Chapter One

In the end, it is death that calls me home again.

I rest my forehead against the cool glass of the carriage window, attempting to lose myself in the crisp evening chill of it on my skin, its smoothness like an unbroken crust of ice atop a pond. When I fled Norland House last May, spring was unfurling; now the beginnings of autumn have perfumed the air with decay. Somewhere beneath the wheels of my vehicle, worms slide through the summer-dark earth, waiting for nature to shed its past season like a snakeskin for them to feast on.

The route I’m traveling should be familiar to me. After all, it is the same path I took when I left home--only the direction is different, heading toward our province rather than away from it. Yet gazing through the window at the stretch of rugged landscape beyond, the scenery seems utterly foreign to my eyes, any recollection of it tossed forcibly from my mind months prior like a glove I’d outgrown.

What was there to remember? Up until a week ago, I’d believed I was never coming back.

Merrick--Papa is gone. If you’ve no more pressing social obligations, I urge you to return to Sussex at once.

My sister’s words have burned themselves onto the backs of my eyelids like a brand, searing me anew every time I blink.

Even before I’d read the letter, I’d been suspicious when the Eaveses’ footman handed me a letter bearing the Darling seal--my Manor’s seal--on it at breakfast two mornings ago. I hadn’t heard from my sister since my hasty departure from Norland House just over four months past. My leaving was the second blow to our proud family tree in a little over a fortnight: three weeks prior to it, the beloved Lady Artemis Darling’s coach had been found overturned at the edge of the Graylands, what was left of her remains a few yards beyond her vessel, cast aside like a napkin tossed from the table. The tragedy quickly consumed our province, though it was not, exactly, unexpected. Even in a place as well-guarded as Sussex, we all knew the risks of traveling so close to the border. Knew what dwelled on the other side of the fiery lamps, hidden in the mists--had seen the bones of the victims they left behind, shards of ivory picked clean, pure and white as sacrificial lambs.

At the thought of my family, guilt presses at my chest, a balled fist against my sternum. After Mama’s death, I should have stayed with my sister and my father. I should have mourned. Instead, I remained by their side for less than a month before running as fast and as far as I could like a rabbit sprinting from its burrow.

Do not leave me here alone. My sister’s voice is a whisper in my mind, her plea one that has trailed behind me like a heavy train with each mile I’ve traveled, threaded its way through every crowd at all the gilded parties I’ve attended while in New London. Even before Mama’s death, Essie and I had been drifting apart for some time--as we aged, it became harder and harder to deny that beyond any blood ties, we were chiefly one another’s competition--but still, the distance between us hadn’t lessened the sting I felt when I’d denied her. She’d asked me for help that day, and I’d abandoned her without any, without so much as a backward glance before I had the maids whisk the rest of my luggage out the door.

The truth was, I left because I couldn’t stand to be in the same province with her, much less the same house. Not when the memory of what my father had told me was angled like a knife to my neck, hindering my every breath.

A shiver runs down my spine as from his bench up front, the driver guides the horses around a bend, bringing Sussex’s coastline fully into view. Bathed in the vicious tangerine glow of the sunset, jagged seaside cliffs gnash limestone fangs at the darkening sky, while from far below I can hear the hushed crash of frothing waves lapping at the pebbled strip of shore like dogs begging for scraps. A line of iron lampposts extends along the cliff edge for as far as I can see in either direction, fires burning steadily in the lanterns that hang from each of their boughs, blazing against the approaching night.

Beyond that lies the fog.

It has long since swallowed the beach whole, twining, ivylike, up the cliffside before cresting over its top like ocean spray. Banks of mist the color of dripping candle wax fill my vision, undulating gently just outside the fire’s reach like a nest of eels. Where the weak evening sun hits it, the fog gleams with a metallic gray sheen, like coins catching the light.

The Graylands. That’s what we call them--the mist-choked, uninhabitable swaths of our nation, the Smoke, contained only by legions of fiery border lamps like the ones in front of me. My ancestors erected the first of the barriers almost two centuries ago, and in the years since they’ve become our primary line of defense in our fight against the fog that otherwise would seep onto our land like pus from a wound.

That would bring its monsters with it.

Unease settles over me like a coat of damp morning dew. When I was a girl, the Graylands only licked the base of the cliffs in this area. Now, despite my family’s best efforts, the mist lurks a couple meters away from the road, hovering in the corner of my eye like an unwelcome guest. A few more years--a few more breaches--and we’ll likely have to remap this route entirely.

I force my thoughts away from the subject. Those of us born in the centuries after the fog’s arrival have grown used to living like holidaymakers at low tide. We eat and drink, we even laugh on occasion, but we know that regardless of any defenses we raise, one day the water will come and sweep us all away.

Just as it swept away my parents, I think. Frustratingly, the obituary the papers ran about Father’s passing was as scarce on details as my sister’s letter had been. But as Manor Lord of Sussex, Silas Darling had more contact with the Graylands than most in our land. Part of our sacred bargain, is how Father always described it to me--the hundreds-of-years-old pact made between my ancestors, the original twelve Manor Lords, and those they governed. Manorborn, like my family, use the immunity we’ve been gifted against the mist’s transformative touch to protect our respective provinces: repairing damaged border lamps, overseeing patrols, and, when necessary, slaying the beasts that slip through the cracks in our armor. In return, a portion of each province’s income is reserved for the ruling Manor. It is a system that has been honed through the turning of the generations, a birthright that passes from Manorborn to Manorborn like a lit torch--unfaltering, unfailing.

I remember the first time I followed my father into the fog. I was thirteen, barely past my first blood, when it happened: a Phantom spotted along the cliffy southern ridge of Sussex, apparently having evaded our patrols. Father and I tracked it together, following it along the seaside before plunging after it into the Graylands, snaring the creature just as it tried to escape into the milky obscurity of its home. I can still see it--the way the mist parted in plumes around my father’s back as he rode like enormous feathered wings. As if he were some divine warrior sent from the heavens, untouchable to us mere mortals.

Yet looking at the mist now, I can’t help but wonder if it has inched closer in the time I’ve been away. Whether one of the creatures Father hunted finally bit him back.

Leaning against my seat, I fish in my handbag for a distraction--and am rewarded when my fingers brush the pulpy skin of a folded newsprint. Carefully, I pull the paper out and flatten it in my lap. The Eaveses, long-time family friends as well as pillars of New London’s social scene, are devoted subscribers of The New London Toast, our capital’s most notorious scandal sheet and required reading for any young lady attempting to navigate the treacherous waters of its season. I managed to snag the latest edition just before I left, intending to save it for whenever I needed a touch of drama to disrupt the stillness of my journey.

I glance again at the banks of mist outside my window, the empty miles of countryside stretching out before me like an unfinished canvas. Now, I think, seems like exactly that time.

The Toast is easy to skim. I breeze through the first couple paragraphs before the sight of my own name catches my attention, making me hunch over in a distinctly unladylike fashion to better make out the inky words:

Readers will delight to hear that our jewel of the season, the beguiling Archdaughter Merrick Darling, continued her shining reign at Lady Fairfax’s ball on Friday last. Though the Archdaughter’s card was filled with admirers attempting to capture her heart, our watchful eye noted that she gave two dances to only one gentleman: Sir Fitzgerald Vannett of the Vannett Manor. Could it be that New London’s most treasured dove has at last found a nest in which to roost? Our sources tell us an offer has not yet been made, but if we have learned anything from observing last year’s hunt, it is that a prized stag is sure to attract a chase.

Relief spills through me, and I flutter my eyes closed. So they were watching--just as I’d hoped they’d be. Good. Fitz was a pleasant enough companion at Fairfax’s ball, though not pleasant enough to justify the grueling hours in front of my vanity that I’d been forced to endure prior to dancing with him. More important, though, as a member of one of the Smoke’s twelve ruling families--even if he is the son of a lower-ranking Rouge rather than a powerful Red Duke or a Marquess of the Blood--his attention should stoke the interest of other suitors.

Interest I’ll need when I return to New London after Father’s funeral. Desperately, if I’m honest. As the past months have taught me, the only thing Manorborn love more than a society darling is a girl scorned. The Toast may be singing my praises for the moment, but my aforementioned shine would tarnish fast if they knew the truth.

The reason that unlike my ancestors, the only hunting I’m currently doing is for a husband.

The piercing shriek of the horse’s whinny is a blade through my thoughts. My eyes fly open as the carriage judders, its wooden skeleton rattling and making my teeth clack together on impact. Steadying myself, I grip the padded bench beneath me with both hands and turn my gaze to the window, my heart a thrashing bird.

I suck in a breath. Not ten yards ahead of our carriage, the air is clouded and opaque with fog--a mass of it, glowing with a silvery spectral aura that seems to flare brighter the longer I watch. And somehow, directly in our path.

Panicked, I glance toward the line of lampposts, searching for protection in the form of a pinprick of orange light. Ice cracks through my chest when I make out a gap in the lamps’ ranks, a shadowed spot like an abscess--one of the lanterns up ahead is dark, creating a passageway for the mist to leak through. Now milky tendrils of it wind their way up the iron post affectionately, caressing the metal. Squeezing it tightly.

A breach. In Sussex. My breath catches. While far from impossible, for as long as I’ve been alive, a downed border lantern has been an event rare enough that a person could almost forget the last one before the next arrived. In other provinces, governed by weaker Manors, breaches are a daily concern--but not here. At least, not under my father’s rule. The fire should be holding the Graylands back.

For a fevered moment, the world stills, time catching and holding as if it, too, is hesitant to plunge ahead. Then the snap of the driver’s whip breaks me free again, and I am back in my body, hurtling toward the fog.

I lurch forward, pounding on the glass divider that separates the passenger compartment from the driver’s seat so hard I half expect it to shatter.

“Are you mad?” The words rip from me, rough with terror; on his bench in front of me, the driver wrestles with his reins, yanking them left, then right, to no avail. The horse charges onward. I raise my voice. “Stop your beast, now, before we--”

A white wall swallows us.

I watch, stricken silent, as ahead of me, the mist wraps its maw around the driver, plunging him into its depths. Blood roars in my ears. My limbs feel waterlogged, heavy and bloated; I stare, motionless, as if from the bottom of a lake, as cottony plumes of fog web across the carriage windows, blinding me to anything beyond.

Outside, all is quiet, muffled as if by a thick quilt as I feel the carriage grind to a creaky halt.

Bile rises in my throat. The driver. Where is he? I strain my eyes, struggling to make out anything other than the ivory curtain that hangs over my surroundings. Manorborn or not, all children of the Smoke are taught what to do in the event of a breach as soon as they can walk. First, cover your nose and mouth. For everyone except the Manorborn, breathing in the mist means a death more certain than any bullet.

And, the almost-as-essential second rule: keep moving. It is when you stop--during that thin pause between one inhale and the next, when you think the danger is finally at your back--that they find you.

I’m still squinting into the blind white when I hear it: a wet, organic noise, like an untidy dinner companion gnawing at a leg of lamb. Chewing; the meaty grind of teeth against flesh.

My nausea swirls, solidifies into a fear leaden and hot. No matter how many times I’ve followed my father and his men into the Graylands before, this terror never fails to surprise me. A nightmare-panic, a swift descent into those realms of bent reality where monsters are real--where they can wander off the pages of a storybook, sit at your breakfast table.

Eat you up.

A Phantom. It’s here.

As if in response, a sickening crack resounds from somewhere in the mist beyond the carriage, the crisp snap of a bone. A spatter of crimson sprays across the window to my right, droplets of blood hitting the glass like a sudden fall of rain. My instincts finally kicking in, I reach slowly toward my ankle, lifting my skirts to retrieve the knife strapped to my calf. I’d prefer the familiar weight of my Ghostslayer, but I’d been forced to give up my favored pistol when I arrived in New London--the Eaveses having deemed weapons unseemly accessories for the society crowd, and rather unsuitable for tea.