The Violet Heart

Rain strikes the gravel platform at an angle steep enough to drive sideways. Cordelia Ashworth has spent nine days in a coffin-sized compartment to reach the estate she was forbidden to inherit, and she has come home anyway. She is not alone. Her sister Evangeline has waited in the manor. Mr. Halse, the Warden, has summoned her. Maren Blacke, last of a long line of hunters, watches from the treeline with guarded, grieving eyes. Lottie Pryce tends the cold rooms. Hester Marsh tends the overgrown graves. Tom Veil keeps the ledger of the dead. And Edwin Crow, the solicitor who delivered the will, has returned to the village to ensure its terms are finally honored. But the will forbade Cordelia's return for a reason. Beneath the manor, in the dark where the roots drink deep, the bloom pulses, a violet heart of corrupted life that has swallowed nine previous Wardens, every vanished lover who crossed the threshold, and Maren's sister before her. Generations of Blacke hunters have died trying to contain what grows there. The house remembers them all. The grounds remember them all. And now that Cordelia is home, the violet heart is waking hungry. To flee is to inherit the curse without a key to its cage. To stay is to become the next name inked in Tom Veil's ledger. Either way, the bloom will have what it wants, and it has learned to want the Ashworths.