the church basement. She laid out the pattern: invitations, gifts, inspections.
"He's switching masks," Ruby said. "If he can't raid the house down, he'll lure its brightest star away. Divide, then conquer."
Grace slammed her palm on the table. "Then we don't divide. Not one step."
Pastor Mulligan raised a brow. "And if she wants to step? Choice is holy."
Aurora flushed, eyes darting to Luxe. Ruby cut in before Luxe could speak. "Choice is holy — but only when the chooser knows the knife at her throat."
She looked at Aurora directly. "Do you see the knife?"
Aurora's throat worked. "I see it," she whispered.
Luxe exhaled, tension easing slightly.
That night, Luxe sat at the window again, the leather notebook Beaumont had gifted now lying open on the desk. Across the street, a figure leaned against the lamppost: not Daniels this time, but another man, taller, coat too fine for a beat cop.
He tipped his hat toward the window and set a small box on the curb before walking away. Luxe waited until the street was empty, then slipped outside.
Inside the box: a silver bracelet, delicate, gleaming. No note this time.
She carried it back upstairs, held it over the open notebook, and scrawled across the page:
WE ARE NOT JEWELS. WE ARE FLAME.
Then she snapped the bracelet in half and shut the book hard enough to make the desk shake.
Aurora stirred in her sleep, murmuring, "Flame." Luxe brushed hair from her forehead and whispered, "Yes. Flame."
Two days later, Beaumont appeared in person.
Not at the Y — not yet. At the market. Grace spotted him first, strolling between stalls with the air of a man inspecting his estate. He tipped his hat to grocers, smiled at mothers, nodded at dockworkers.
When he reached Grace's stall, he picked up a loaf of bread, examined it, and set it down without paying. "Fine work," he said softly. "Shame if the ovens went cold."
Grace met his gaze without flinching. "They won't."
He smiled, showing no teeth. "We'll see."
Luxe heard the story that evening and felt her blood run hot. Beaumont was circling closer, drawing the net tighter.
That night, she gathered Aurora, Ruby, Grace, and Mrs. Greene in the dining hall. The rest of the girls slept fitfully upstairs.
"He's not clapping anymore," Luxe said. "He's reaching. Next time, it won't be gifts. It'll be hands."
Mrs. Greene's face was stone. "Then we sharpen the locks."
Ruby's eyes burned. "And the words."
Grace set her jaw. "And the knives."
Aurora clutched her notebook to her chest. "Then we'll give him nothing but fire."
Luxe nodded. For the first time, she felt not just like a sister, not just like a protector, but like a general. Beaumont wanted war dressed as courtship. She would meet him with fire disguised as light.
Aurora lingered over the memory of the dress longer than Luxe liked. She never touched it, never even reached out when Grace and Mrs. Greene fed it to the fire, but her eyes followed the satin as though it whispered to her.
In their room that night, Aurora confessed, voice soft: "It felt… like he saw me. Not just my words, but me."
Luxe's jaw tightened. "He doesn't see you. He hunts you. That's different."
Aurora curled against her, whispering, "But what if part of me wants to be seen? Not by him—never him—but… by the world."
Luxe wrapped her arms around her sister and held on tight. "Then we'll make the world see you without his shadow. I promise."
The writing circle met two days later, the tension heavy enough to choke on. Margaret bubbled with talk of what Beaumont Hall must look like — chandeliers, velvet seats, men in tuxedos. Ruth hissed at her to shut up.
Helen sewed quietly in the corner, her needle flashing in and out of cloth. Finally, she spoke: "Sometimes, you accept the cage to survive. Sometimes, you even sing prettier inside it."
The room went still.
Aurora frowned. "I don't want a cage."
Helen's smile was faint. "No one ever does." She tied off her thread with a tug that made the cloth jerk. "But sometimes, the cage closes before you realize you've stepped inside."
Luxe watched her, suspicion sharp. Helen's words weren't warnings anymore. They were riddles, delivered like someone who already knew the ending.
Ruby's coalition responded fast. Flyers went up across the neighborhood: NO GIFTS WITHOUT CHAINS. NO INVITATIONS WITHOUT PRISON. Grace's bread carried slips of paper tucked inside: short poems, fragments of Aurora's lines, prayers disguised as grocery notes.
Pastor Mulligan thundered from the pulpit: "No velvet glove hides the iron teeth of a wolf!" The congregation roared agreement, echoing in the rafters.
But Luxe knew not everyone felt brave. Some neighbors crossed the street when they saw the Y girls. Some mothers pulled their children closer. Beaumont's charm reached further than their fear.
That night, Luxe once again took her post at the window. Aurora slept fitfully, her pencil still in her hand, notebook half-filled with jagged lines:
Jewels don't shine the way we do,
not with heat, but with a bruise.
Not with silk, but with a scar,
and scars tell stories truer, far.
Luxe closed the book gently, pride and terror twisting in her chest. Aurora's fire was blazing brighter, and Beaumont's shadow stretched longer.
Near midnight, a knock rattled the Y's front door. Mrs. Greene answered with her cane in hand. On the stoop: another box, smaller than before.
Inside was not jewelry. Not perfume. Not silk.
A birdcage. Empty.
The girls who crowded around gasped. Some whimpered. Aurora went white as paper. Luxe lifted the cage by its handle, its door swinging open with a creak that echoed in the hall.
"No more gifts," she said flatly. She carried it into the courtyard and smashed it against the cobblestones until the bars twisted and the door hung bent. Then she left the broken cage there, a monument to defiance.
Aurora's voice shook, but it was steady enough: "He won't make me sing."
Luxe stood beside her, hand gripping hers tight. "Then we'll make sure he chokes on silence."