The rain lashed down like a thousand tiny whips, each drop stinging the weathered tombstones in the forsaken graveyard on the outskirts of London. It was March 1889, though the date meant nothing to the dead—or so it should have been. Beneath a crumbling slab of stone engraved with "Elvira Grey, 1865-1889," the earth shuddered. A pale hand, streaked with mud and blood, clawed its way free, fingers trembling as they gripped the sodden soil.

Elvira Grey gasped, her lungs burning as if she'd swallowed fire. The air tasted of damp rot and coal smoke, a bitter reminder of the world she'd left behind. She dragged herself from the grave, her tattered maid's dress clinging to her slender frame, the black fabric soaked through and outlining every curve of her body. Her dark hair hung in wet tangles, plastered to her face, but her eyes—oh, her eyes—burned with a fury that no rain could extinguish.

She remembered everything. The flickering candlelight of Harper Manor. The crack of the whip against her back, splitting her skin until blood pooled at her feet. Lady Margaret's high-pitched cackle as she watched, sipping tea from a porcelain cup. James's hands—those cruel, beautiful hands—closing around her throat, his breath hot against her ear as he hissed, "You're nothing." And then the stairs, the endless fall, the snap of her neck as the world went black. She'd been a maid, the lowest of the low, punished for daring to refuse James Harper's lustful advances. They'd branded her a thief, flogged her, and left her to die in that cold, shadowed hall.