Prologue

ISLA

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

It wasn’t the cozy, familiar scent of the logs crackling in the grand fireplace downstairs. This was different. Sharp, ugly, and chemical, it clawed its way under my bedroom door and stole the sweet, sleepy air from my room. I sat up in bed, my heart doing a little tap-dance against my ribs. My white canopy suddenly felt like a flimsy tent.

A shout echoed from somewhere deep in the house. Then another. My stomach twisted into a cold knot.

I slipped out of bed, my bare feet silent on the thick Persian rug. My favorite, the one with the deep red and gold patterns that Mathieu said looked like dragon scales. I crept to the door and pressed my ear against the cool, painted wood.

The sounds were clearer now. Not the usual muffled hum of the house settling. These were frantic. A crash. The pounding of footsteps on the marble staircase. And beneath it all, a low, hungry roar I’d never heard before.

I turned the brass handle slowly, pulling the door open just a crack.

The sight made me gasp and stumble back. The hallway was no longer my hallway. It was a nightmare of swirling, grey-black smoke. It clung to the high ceiling like a living storm cloud, reaching down with ghostly fingers. The beautiful crystal sconces on the walls were just hazy, glowing eyes in the gloom.

“Mommy?” I whispered, my voice a tiny, frightened thing. It was swallowed by the noise.

Another crash, this one closer. I jumped, my breath catching in my throat. I had to find someone. Mathieu. I had to find Mathieu. My big brother always knew what to do. He was seventeen, practically a grown-up. He was brave.

I dropped to my hands and knees, remembering something from a school safety video. Stay low, where the air is clean. The carpet scratched my palms, but the air was easier to breathe down here. I crawled out into the hallway, the smoke stinging my eyes and making them water. 

I crawled towards the top of the grand staircase. The heat hit me first, a solid wall of it that made my skin prickle with instant sweat. Then I saw the flames.

They were down in the main foyer, licking up the velvet curtains, dancing across the family portraits that lined the walls. They were orange and yellow and a terrible, beautiful blue, devouring everything they touched. The roaring was their voice. They were laughing.

“Isla!”

A strong hand grabbed my arm, pulling me back from the stairwell. I looked up, tears of relief and fear mixing with the soot on my cheeks. It was Mathieu. His face was smudged with black, his usually perfect hair sticking to his forehead. His eyes, the same shade of storm-grey as mine, were wide with a fear I’d never seen in him before.

“What are you doing out here?” he yelled over the roar of the fire.

“I was scared,” I choked out, clutching his pajama shirt.

He didn’t scold me. He just pulled me into a tight, crushing hug. “It’s okay, Izzy. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” He always called me Izzy when he was trying to be brave for me.

He scooped me up into his arms, my legs dangling. He was so strong. He carried me back down the smoky hallway, away from the worst of the heat. I buried my face in his shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of his soap underneath the horrible smell of smoke.

We reached a side door that led to a smaller, back staircase--the one the servants used. He set me down on my feet, his hands firm on my shoulders. He knelt so we were eye-to-eye.

“Listen to me, Isla. You need to be the brave girl I know you are. Go down these stairs. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Run straight out the side door into the garden. Go to the big oak tree, okay? Wait for me there.”

I shook my head, fresh tears welling up. “No! Come with me!”

“I will,” he promised, his voice rough. “I will, I just… I have to go back.”

My blood ran cold. “Back? Back where? Lucien, no!”

“I have to, Izzy. I think… I think Dad’s still in his study.” His eyes darted back towards the main part of the house, towards the inferno. “I have to make sure.”

“No, please!” I screamed, grabbing his arms. “Don’t leave me!”

He pried my small hands from his shirt. His own hands were shaking. “I’ll be right behind you. I promise. Go to the oak tree. I’ll meet you there. Now run!”

He gave me a little shove towards the top of the dark, narrow staircase. I stumbled, looking back at him. He was already turning away, a silhouette against the hellish, flickering orange light filling the main hallway.

“Mathieu!” I cried out.

He paused for one last second, looking over his shoulder. The fear was gone from his eyes, replaced by a desperate, determined fire. “I love you, Izzy. Now RUN!”

And then he was gone. Swallowed by the smoke and the shadows.

A sob ripped from my throat, but I obeyed. I turned and fled down the cold, dark stairs, my bare feet slapping on the stone steps. The air was clearer here, colder. I burst out the side door into the shock of the chilly night air.

The garden was chaos. People were shouting. The distant wail of sirens was getting closer. The sky was lit up with an unnatural, pulsing orange glow from the house. I didn’t look back. I ran, my nightgown tangling around my legs, the damp grass cold under my feet. I ran until I crashed into the thick, familiar trunk of the old oak tree.

I collapsed at its base, hugging my knees to my chest, shaking uncontrollably. I turned and looked back at my home.

It was a monster. A beast made of fire and noise, tearing its way through the roof, shattering the windows I used to peer out of. Sparks flew into the sky like a million angry fireflies. I watched, helpless, as a part of the roof caved in with a terrible, groaning crash, sending a fountain of embers into the air.

The firefighters arrived. They were like giant, shiny beetles, unraveling their hoses, shouting orders. Someone wrapped a scratchy wool blanket around my shoulders. A paramedic tried to look at me, but I pushed them away, my eyes glued to the side door.

Any second now, I thought. Any second, he’ll come running out. He’ll be coughing, his face will be black, but he’ll be smiling. He’ll find me here, and he’ll say, “See, Izzy? I told you I’d come.”

I waited.

The fire raged on.

I waited.

The east wing, where Lucien’s bedroom was, collapsed in on itself.

I waited.

My mother was found, sobbing, being held back by two firefighters. My father was there too, shouting Mathieu’s name over and over.

But Mathieu never came.

The night stretched on, thin and fragile as ice, until the first hint of dawn began to bleed into the black sky. The roaring beast of the fire was finally dying, beaten back by the water, leaving behind a skeleton of blackened wood and stone, hissing and steaming. The fire chief, a man with a kind, tired face, his helmet in his hands, finally came and knelt in front of my parents. His words were quiet, but they cut through the morning’s eerie silence and reached me under my tree.

“We’ve searched everywhere we can safely reach, Mr. and Mrs. Moreau,” he said, his voice heavy. “The study… it’s one of the worst-hit areas. The collapse was total. There’s no way anyone could have survived in there.”

My mother let out a low, broken moan, sinking against my father.

“What are you saying?” my father demanded, his voice cracking.

“I’m saying,” the chief said gently, “that given the intensity of the fire in that section, and the fact that he was last seen running towards it… we have to assume that Mathieu was inside. We may never… we may never find any remains. I am so very sorry. For all intents and purposes, your son is gone.”

For all intents and purposes.

The words were too big for my ten-year-old brain, but their meaning was a final, crushing weight. They weren’t going to find him. Not alive. Not even a body to say goodbye to. He was just… gone. Vanished into the smoke and the ash. The hope I had been clinging to, the tiny, stubborn part inside me, was snuffed out, leaving only a cold, dark emptiness.

I looked from the chief’s sad face to my father’s. The grief was still there, but it was hardening, twisting into something else. Something dark and sharp and terrifying. He looked from my mother’s weeping form to the smoldering ruins of our house, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

He pointed a trembling finger at the blackened skeleton of the mansion, his voice rising, raw with a new, chilling purpose.

“The Valentes did this,” he snarled, the words slicing through the dawn. “Alistair Valente burned us out. He killed my son.”

The name hit me like a truck. Valente. Our rivals. The family Mathieu always argued with Dad about. The boy, Ciaran, who used to tease me and call me “Little Flame” at parties.

And in that moment, as my world turned to ash around me, a new feeling began to grow, pushing its way through the icy grief. It was small and sharp and bitter. It was the only thing strong enough to fill the hollow space Mathieu had left behind.

It was hate.

I wrapped that hate around me. I held onto my father’s words. The Valentes did this. They took my brother. They took my home. They left me with nothing but a ghost and a promise.

Sitting under that oak tree, watching the sun rise on the ruins of my life, I made a promise of my own. 

I would find out the truth. And I would make them pay.

All of them.