The Nightshade name carried weight.

  Not the sort you could touch or measure, but the kind that bent rooms around it.

  Doors opened faster.

  Voices softened.

  Backs straightened.

  My father’s name had a way of arriving before he did, like a shadow cast ahead of the body.

  Mr. Alaric Nightshade.

  People said it with respect. Sometimes with fear. Often with gratitude.

  He was known as a fair man. A generous patron. A lord who paid on time and punished rarely.

  In a world where cruelty was often mistaken for authority, my father’s restraint was praised as virtue.

  In public, he was admirable.

  In private, he was absent.

  I had learned, over the years, to tell time by him. Not by hours, but by seasons of distance.

  When I was very young, he would kneel to speak to me. Ask me questions. Touch my head as though he were making sure I was real.

  That version of him disappeared shortly after my arrival.

  Not vanished. Simply... diluted.

  That afternoon, I saw him in his study. It was not intentional.

  I had been carrying linens past the open door when his voice drifted out, calm and measured, discussing trade routes with a steward.

  He stood behind his desk, sleeves rolled, dark hair threaded faintly with silver.

  He looked exactly as he always did: composed and dignified in a way that made him seem unreachable.

  For a moment, foolishly, I slowed.

  I wondered what it would take to step inside that room as a daughter instead of a servant.

  I wondered whether he would notice the difference.

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  He finished speaking and dismissed the steward with a nod.

  As the man left, my father’s eyes lifted. They landed on me.

  There it was. That pause. That flicker.

  Guilt lived there. I had seen it often enough to recognize it, though I did not yet know its cause.

  It was not the guilt of wrongdoing actively repented, but the quieter kind.

  The kind that settles in and rearranges furniture until you can no longer remember the room as it once was.

  “Ophelia,” he said.

  He still used my name. That alone set him apart from the rest of the house.

  “Sir,” I replied, lowering my gaze automatically.

  “You are… busy,” he said, as if the linens in my arms had surprised him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Silence stretched.

  “I heard you are being sent to the southern forest,” he said finally.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That path is difficult.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Another pause. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his desk. A habit. He did it when weighing costs.

  “You are strong,” he said, not looking at me. “Stronger than people think.”

  I did not know what to do with that, so I said nothing.

  He nodded once, as though the matter had been settled between us.

  “You may go.”

  That was it.

  No warning. No objection. No intervention. No offer to speak to Lady Calantha about it.

  Only permission.

  I turned and left before hope could embarrass me.

  ***

  The crate was a nightmare. I could not lift it, so I had to drag it, the rope biting into my palms like a hungry iron wire.

  As I hauled it toward the exit, I felt the eyes of the house on me. The portraits of my ancestors seemed to sneer; the maids looked away with a mixture of pity and relief that it was not them.

  And then, I saw him.

  My father. Lord Nightshade.

  He stood at the end of the corridor, looking immaculate in a coat that probably cost more than my life was worth. He was a pillar of grace and calculated indifference.

  Our eyes met. Just for a second.

  I waited. Like a fool. Like a child who had not been rejected years ago. I waited for him to say something.

  That is too heavy for her.

  Send a footman.

  Do not go into the woods alone.

  He did not speak. He did not even frown. He simply adjusted his cuffs, looked through me as if I were a particularly dull window, and stepped aside to let me pass.

  How I wished to kick him from behind.

  The heavy oak doors to the grounds opened with a groan, letting in the scent of damp earth and rotting leaves. The sky was wide and grey.

  I adjusted my grip, squared my aching shoulders, and pulled the crate over the threshold.

  Lowborn etiquette, after all, demands endurance.

  And if there is one thing I am good at, it is enduring the unendurable while making a mental list of all the ways I would like to see this house burn. Naturally, with the entire Nightshade family inside it.

  Behind me, the doors clicked shut, plunging the hallway into an oppressive silence.

  Ahead of me, the forest waited.

  From the safety of the upper window, my father watched his only biological daughter march toward her potential demise.

  He did not move. He did not call out. He simply watched the trees swallow me whole, and then he turned back to his tea.

  I would have been touched by the attention, truly, if I had not been so busy planning how to survive the afternoon solely to spite him.

  At the gates, I felt it again. That sensation. The one I had carried since the morning. Like being observed from a distance too far to pinpoint.

  As I stepped into the shadows of the trees, a strange shiver raced down my spine.

  For the first time in my life, I felt as though the house was not the only that had it's eyes on me.

  Something in the woods had noticed me.

  Something was waiting.