Autumn 2015. The Amtrak train carved through amber waves of grain, carrying Luna Carter from Maplewood—a township so insignificant it lacked even the basic marker of civilization, a Starbucks—back to Highland City. Nine years of exile dissolved like sugar in bitter tea as the iron beast approached the skyline. At nine years old, she'd arrived in that rural purgatory clutching a battered suitcase containing her mother's mothball-scented dresses and a one-eyed teddy bear. Now they summoned her for a singular purpose: sacrificial lamb to the Thorn family's proxy matrimony.
Whispers slithered through Highland's elite circles—the Thorn heir lingered at death's threshold. The Vosses boasted two daughters: Claire, the Instagram siren, and Emily, the debutante darling. Neither would soil their manicured hands with a dying man's ring. Thus they resurrected Luna from obscurity, polished her tarnished "Voss" pedigree, and presented her as the noble savior of family honor.
Luna's fingers traced the weathered spine of The Complete Herbalist in her lap, the sleeper compartment's rhythmic creaks composing a lullaby. Budget ticket isolation suited her until the door exploded inward. A blade-sharp wind carried the metallic tang of blood and danger.
The man collapsed against the wall performed an Oscar-worthy death rattle—too still, yet his fingers curled in readiness. Crimson blooms decorated his shirt, but Luna noted the dried edges. Theater blood, she deduced, bait for predators.
"Clear the car," growled a voice like gravel in a cement mixer. Three leather-clad brutes filled the doorway, their knuckles topographic maps of violence. The leader—a walking advertisement for prison dentistry with a scar bisecting his face—snarled at her.
"Who the fuck're you?"
Luna manufactured a tremor. "N-nobody! Just... going home." She hugged herself, veiled face angled downward—a habit cultivated through years of Maplewood's prying eyes.
Scarface's nicotine-stained fingers gripped her chin. "Liar." His gaze snagged on her lace veil, lifting it with butcher's tenderness. Pupils dilated at her exposed face. "Pretty eyes. Pity."
Adrenaline sharpened her calculations: knives over firearms (advantageous), loose grip (distracted), and the "corpse" playing possum. She let Scarface's hand wander to her collar, his breath sour with anticipation.
"Please..." Her whimper masked the silver needle's glide from hair to palm. "I'll do anything."
The thug's leer died mid-formation as Luna drove the acupuncture needle into his trigeminal nerve. His collapse startled the lackeys into motion—right into the "dying" man's ambush.
Knives clattered. Bones snapped. When silence reclaimed the compartment, Luna smoothed her skirt with steady hands. The stranger rose, wiping imaginary dirt from immaculate sleeves. Up close, he resembled fallen aristocracy—razor-sharp cheekbones, obsidian eyes that swallowed light, and a smile sharp enough to slit throats.
"Miss...?" His voice poured over her like smuggled cognac.
"Voss." She stood, veil restored. "Luna Voss. Currently en route to marry Highland's favorite cadaver."
His eyebrow arched. "The Thorn heir's proxy bride?"
"Fail to deliver me, and both our problems multiply." She met his gaze without blinking. "Do we understand each other?"
A slow grin revealed wolfish teeth. "Thoroughly." He stepped aside, murmuring as she passed: "This dance isn't finished."
Voss Manor's ballroom glittered like a diamond brooch. In the bridal suite, Claire Voss circled her prey, stiletto heels stabbing carpet.
"Let's clarify your existence," the stepsister hissed. "You're the human equivalent of a Band-Aid—peeled off and discarded once the bleeding stops."
Luna adjusted her veil's gossamer layers. Silence had always been her sharpest blade against Claire's tantrums.
"You think that veil makes you mysterious?" Claire's perfume—overpriced gardenia with undertones of desperation—choked the air. "When Thorn sees the hayseed beneath, he'll—"
"—Request your company instead?" Luna's smile bloomed venomous. "Shall I mention your enthusiasm for corpse husbands?"
The slap never landed.
"Darling, preserve your manicure." Lila Voss materialized like a silk-wrapped viper, her husband Richard twitching beside her. "Our audience awaits."
The procession began. Crystal prisms danced across Luna's restrictive gown—Lila's sartorial revenge. Yet the veil remained, her linen armor.
As organ music swelled, Luna's thoughts drifted to obsidian eyes and blood-stained cuffs. To promises whispered through train compartment shadows.
The altar loomed.
Somewhere beyond stained glass, destiny sharpened its knives.
Lila Voss undulated through the wedding hall's gilded archways like Cleopatra touring Rome. The former silver screen siren—whose career had peaked with a 1995 Oscar nomination before dissolving into daytime soap operas—wore her forty-five years like couture. Platinum curls framed a face preserved by Swiss clinics and spite, her couture gown whispering of budgets that could fund small nations. Society columns chronicled her metamorphosis from Richard Voss's mistress to third wife as Highland City's greatest social coup—a narrative she polished daily with Machiavellian precision.
The ceremony dripped with Lila's signature poison-laced pageantry. Ten thousand ivory roses wept from crystal chandeliers. A harpist plucked Debussy's Clair de Lune with metronomic precision. Luna's gown—a suffocating carapace of Venetian lace—cost more than Maplewood's entire annual harvest. Guests effused over Lila's "compassion," their champagne flutes clinking to the tune of willful ignorance.
Luna performed her role as sacrificial ingénue flawlessly—veiled head tilted in virginal confusion, fingers plucking at her corseted waist. "Shouldn't the groom escort his bride?" Her whisper cut through orchestral tremolos.
Three heartbeats of glacial silence.
Richard Voss studied his Oxfords with sudden intensity. Lila's smile hardened into a rictus. "Darling Caleb's...indisposed." Her manicured hand fluttered like a wounded dove. "A Thorn bride's duty is to bring vitality. You'll proceed alone—for his convalescence."
Luna's lashes fluttered in bovine acquiescence. "Of course, Mother."
The Rolls-Royce's leather seats still reeked of Lila's jasmine perfume—a scent Luna associated with childhood evictions and locked pantries. As Thorn Estate's wrought-iron gates loomed, she caught the driver's pitying glance. Let him whisper about the doomed bride. Let them all whisper.
The ancestral manor rose from mist like a gargoyle awakening—Gothic turrets clawing at low-hanging clouds, ivy strangling limestone walls. Luna's heels echoed through mausoleum corridors to the third-floor nuptial chamber, where shadows pooled like spilled ink.
Her husband's silhouette dominated a four-poster bed worthy of Dracula—still as death yet thrumming with latent violence. Luna reached for his pulse point.
Iron fingers shackled her wrist.
One moment she stood; the next, her spine molded into goose-down as six-foot-two of coiled muscle pressed her into the mattress. Sandalwood and gunpowder invaded her senses—an olfactory ambush.
"Impatient little wife," the darkness purred.
Her knee jerked upward. He trapped her thigh against silk sheets with infuriating ease. "Predictable." His chuckle vibrated through her ribcage.
"Release me or—"
"—Or you'll what?" His lips grazed her earlobe. "We've spectators."
Floorboards creaked beyond the door. A reedy voice hissed, "Louder, Ezekiel! I can't hear the deflowering!"
"Grandmother requires...performance validation." His teeth nipped her collarbone. "Shall we educate her?"
Luna's nails bit his shoulders. "I don't do matinee shows."
The first pearl button surrendered to his fingers. Cool air kissed exposed skin. "Scream," he commanded.
She obliged—not with pornographic theatrics, but sharp yelps timed to bedframe creaks. When elderly cackling echoed down the hall, he rolled away, leaving her disheveled and furious.
Golden lamplight revealed the train compartment phantom in horrifying clarity—razored jawline now clean-shaven, obsidian eyes glittering with familiar malice. The "dying heir" wore health like armor.
"You." Luna's bodice ribbons snarled under trembling fingers.
Caleb Thorn lounged against mahogany paneling, shirtsleeves rolled to reveal forearms mapped with scars. "Disappointed your groom isn't corpsified?"
"The train was staged." Realization crystallized. "You wanted witnesses to your weakness."
"Embezzlers grow bold around sickly prey." He swirled amber liquid in a cut-crystal tumbler. "The Vosses promised a biddable broodmare. Instead..." His gaze raked her exposed throat. "...I acquired a stowaway viper."
Luna's laugh startled them both. "You're the one playing corpse."
He captured her chin, thumb brushing the needle's entry point from their first encounter. "And you, Mrs. Thorn, reek of secrets."
The honorific sparked unexpected heat. She jerked free. "Why marry me then?"
"Curiosity." He pressed a tumbler into her hand—peat smoke and honeyed betrayal. "To discover what a woman who armors herself in veils and village herbs truly desires."
Luna sipped, letting the whiskey burn. "Survival."
Caleb's smile could curdle milk. "We'll make a Thorn of you yet."
Somewhere in the estate's bowels, a grandfather clock tolled midnight. Luna studied her husband—this enigma of staged deaths and calculated seductions—and glimpsed the jagged edges of a kindred spirit.
"To mutually assured destruction," she toasted.
Their glasses clinked. Somewhere beyond the manor walls, Highland City's chess pieces trembled on their boards.