The smell of expensive lilies was the last thing Eliza remembered. They were draped over her casket—the irony of her stepsister, Maryan, choosing "purity" for a funeral she had personally orchestrated. The slow-acting poison had been a patient thief, stealing her breath over months until she was a hollow shell, gasping for air in a room full of people waiting for her to die.
Then, the cold water hit.
Eliza gasped, her lungs burning not with fluid, but with the sharp, biting chill of the fountain in the Rose Garden. She wasn't in a mahogany box. She was on her knees in the dirt, her silk gown soaked, staring at a reflection that shouldn't exist.
"Eliza? Heavens, you're so clumsy. Did you trip again?"
That voice. It was like a ghost reaching out of the grave. Eliza looked up. Maryan stood there, holding a lace parasol, her face a mask of faux-concern that Eliza had once mistaken for love. Behind her stood the stone pillars of the Vane Estate, gleaming under a sun Eliza hadn't seen in half a decade.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Maryan giggled, extending a gloved hand.
Elara didn't take it. She looked at her own hands—no age spots, no IV bruises, no trembling. Her diamond engagement ring, the one she'd sold in a feverish panic to pay for a lawyer who eventually betrayed her, glittered in the sun.
May 14th. Five years ago. The day of the Spring Gala.
"I haven't seen a ghost, Maryan," Eliza said, her voice raspy but steady. She stood up, ignoring the offered hand, the water dripping off her chin like melted diamonds. "I've just realized that some weeds are better at mimicking flowers than I thought."
Maryan's smile flickered, a hairline fracture in the porcelain. "What a strange thing to say. Are you sure you didn't hit your head? You're acting so strange today."
"Everything is perfect, Maryan," Eliza replied, squeezing the water from her skirts with a terrifyingly calm precision. "I've simply decided to stop playing the lead role in a tragedy you wrote. From now on, you're just a footnote."
Eliza turned away before Maryan could respond, her mind a whirlwind of dates and ledgers. She knew what happened next: she would go inside, change into a dress Maryan had "chosen" for her—a hideous shade of puce that made her look sickly—and meet Julian, the man who would help Maryan dismantle the Vane fortune.
She wouldn't be going inside. Instead, she walked toward the iron gates, where a black carriage sat idling.
Leaning against the frame was Silas Thorne, the "Black Sheep" of the rival House Thorne.
In her first life, she had avoided him like a plague, believing Maryan's whispers that he was a heartless usurer.
Silas watched her approach, his dark eyes tracking the water trail she left on the gravel. He straightened, a smirk playing on his lips. "You're looking at me differently today, Lady Eliza. Usually, you look at me like I'm a stain on the carpet."
Eliza stopped inches from him, the scent of cedar and rain emanating from his coat—a stark contrast to the cloying lilies of her memory.
"I've realized that stains are at least honest about what they are, Silas," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial silk. "It's the 'clean' surfaces I have to worry about now."
Silas raised an eyebrow, his smirk faltering into genuine curiosity. "That sounds like the wisdom of a woman who just died and came back."
Eliza felt a chill that had nothing to do with the fountain water. How could he know? She looked down at her wrist. Beneath the lace of her sleeve, a faint, glowing mark—the shape of an hourglass—burned against her skin. The Collector's mark.
"I need a lawyer," Eliza said, ignoring his observation. "Not the one my stepfather pays. I need one who hates my family as much as you do."
Silas leaned in, his shadow falling over her. "And what do I get in exchange for helping the Golden Heiress burn down her own house?"
Eliza looked back at the balcony, where Maryan was watching them, her face pale with confusion.
"Death is a silent teacher, Silas, but I was a fast learner," Eliza whispered. "I spent my last breath wishing for a knife; I woke up with a whetstone. Help me, and I'll give you the one thing money can't buy: a front-row seat to the reckoning."
Silas laughed, a low, dangerous sound, and opened the carriage door. "Get in, Lady Vane. Let's go sharpen some blades."