On her wedding night, Victoria found a sealed chamber in Blackwood Manor. Six headless mannequins wore wedding gowns from six eras, gilded names on the wall—Isabella, Catherine, Margaret, Delphine, Sophia, Eleanor. The seventh dress bore her own name: Victoria. 2025.
Her husband Lucien handed her an antique pocket watch counting down: 364 days until she died. Three hundred years ago, the Blackwoods wronged a witch coven. Every bride since perished on day 365.
But Victoria, a book restorer, did not run. The wall carvings were blood, not ink. An ancient rune trapped the first wife's soul. Six empty coffins under the black rose garden proved every wife had clawed to escape. When a black rose pricked her finger, her blood glowed blue.
She was the last Thornheart witch descendant. Lucien had spent ten years finding her—not for love, but because only she could break the curse. Six wives had died in her place.
The previous wives left clues: invisible ink coordinates, a biochemist's proof that the curse fed on fear, a coded paper crane exposing the family doctor as a thirty-year "cleaner." And one wife had not died of the curse.
She was murdered. By whom?
