The Curse-Bound Heir

The wind clawed at the mansion’s slate roof, and you stood in the foyer with the letter still crumpled in your fist. Grandmother’s seal—a serpent eating its own tail—stared up at you from the cracked wax. You hadn’t asked for this. You hadn’t even known her name until the solicitor’s courier found you in that rented room in Boston, four hundred miles from anywhere you belonged. Twenty-nine. One year left.

The key in your palm was still warm from your grip. It fit the door on the third floor, the one with the iron bands and no handle on the outside.

You climbed, the stairs groaning under your boots. Dust motes swam in the last light slanting through a broken window. At the landing, a man’s silhouette waited against the door. Not Bram—younger, sharper, a wool overcoat that cost more than your last three months’ rent.

“You’re late,” he said.

Elias Voss. The name caught in your throat, a dry hook.