The wax seal on the parcel was stamped with the likeness of an open coffin.
Odessa severed the twine with an ivory letter-opener, peeling away greasy brown paper. Inside lay a pouch of black velvet and a folded slip of parchment. When she loosened the ribbon, a fine, gritty gray powder spilled across her lace counterpane.
Bone grit. Hearth soot. Incinerated cloth.
She unfolded the paper. Written in crisp, copperplate script were seven words:
*Thank you for being so delightfully flammable.*
The reek of scorched tallow and blistering skin surged thick in her throat. Locked iron doors. The scream of boiling timber. Dallion standing on the flagstones below the nursery tower, his coat collars pulled high against the fog, his hands tucked neatly into his pockets while black smoke plumed out of her bedroom casement. She had clawed at the lead-paned glass until her fingernails tore free, roasting alive while the man she loved counted his ledger entries on the lawn.
Then she had burned down to grease and ash.
And now—she sat upright in her bed, her nightgown intact, the fog of Morrowbeck pressing thick and yellowed against the intact windows of High Gallowgate.
Odessa threw her head back and laughed until her ribs ached. It was a brassy, lunatic sound that shattered the room’s dead quiet.
"Back already?" she whispered, dusting the gray powder between her thumb and forefinger. "And with so much work to do."
The door swung open with a cultivated, oiled glide.
Dallion Vrost strode in, smelling of tobacco, wet wool, and the bitter bergamot pomade he favored. His waistcoat was embroidered with tiny silver moths—the trademark of their family’s weaveries. He wore the face of an anxious saint, brows knitted, his mouth curled in rehearsed concern.
"Odessa, my heart?" He crossed the room, reaching out a manicured hand to touch her cheek. "I heard shrieking from the landing. Are the vapors troubling your chest again? The physicians warned that the autumn fog would ruin you if you didn't take your draughts."
She tilted her head into his palm, smiling so wide her molars showed.
"Vapors, darling? Oh, not at all. Merely having the most delightful fantasy about domestic warmth."
Dallion’s hand hesitated against her cheek. His thumb twitched. "You look... flush. Did a messenger arrive? What is that on the counterpane?"
He reached toward the velvet pouch, but Odessa snatched it up first, twirling the drawstring around her index finger like a child’s toy.
"Just a souvenir from a friend who admires my constitution," she purred. She slid out from beneath the eiderdown, bare feet meeting the cold parquetry. She paced toward him, unhurried, trailing the linen hem of her gown across his polished boots. "Tell me, Dallion. How much kerosene does it take to scrub out a bad investment? A pint? A hogshead? Or just enough to keep the widow from asking where the Gloom-silk consignments went?"
He went rigid, the rehearsed softness souring into the pinched angles of a debt collector. "You are speaking nonsense. You’ve taken too much tincture."
"Nonsense?" Odessa tapped his chin with the soot-stained pouch, leaving a gray smudge across his pale skin. He jerked back as if branded. "I only ask because you look dreadfully combustible tonight, my sweet. All that tallow in your pomade. Those dry, paper promises you make to the ledger keepers. A single spark, and poof. Nothing left of my doting husband except a lingering smell of grease and bankruptcy."
Dallion stared at her, his lips pressed flat. He wasn't accustomed to teeth; he was used to a girl who wept into her embroidery when he stayed out until dawn. "You are hysterical. Go back to sleep, Odessa. We have the guild banquet tomorrow night. Nyssa Morlaine has already secured the pavilion boxes on the lower docks, and you will not embarrass me with this derangement."
"Nyssa Morlaine?" Odessa’s smile broadened until her cheeks stung. "Why, how thoughtful of her to help you spend my father's money. Don't worry, darling. Tomorrow, I'll be the very portrait of wifely devotion. Now get out. You smell of cheap perfume and wet canal water, and both offend my delicate sensibilities."
Dallion’s throat bobbed. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and turned on his heel. The heavy oak door clicked shut behind him.
Her mouth flattened to an iron line the instant the latch met the strike plate.
She moved without a wasted motion. She crossed to the rosewood armoire, slid her hand behind the false molding on the lower skirting, and pulled out an iron skeleton key.
He wanted the deeds. That was why she had burned in that first, blinding nightmare. The Vrost estate had been built on her family's shadow-weft looms; Dallion had married her for the monopoly, and once the contracts were signed, her heartbeat had become an inconvenience. He would try to gut her vault before the week was out.
*Not this time, you pathetic leech.*
She would strip him down to his skin. She would bleed his vaults into the gutter, leave his mistress begging for coppers at the faro tables of the Obsidian Exchange, and seize every scrap of Gloom-silk woven between here and the sunken coast.
She crossed the private salon, kneeling before the cast-iron safe disguised as a grandfather clock. She inserted the key, turned it twice to the left, and gripped the brass handle.
A dry scrape echoed through the corner of the room.
Odessa froze.
The smell hit her nostrils before she could turn around. It wasn't Dallion’s tobacco. It wasn't the autumn river rot leaking through the window seams.
It was sulfur.
Pungent, suffocating, yellow sulfur.
From the deep pool of shadow beneath the heavy velvet drapes, a figure stepped forward into the pale gaslight. Tall, thin as a willow switch, draped in the dark, slate-gray robes of the Grand Academy.
Maester Yuric.
Her mentor. Her tutor since she was seven years old. The man who had held her hand when her father died and promised that she would always have an anchor in Morrowbeck’s treacherous waters.
He did not speak. Between his ink-stained fingers, he held a small, rectangular box of black cedar, inlaid with a silver coiled viper.
Her fingers tightened against the cold iron of the key.
It was the exact matchbox. The matchbox she had seen resting on the stone balustrade outside her burning window while the smoke filled her throat. Not Dallion’s hand. Not Dallion’s matches.
Yuric slid the box open an inch with a soft, raspy click of brimstone against sandpaper. He looked down at her with calm, milky eyes.
"Did you sleep well, my dear?"