Prologue
Sixteen years ago…
“You’re going to die,” my sister Briar tells me around a yawn while tucked beneath her embroidered blankets. “I saw it in a dream. You die. But everyone thinks you’re me—hey! Why did you stop?” She tilts her blond head toward me expectantly.
I’m holding her brush. It’s heavy and silver, so different from the cheap, wooden comb I use. Jealousy is a constant itch I have to smother. It’s like Mother says:Briar may have more material things, but things aren’t everything. You have gifts too, Ellen, my Rose.
My “gifts” aren’t as obvious as the shelves of dolls and finery lining the walls of Briar’s massive bedroom. Pink walls and buttery-soft carpet form a suite ten times as big as my room downstairs. Her bed alone is big enough for the two of us to lie outstretched on the center of it beneath a lacy canopy.
“Ellen?” Briar tugs on my arm. “Keep going.”
Swallowing hard, I finger one of her golden curls and then ease the tangles from it. “No one would ever think I’m you,” I reply, knowing exactly what she wants me to say.
“Of course.” She giggles, wiggling her nose. “Because I’m prettier.” And she is. Just nine years old—two years older than I am—and she already looks more like our mother than I could ever dream to. At least until, her pretty smile fades. “But everyone still likes you more.”
“Nuh uh.” My stomach drops. I hate when Briar gets this way, like when we play board games and I make the mistake of winning too many times. Everything becomes a contest.
And I always have to lose.
“You’re so much better than me,” I insist. “I have to be nice. That’s all.”
Because I’m not like her—not an heiress. If I pout, or scream, or throw a tantrum, I’ll be punished and Mother won’t be able to see me. Even the thought of it makes my heart ache, and I maneuver the brush more gently through Briar’s curls. “Everyone lovesyou.”
Her pink lips quirk into a lovely smile, and she shrugs me off to sit back against a wall of pillows. “I know that,” she insists. “Even Robert is nicer to you though.”
Robert. Her older brother who visits the manor sometimes. He’s back now. Occasionally, I pass him in the hallway. Would I say he’s nice to me? Maybe. But sometimes I think he looks at me the way Briar does her dolls once they’re broken. Like I’m tiny, and plastic, and hollow.
“Ugh.” Briar rolls her eyes. “Speak of the devil.”
My cheeks grow hot. We aren’t allowed to talk like that, not that it matters. Mother isn’t the figure standing in the doorway, and Robert doesn’t seem to care. Only Briar would ever dare call him unholy anyway; he looks like an angel. His hair is a brighter gold than his sister’s, his eyes a deep shade of brown.
“It’s late,” he says, running his fingers along the collar of a pressed suit. He looks grown up wearing it. Like Briar’s father, the master of the house, does. Like a businessman. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?Bothof you?” His eyes cut in my direction.
I cringe, jumping to my feet. “S-sorry—”
“She was getting me a glass of milk,” Briar says over me. “That’s why she’s here. Don’t you dare tell.”
“It’s dangerous to sneak around at night,” Robert says, his voice soft. “Don’t you know that’s when the monsters come out?”
“There’s no such thing as monsters,” Briar declares, squaring her jaw.
But she’s wrong. Monsters live right here in the manor. Sometimes I hear them if I stay up too late: faint scuffling noises from down below… Screaming.
It’s why I’m never supposed to leave my room at night. Mother makes me promise I won’t—but Briar is the only one worth breaking that promise for.
“Fine, then. If you insist on being a lazy brat, come, Elle.” Robert waves his hand, summoning me closer. “I’ll go with you.”
A part of me wants to stay here with Briar—hidebehindher if I have to. But Robert is sixteen, practically an adult. I have no choice but to shuffle after him into the hall.
Briar has a whole wing to herself. Even the walls are decorated in soft shades of pink to match the cream carpeted floors. We pass her playroom and the closet where she keeps her winter clothes. There’s a servant’s stairway back here too. Accompanied by the regal boy beside me, I notice all the flaws here that aren’t visible in the grand hallway his family uses. The walls are painted white with cracks in the corners that draw his gaze.
“The kitchens are this way,” I gather up the nerve to point toward a door at the base of the steps.
Robert shoots me an odd look. “I know. Your room is down here, isn’t it?”
I force myself to nod, my eyes wide. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in this part of the house before.
Chuckling, Robert nudges my chin with the tips of his fingers and I shiver. He’s smiling, one of the few times I’ve ever seen him do so. “Don’t look so surprised,” he gently scolds. “You aren’t like Briar, are you? You don’t act like a child. How old are you?”