Blood and Lace: 1. The Masquerade

The invitation hadn’t been meant for her. It had come when she was lonely and needed to get some fun. 

It had arrived in a black envelope, edges gilded in gold, the handwriting a sharp, elegant script that looked as though it had been carved into the paper rather than written. She had found it tucked between the pages of a library book she’d been shelving during her evening shift.

She should have put it back. She should have left it for whoever it was truly meant for. But the embossed seal — a crimson wax crest shaped like a rose dripping with blood — caught her fingers before her common sense could.

It had read only:

Midnight. Wear a mask.

The House of Thorne welcomes you.

And so here she was, standing at the wrought-iron gates of a mansion that looked as though it had been plucked out of a gothic fairytale and dropped into the city’s outskirts. Candlelight glimmered in every window, warm but strange, as if the flames thems