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chamber. Servants moved in and out, needles bobbing, new threads surfacing, voices clattering in a deluge of muddling confusion. Night had long since settled and they’d been bid to dinner thrice, but Sarah wouldn’t have it until the costume had been completed. At last Alexia stood before the mirror modeling the newly-fitted white and violet funeral vesture in the candlelight.
    “Excellent.” Sarah applauded. “And I think the only other alteration is tightening at the sleeves.”
    Pins appeared and started piercing every which way.
    Alexia had grown accustomed to venturing into the city with Mother where they sat in a parlor and examined varying styles, making an order to be retrieved and altered weeks later. Sarah must be spending a fortune for this convenience. Alexia shifted uncomfortably.
    “Is it awful?” she asked to distract herself.
    “Is what awful?”
    “The way he died?”
    Sarah’s lips snapped shut. She waited until the servants had finished and dismissed them. “Not in front of the help,” she advised warmly. “I find their ears are too keen.”
    Alexia nodded.
    “But . . . oh, Lexy, do you know what unfathomable injustices I have endured?”
    She settled on the bed next to Sarah.
    “He was leaving.” Her aunt heaved a great sigh and leaned tiredly against her. “He had a girl—probably less than that, waiting for him in Dublin.”
    Alexia’s heart shrank.
    “I fumed and fought, but it did not matter. He was going.” She smiled apologetically and rose to help Alexia out of her gown.
    “Sarah . . .”
    “It was not the first time.” She returned to the memory behind her eyelids. “So I threatened him with divorce. He became incensed. He sped away on his pretentious carriage, and I watched with glee as it overturned at the gate.”
    Alexia’s jaw dropped. A stormy night, wheels rattling, whip lashing, carriage flipping, driver launched upward . . .
    “Wh-what?”
    “He was impaled on the outer gatepost.”
    “Impaled?” A cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
    Sarah sighed. “I meant to keep the details from you. They are not precisely agreeable, but you have more a stomach for these things than I.”
    “ Impaled? ” Alexia asked again, hugging herself. Another dream fulfilled.
    “Some say it is intervention of a just deity,” Sarah’s brows lowered, “but I do not believe it.” Sinister light burned in her eyes.
    “What do you believe?”
    “It was not God.” Her lips pulled back, exposing clamped teeth.
    Alexia shifted, uneasy from the expression on her aunt’s face. “Dearest Sarah—”
    “I cannot explain it.” She picked at her skirt, a wicked grin sneaking up one cheek. “I wanted the thing to crash, and it did. Right when I asked it to. That could not be coincidence.”
    Alexia shivered. “The answer to a prayer?”
    Her aunt’s lips twitched. “It is odd. That’s all.” She straightened, eyes gleaming viciously. “You remember my parents died the same way?”
    Alexia hesitated and nodded.
    “What if we—not all of us, but some of us have . . .”
    “Have what?” Alexia leaned forward.
    Sarah smirked, an eerie smile, then resumed a pleasant grin. “Do not let me ruin your evening. It is nothing I am sure. Coincidence.”
    “Sarah, surely it is not—”
    “I wanted him dead, Lex.” The darkness of her tone drowned out her niece’s protest. A vicious sneer turned her upper lip back. The action bothered Alexia, so uncharacteristic of her beloved sister, so characteristic of someone else. “I wanted him to suffer for dragging me through hell. I hated him . . . and I loved him.”
    Alexia gasped. She knew where she’d seen that expression before.
    Sarah’s eyes turned on her innocently, as though the previous statement had been made by an entirely different being. “You look faint. Perhaps you do need to eat after all.”
    “Please,” Alexia stopped her. She turned away, swallowing the shock. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to