Chapter 3: Caroline

I’ve worn designer gowns before.

Gala fundraisers. Political dinners. The sort of soirées where people smile through their teeth and sip champagne like it doesn’t taste like nothing. Where daughters like me are dressed up like porcelain dolls, polished and presented for the highest bidder.

But this is the first time I’ve worn a dress chosen by my husband.

Chosen like a weapon.

Tailored to his fantasies.

Fitted to remind me that even my skin belongs to him now.

The black silk hugs every inch of me like a second skin. Cool. Expensive. Silent. The way the maids looked at me when they zipped me into it — I could feel their pity. Or was it fear?

Maybe both.

The diamond at my throat is heavy. The Moreau crest, carved in the center, rests like a blade against my collarbone. A mark. A brand.

Property.

I stared at myself in the mirror for too long before walking down the stairs. My face was still my own. My lips, my eyes, my voice. But something had shifted. Something invisible but permanent.

A kind of possession that crawls under the skin.

When I enter the dining hall, the air shifts. Conversations hush. Eyes turn. I don’t need to look at him to feel Sylvester watching me.

He's always watching.

I walk the long corridor of eyes and half-smiles and whispered curses, and I remember what he told me this morning: You’ll be dining with the family tonight.

Family.

He meant wolves.

———

I take my place beside him. I don’t ask, I don’t hesitate. That would be weakness, and if I’ve learned anything from my father’s world and now this one, it’s that weakness draws blood.

Sylvester doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to.

His presence is enough — overwhelming, suffocating, magnetic.

His hand rests on the table just close enough to brush mine. He doesn’t. But he could. And that threat — that maybe — is more intimate than any touch I’ve ever known.

I breathe carefully.

The room is full of people with names I don’t recognize but power I can feel. Men with cold eyes and women with sharper tongues. Every movement is choreographed, every smile a strategy.

I hear them.

“The bride is quiet.”

“She’s beautiful, but will she bend?”

“Moreau’s little virgin sacrifice.”

I pick up my wine glass, hold it delicately, and pretend I don’t want to throw it.

Sylvester leans in just slightly. His lips are at my ear, his breath warm.

“You’re doing well,” he murmurs.

I don’t respond. If I speak now, I might say something that gets me killed.

Or worse — something that gives him satisfaction.

———

Later, after the third course, a woman across the table addresses me directly.

She’s striking — red lips, high cheekbones, a diamond serpent coiled around her neck. The kind of woman who has survived men like Sylvester and turned the game into an art form.

“Caroline, darling,” she says, tilting her head. “You look stunning. Tell me, how does it feel to sleep next to the Devil and still wake up whole?”

Laughter.

Sharp. Cruel.

Sylvester doesn’t say a word. He lets it hang in the air, waiting to see what I’ll do.

I meet her gaze. “I wouldn’t know,” I say sweetly. “The Devil sleeps alone.”

There’s a pause — just a heartbeat — and then a ripple of low laughter and raised brows.

Even Sylvester hums under his breath.

“Well played,” he murmurs.

I clench my jaw.

I didn’t say it to impress him. I said it to remind myself I still exist.

———

When the dinner ends, and the guests disappear into the velvet-dark halls of the estate, Sylvester and I are left alone in the corridor.

He walks beside me like a shadow. Always too close, never touching.

“You surprised me tonight,” he says at last.

I keep my gaze ahead. “Is that a compliment or a warning?”

“Both.”

We stop in front of the doors to our bedroom. He turns to me, searching my face.

“You hate me,” he says softly, more observation than accusation.

“I don’t even know you,” I reply, my voice low.

He steps closer. His hand lifts — slow, deliberate — and tucks a stray curl behind my ear. The touch is gentle. Too gentle. Like a storm pretending to be rain.

“You’ll know me,” he promises. “Every inch. Every sin.”

I stare at him.

He terrifies me. Not because he’s cruel — though he is. Not because he’s powerful — though he’s that too.

But because a part of me is starting to wonder what it would feel like to let go.

To fall.

And worse…

To want it.

———

Later that night, I lie beside him in the same bed. Our backs are to each other. Our breaths are quiet.

I don’t sleep.

I think about the woman he made me become tonight. The one who smiled with venom and wore his name like a crown of thorns.

That woman scares me.

Because she might be the one who survives.

The house is too quiet in the morning.

No voices. No footsteps. No clinking of china or rustle of silk. Only the low hum of the wind pressing against the glass panes, like the world outside is trying to get in — or maybe trying to pull me out.

I wake up alone.

The space where Sylvester slept — or pretended to sleep — is cold. He’s gone before the sun has fully touched the marble floors.

Typical.

He disappears before I can question him and returns when I’m too tired to fight. A ghost wearing flesh. A man made of silk and gunpowder. He’s everywhere and nowhere, a phantom that commands shadows and people with the same casual cruelty.

But this morning, I have time. And time, in a place like this, is dangerous.

Because I begin to look.

———

I wander.

There are wings of this house I haven’t seen. Doors always closed. Corridors that stretch too long, as if built for people who never needed to rush, only rule.

The west wing draws me in like a magnet. Something about it feels different — heavier. The wallpaper is darker, the windows taller, the silence louder.

There are no staff here.

No maids. No guards. No warmth.

Just a long stretch of hallway… and one door at the very end. Locked.

Of course.

I reach for the handle anyway. Cold brass bites at my skin.

It doesn’t budge.

But I press my ear to the wood. Listen.

Nothing.

Then — a whisper. Barely audible. A breath, maybe. Or imagination. I step back, heart thudding, and for a moment I feel something I haven’t felt since I entered this place:

Fear not of Sylvester…

…but of what lies beyond him.

I walk away. Fast. But my thoughts stay nailed to that door.

———

Later, I find a maid alone in the library. She’s young, barely more than a girl, arranging books that no one has touched in years. She startles when she sees me.

“Don’t worry,” I say softly. “I’m not here to shout orders.”

She bows her head. “Mrs. Moreau—”

“Caroline,” I correct.

She hesitates. “We aren’t allowed to speak with you.”

I tilt my head. “Why?”

Her eyes dart to the closed door behind me. “He listens.”

I swallow. “The west wing. What is it?”

She doesn’t answer. But her face goes pale. Her hands tremble around the spine of a leather-bound novel.

“Don’t go there,” she whispers. “Even locked doors sometimes open… and you don’t want to know what’s behind them.”

———

The rest of the day stretches into a cold, sterile fog.

I eat alone.

Read nothing.

Speak to no one.

Sylvester doesn’t return until nightfall. He walks in like he owns the dusk. Tall. Silent. Covered in the scent of wind and blood and leather.

He doesn’t say where he’s been. He doesn’t need to.

But tonight, I don’t want his silence. I want answers.

“What’s in the west wing?” I ask as he unbuttons his cuffs.

He stops. Just for a second. Just enough for me to feel the shift.

“Old things,” he says finally. “Dead things.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He looks at me.

That look again — the one that says don’t push me. But I’m already leaning over the edge.

“I’ve played your perfect wife,” I say quietly. “Sat beside you at your bloody table. Smiled at people who want to devour me. I think I deserve the truth.”

He moves toward me. Slowly. Dangerously.

“You think you deserve anything, Caroline?”

I straighten my spine. “Yes.”

He laughs. Low and amused — but there’s no humor in it. Only hunger.

He steps closer. “You want to know what’s behind that door?”

My breath catches. “Yes.”

His voice drops, soft as sin. “Then earn it.”

He leaves me in the dark with that promise.

Or was it a threat?

———

I lie awake that night staring at the ceiling, tracing the shape of the chandelier with my eyes.

Sylvester sleeps beside me this time. Or pretends to.