After being banished with nothing but the clothes on her back from the convent she grew up in, Helena finds a job in an eerie mansion with strange rules that bind her there indefinitely. Still haunted by the ghosts of her past and the scars of trauma, she clings to routine, asking for nothing more than a place to survive the winter.

But the mansion is far from ordinary. Despite the servants’ kindness, something about it feels like a coffin frozen in time. Screams echo through the night. The scent of blood lingers in the halls. The lord of the house keeps to himself behind locked doors. But when he appears, drawn by the sound of her piano, he looks at her with something deeper than curiosity. Hunger.

As Helena spends her days dawdling in the library, tracing melodies on the old piano, she feels the walls watching her like a beast ready to pounce.

Yet Helena doesn’t fear the man they call a monster, or even the threat of being swallowed whole by darkness—what she fears is the awakening of something she’s been trying to bury away before it takes the little peace and freedom she has found.

❧༻༺❁༻༺☙

A low fantasy, gothic story set in an alternative era. A slow-burn, obsessive “who-did-this-to-you” romance wrapped in psychological horror, tender dread, and mature themes of trauma, hunger, and autonomy. For readers who crave stories where broken girls meet dangerous men, and somehow, in the grave between obsession and care, they learn again what it means to feel alive.

THIS STORY CONTAINS themes that might be troubling to some readers, including, but not limited to, depictions of and references to childhood abuse, psychological & physical, recollected; emotional manipulation, grief, PTSD, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, attempted sexual assault (past, recollected), death of a character, obsessive behavior, emotional fixation between main characters, blood, gore, torture. Please be mindful of this and other triggers.