The bells of St. Bartholomew's rang through the London fog with deliberate malice, more a dirge than a summons to prayer. Each toll seemed to bruise the damp air, a metallic omen pressing down on the city like the promise of inevitable ruin.
Seraphine Halveth stood beneath a mourning canopy at the churchyard's edge, still as stone, her presence carved into the gray mist. A veil of fine crepe shrouded her face; thin enough to let her breath pass, thick enough to mask the truths hidden beneath. Rain slicked the cobblestones and washed the churchyard as if it could cleanse the memory of a man unworthy of absolution. Even the bells mourned the lie of Lord Halveth's sainthood, their heavy clamor echoing the falsehoods of the world.
Widows were expected to weep—softly, prettily, with delicate decorum—but Seraphine had long practiced the art of restraint. She had trained her tears until they had corroded to rust, bitter and useless behind her eyes. This man, this so-called husband, had earned no grief. Today, her gaze was hollow, unbroken by pity or sorrow.
The coffin descended slowly, cushioned by murmured prayers and pale white roses: the white of innocence, of purity, of farce. Seraphine could only scorn the charade.
Lord Edwin Halveth had been quick to leave the world, perhaps hastened by his own careless choices. The papers lauded him as a devoted husband, but Seraphine knew the truth of his devotion. Unlike the women who had bent and broken beneath him, she had survived—longer, higher, untethered.
"What was the cause of death?" whispered a voice behind her, soft and almost accusatory, a widow masquerading as mourner.
"Natural causes, they said," came the murmur, hollow and rehearsed, rising from another nearby woman.
Eleven months and seven days. That was the span of her marriage, long enough for silence to become a weapon, long enough to corrode humanity, long enough to teach her the cold art of endurance.
Murmurs never ceased to back down behind her back. They were accusing, as if their eyes were fingers that were supposed to point. Noble houses stood in clusters watching Seraphine as if she was a broken glass: curious, wary, eager to see where it might cut.
She felt their judgment settle on their spine. With. Curse. Black widow.
Widows were always spectacles, half-tragic, half-shameful. A few already wondered how long until she would remarry, or fell, or vanished entirely.
Let them whisper, she thought.
A man stood apart from the mourners, as if the crowd instinctively granted him space. His suit was mourning black, tailored with precise cruelty, worn as easily as if it were second skin. Blond hair carefully arranged, expression one of detached curiosity rather than grief. His gray eyes tracked her with unsettling attentiveness, sharp and unblinking. Seraphine tilted her gaze away, refusing to let it pierce her like a knife.
She bowed her head as the final prayer concluded, fingers lightly laced, calm, and unshaken. It was learned restraint, an art of survival.
She had long known the trajectory of her life, the ruin awaiting her, long before she realized she had been sold for the paltry price of twenty sovereigns. Seraphine had endured every whim of Lord Halveth with relentless fortitude, enduring not only his demands but the erosion of her dignity; the last shred of her humanity, ground to a crumb under his cruelty.
The crowd still clung to the farce of mourning, but Seraphine had already departed the moment the prayer ended. She had no time to perform as the pitiful widow, no patience to hear their whispered judgments. Survival had always demanded more than obedience, it demanded she leave their world behind.
As she stepped beyond the churchyard gates, the familiar piercing weight returned to her soul. The same eyes that had sharpened on her every motion, relentless, predatory, and yet unlike any she had ever encountered.
Not the idle curiosity of noble gossip, nor the coarse appraisal of men who mistook mourning for fragility. This was something else entirely. Denser. Darker. As if a blade had been pressed to the nape of her neck, and someone waited, savoring the anticipation of her flinch.
She did not.
The rain fell around her, soaking the cathedral steps and hissing against her skirts, whispering secrets of stone and shadow. The black carriage waited; unmarked, discreet, like an accomplice in the gray drizzle. And then the voice came, gliding over the rain like a sharpened knife, its cadence both amused and perilous.
"Lady Halveth."
Smooth. Controlled. Dangerous in the way still water conceals its undertow. Seraphine's gaze lifted. He stood beneath the cathedral arch, his frame commanding, posture perfect as though sculpted from shadow and steel. His eyes were smoke-dark, tinged with something more, an undercurrent of fresh violence, of threat barely restrained.
Lucien Blackthorne.
She had known the name long before today, a specter in politics; ruthless, precise, unrelenting. He had been a companion in cruelty to Edwin Halveth; their mercilessness, when measured side by side, was almost indistinguishable. But Lucien carried a gravity that was suffocating, a presence that threatened to pin her to the wet cobblestones beneath her feet. His voice alone coiled around her like a trap, and the memory of every whispered horror seemed to take shape in his form, as if some darker legend had found flesh.
Politeness demanded a tilt of the head, a recognition of rank and danger alike. Seraphine inclined herself with the precision of a practiced widow.
"My lord," she said, voice steady, eyes hidden beneath her veil, betraying nothing.
"You seem to endure Lord Halveth's absence with…composure," he said, his voice smooth, eyes weighing her like a ledger. "Though London, I imagine, has treated you with little mercy."
Seraphine's lips curved, faintly, the ghost of courtesy. "London is seldom merciful to women who survive, my lord."
A shadow of approval flickered across his features. "Indeed."
He advanced another step, each movement deliberate, unhurried like a predator pacing the edge of its kill.
"And tell me, Lady Halveth," he said softly, "What course remains to you, when only a third of Lord Halveth's estate has been allotted to your name? Especially now that the remainder passes to a distant nephew, tenant for life."
Seraphine lowered her head in measured restraint. "I would not presume to question the workings of the law, my lord."
Yet curiosity, dangerous and keen, tilted her chin ever so slightly. His interest lingered too long, too sharp, as though he meant to draw something from her, strip by careful strip.
"To what end do you ask?" she murmured. "What is it you seek from this conversation?"
Lucien closed the distance between them. He stood near enough that she caught the scent of rain-soaked wool and bitter tobacco clinging to his coat, his broad frame shielding her from the wind-driven rain. She looked up at him, her fists clenched within her gloves, unaware of the ideas turning behind his eyes.
His voice lowered, meant for her alone.
"London has shown you little mercy since you arrived," he said. "For all his faults, Lord Halveth kept the vultures at bay, those eager to see you stripped of protection."
Her fingers tightened around the leather of her gloves. Lucien's gaze sank into hers, intent and unblinking, like a hunter assessing its prey.
"And now…" he continued, studying her with unsettling precision, "your husband lies in the earth. Yet you remain untouched. Unmoved. Unbroken."
A pause, sharp as a blade.
"As though his death never taught you how closely danger now circles you."
Seraphine met his gaze at last, granting him a single, deliberate glimpse of what lay beneath the veil. Not grief. Not fear. Calculation.
"You killed Lord Halveth," he said, the accusation delivered with quiet certainty, as though instinct alone sufficed as proof.
"You take pleasure in suspicion, my lord," she replied, lips curving faintly. "Though you should be cautious. London have a fondness for stories; and women like me rarely survive them twice."
She held his stare, eyes sharp, composed, and watchful. "Tell me, my lord. What is it you seek from this conversation?"
"The truth," he said after a pause. "And perhaps…an arrangement."
Seraphine laughed; soft, low, and edged with danger. "You mistake me for a desperate woman."
"No," he answered, voice steady. "I see precisely what you are, Lady Halveth."
His gaze dipped, just briefly, to the steady rise and fall of her chest.
"Women such as you," he continued, "are the most dangerous stories of all."
The carriage door slammed shut the moment she stepped inside. Without another word, Seraphine turned away. As the carriage rolled into the fog-choked street, she allowed herself a single breath; measured, controlled. She did not look back.
Lucien Blackthorne watched until the wheels disappeared into rain and mist.
For the first time in years, Seraphine felt it. Not fear, but anticipation.
Because monsters, she had learned, always recognize one another.
And for what had been done to her, this city would burn.
Soon enough, all of England would listen.