The Plague Garden

Sera Voss is untouchable. For three days the stairwell has smelled of ash and rot, and for three days the plague that has sealed the city behind quarantine has passed her by, leaving her to climb nineteen steps to the third floor with grey dust on her fingers and no one to wipe them on. She is a servant in a noble house, invisible and overlooked, the daughter of a man whose memory she cannot quite reach. That changes the night a hooded stranger follows her home and asks a single question about her blood. Lord Maren Crestwood, the master of the house, begins to watch her with the careful attention of a man who sees what others miss. Caelum Ashford, the stranger who will not give his name, offers her a different kind of knowing , and a warning that her untouchable status was never a mercy but a mark. Sister Iola and her veiled order have been expecting Sera for years. Even Dax Rennick, the baker whose loaves arrive at the back door each morning, carries secrets tied to the sickness consuming the streets below. As the plague tightens its grip and the true nature of the garden beneath the city stirs awake, Sera is offered two futures: to be cured into compliance under Crestwood's protection, or to be claimed, body and blood, by the order Caelum serves. Her sister Margot is still out there, beyond the quarantine line. Her father's memory still calls from somewhere she cannot follow. And the choice Sera makes will determine whether the next untouchable to walk these streets does so alone.