Even as the carriage jolted beneath her, Yvette tore open the letter. The late Dr. Chandler’s words leaped from the page with his shocking revelation: London’s infamous "Lamia," the child-killing crone, had once been a nurse at Dr. Lupton’s clinic. A old photograph from the clinic’s staff showed the Lamia—then merely a middle-aged woman—lurking in the back. Worse, when her foundling home first opened, Lupton and other society elites had donated generously to her charity.

  Chandler was certain the orphanage had been a sham. The Lamia had been hailed as a living Madonna cradling babes, but in truth, she’d been pocketing donations while murdering infants to cut costs.

  His murder proved he’d uncovered something Lupton wanted buried—was it the orphanage’s horrors? Grave robbers swore they’d seen the hooded Lamia near Lupton’s sanatorium, clutching a bloodstained bundle the size of a terrier. If this was just about money, why involve infant corpses? She could’ve weighted sacks with stones and dumped them in the Thames.

  One thing was clear: Lupton’s plans for Alison and their child were anything but kind. Tonight, Yvette would infiltrate his home to uncover why his wife’s stance differed from his—and what secrets she might know.

  ……

  Albion’s gentry, like many cultures, revered land over finance, seeing country life as pure escape from urban grime. Those trapped in the city aped rural charm where they could.

  The Lupton manor occupied a genteel borough where every townhouse flaunted manicured gardens—oases of color in London’s soot.

  But stepping indoors was like walking into grief itself. Instead of seasonal blooms, funereal lilies and chrysanthemums yellowed in vases, untouched for days. Silver frames displayed the couple holding their sons—six and two years old, eyes forever closed in death-portraits, the latest Albion mourning trend.

  Every clock in the house stood frozen at 11:17—the moment their youngest died. Some believed stopped clocks tethered souls longer. Custom demanded only three days; the lady had insisted on six months. Servants told time by church bells now, tiptoeing lest they disturb her sorrow.

  A black-gowned woman carrying supper and a candle passed housemaids rolling up a soiled rug.

  "The master’s been gone days—longer than ever."

  "Would you stay? I’d wager he’s got a mistress by now."

  They didn’t see Karen, Lady Lupton’s lady’s maid, frown. Normally above such tasks, she’d become her mistress’s sole conduit to the world since the children’s deaths.

  Entering the pitch-black bedroom, Karen winced as light spilled in.

  "Close it!" croaked a voice like a rusted gate.

  Candlelight revealed the nightmare opposite the bed: a slashed family portrait. The children’s images bore ghostly lipstick kisses. Even Lupton’s knife-gouged face bore smeared red marks—kissed through torn canvas with demented fervor.

  Karen’s hands shook. That painting always unnerved her.

  "Did the candle help you read?" she asked brightly. "There’s a new French detective novel everyone—"

  "Niobe." The bed’s shrouded figure ignored her. "Apollo and Artemis slaughtered her fourteen children before her eyes. She begged for one to live…" The voice cracked. "They left her a stone weeping forever."

  Karen recoiled. She’d brought that book.

  "I lost two. What was my crime?"

  The candle trembled in Karen’s grip, illuminating the lady’s face—one empty eye socket, the other bloodshot. Laudanum was the only thing that brought sleep now.

  Once the drug took effect, Karen fled.

  From the balcony, Yvette slipped inside.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The defaced painting struck her first—love and hate woven into the very brushstrokes. Alison swore the Luptons adored each other. Then why—

  Peeling back the covers, Yvette gasped.

  One eye, one arm, one leg—the rest severed neatly.

  Abortion carved life away. Amputation erased limbs. But this… This was his wife.

  Yvette steadied her nerves and carefully rearranged the quilt. But as she turned to leave, a frigid hand clamped around her wrist.

  From the shadows of the four-poster bed, Lady Lepton's voice cut through the darkness—awake, strained, and oddly eager. "What manner of creature are you? Some sorcerer? A fae? Or perhaps a dream-walking phantom?"

  "Your pardon, my lady," Yvette replied smoothly. "An uninvited guest, certainly—though I may simply be a common thief."

  She flexed her fingers near the White Rabbit's watch, ready to erase this inconvenient witness. The laudanum should have held.

  "I've built a tolerance to that wretched tonic," the woman hissed, her voice quivering like an overtightened violin string. "Else I'd have screamed for the constables. But you... you move like shadow, and there was light dancing at your fingertips just now." A desperate chuckle. "The old tales say creatures like you grant wishes—for a price. What's yours?"

  Yvette studied her in the gloom. This broken noblewoman knew something. "Name your desire."

  "Kill my husband. Cleanly."

  "You despise him?"

  "Love and loathing share the same bed in my heart," she whispered. "Just as they do in his. Only his love carries... a hunger. The more of me he takes, the hotter it burns."

  A chill crept down Yvette's spine as understanding dawned. "You think him—"

  "Oh, he's no changeling," Lady Lepton interrupted bitterly. "I'd know after twenty years."

  And so the story spilled out—of her family's notorious penny-pinching that left her marrying beneath her station; of Dr. Lepton's razor-sharp ambition that first drew her admiration; of their rise as London's golden couple until the Alps changed everything.

  "That damned mountain stole the man I knew. Survivors speak of the White Maiden's curse—how it reshapes those it doesn't kill. After his rescue, I saw the change in his eyes when our youngest sickened... and then our eldest..."

  Her voice broke. Moonlight caught the tears tracing her ruined face—one eye gone, an arm missing, her body whittled away piece by sacrificial piece.

  "He doses my wine with opium, but I've learned to feign sleep. Last winter I woke mid-amputation. Saw the reverence in his gaze as the saw bit through bone." Her remaining knuckles whitened on the bedsheet. "I won't let his worship end me like some pagan offering. Nor let him turn that devotion to another."

  Yvette's fingers found the maid's name like a blade. "Alison's child—was it his?"

  A dismissive flick of maimed fingers. "A servant's bastard meant nothing then."

  "Yet everything now." Yvette turned toward the window. "I'll end this—but not for your sake, nor any price you offer. Tomorrow you'll recall nothing but a bad dream. That, madam, is your punishment."

  The ragged laughter that followed her out sounded more unhinged than triumphant. Behind the billowing curtains, glass clinked against teeth as Lady Lepton downed her hoarded poison—a final act of control in a life stripped bare.

  The ending sob was lost in the wind as Yvette melted into the night.

  The St. Norbert Sanatorium had once been an aristocrat's country seat until the line died out and the Crown reclaimed the lands. Dr. Lepton, ever the opportunist, purchased the estate and its mineral springs to capitalize on the era's obsession with "hydropathic cures." Soon, London's wealthy flocked to soak in waters rumored to remedy everything from gout to melancholia.

  Half a mile from the main house, shrouded in oaks, stood a crumbling chapel—a relic from when nobility paid hermits to pray for their souls behind walls of self-imposed silence and filth. Leaded glass now lay in colored shards underfoot, vines throttling the broken arches where devout whispers once echoed.

  Yet tonight, the chapel hosted an unholy sacrament.

  "Life is flux," murmured Dr. Lepton, carving a rosy morsel on silver. The knife parted flesh with surgical precision, releasing only a ghost of pink essence. "To receive the intangible requires a vessel. Mediocre cups overflow. The worthy vessel is bottomless—forged by hunger itself."

  He brought the meat to lips grown strangely loose.

  Tasteless. Like unbottled wine.

  He knew better fare: miners with flinty afternotes, harlots stewed in cloying decay, stillborns crisp as mountain snowmelt. But hunger made any meal gourmet—especially when seasoned with love.

  Ever since the Alps, an itch had gnawed beneath his skin. The more he adored his wife, the sharper his craving to... ingest that affection. His devotion hollowed her limb by limb, yet each amputation only intensified his hunger.

  The sanatorium's back rooms accommodated society ladies seeking "therapeutic irrigations" for inconvenient pregnancies—his proprietary method left no evidence, unlike butcherous coat hangers. Grave robbers supplied cadavers, though putrefaction often spoiled the meat. How he missed that hanged midwife's fresh offerings...

  A floorboard creaked.

  By the door stood a girl—pale as the moon glinting off his scalpel.

  Drool slicked his chin as transformation seized him: jaw unhinging, teeth serrating, pupils dilating to pits. No matter. Witness or wanderer, she'd quiet the gnawing.

  For a heartbeat, Yvette felt the chapel's shadows coil inside her—an answering hunger, black and bottomless. Then discipline reasserted.

  She leveled her pistol. The Bureau trained her to end abominations, not philosophize over shared monstrosities.

  "From one hunter to another," she said softly, "let me show you mercy."

  The hammer clicked back.

  Mercy, after all, was also a form of consumption.