It's the late 18th Century and the Industrial Revolution has set a divide between the world's rich and poor. Within the concealed cracks of luxury and power hides a booming dynasty that thrives on the sexual slavery of young men and women; a rising bloodline that runs too deep for the governments moral compass to break. Where every kink you harbor and dark secret you desire can be bought with a price.   When Cinesra Calvert wakes up in a glass cage full of bodies. She counts the dead to alive, but doesn't know which one she is just yet. Memories begin to come back to her and she stitches her kidnapping together. Stolen from the bakery that she spent her childhood in, taken away from her mother and baby sister she is forced into a world where evil kisses every bone of the men that captured her. He is everything she hates.  With every brothel whore and human pet to chancellor and judge wrapped around his father's fingertips, Micah Waitstill is the city street's wicked prince. Born into the embers of lust and money, he's never known anything else. As the eldest brother and next in command of the family reign, he gets gifted a silver haired girl by his uncle out of the blue. She is nothing he needs. Together, they are poison Trigger Warning(s): All of them.

In the dark wintry recesses of Baneberry Lane where the sun seems to set earlier than the rest, troubled passion blankets the streets. Known as the Valley of The Shadow of Death by the commoners for the dangerous folk it harbors. There's a house at the corner of the street underneath the pavement where a lone mollyboy stays with his dying mother with no inclination to trouble, save the knife he carries for protection. Brinley knows people look at him when he walks the districts. He sees the disgust in their eyes, he understands. The same dysphoria follows him everytime he looks at his body. Being born a girl, with a girls body and a girls voice took nothing from him knowing he was a boy. So he carries on, deepening his voice and binding his chest. Hoping one day, the misgendered notions would drop and people see him.  Finn was born into wealth. Yet, the one thing he wants is the one thing he can never have. It's the secret he keeps against his family. Being attracted to the same sex is seen as a passing moment or a hankering in one's life. Finn knows that sex in his world is never followed by anything as absurd as love. So he carries on, still he craves and late at night, his desires take over him and he imagines what his life would feel like if he dropped all the pretenses.  They could only shatter each other's worlds. Note: This is a short story set before the timeline of "Arsenic." It is not necessary to read this before reading "Arsenic", it can also be read as a standalone.