The Beast's Bride

A dried marigold petal on the windowsill, crushed between Lorna's fingers and tipped into her apron pocket. Useless, like every remedy she has tried. Her brother Tobias lies on his side facing the wall, three cold cups of tea going mouldy on the nightstand beside him. The physician has given him until the next blood moon. *"Don't pretend it's working."* The moonflower grows in exactly one glasshouse: white petals, blue veins, blooming only under the blood moon. That glasshouse is inside Hollow Court, and everybody in the village knows what happens to the women who go up that hill. Lorna writes her father a letter, props it against the salt cellar on the kitchen table, and goes anyway. *"I'm not begging. I'm offering to trade."* Bramwell watches her come out of the mist from the window of the great hall. He has been expecting her. What he offers is a contract. *"Marry me. Stay for three months. On the final day, I will give you the moonflower and release you from the contract."* What he does not offer is any account of the seven women who signed the same contract across seven years and were never seen again. And what he does not mention at all is the conversation he had at that window while she was still climbing the hill. That her brother should be bedridden by now. That he is sitting up and taking broth instead. That three drops per cup is evidently not enough. Lorna signs. She has three days until the flower opens, three months until she can go home, and a husband who tells her to stay in her room after sunset and calls it a warning rather than an order. The moonflower, meanwhile, has been moved to the upper shelf. Out of reach. Not hidden, because he does not want it hidden. He wants her to have to ask. What neither of them has planned for is a registrar arriving at Hollow Court with a letter about irregularities, written by somebody already living in the house. A gothic shifter romance of a bargain struck between two people who are each lying about what they want: a glasshouse, a locked hand, a scar from temple to jaw, and a girl who came to trade rather than to beg. The romance is closed-door.