Present Day
Eliza
Three sharp knocks hit the front door. Deliberate. Unhurried. The sound carried the weight of something that had all the time in the world and knew it.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the knocks themselves.
"Are you expecting anyone?" Eliza's hand had already found the dagger before she consciously thought to reach for it.
"No one who knocks that politely," Katherine murmured. Her fingers closed around the silver cross at her throat with the automatic precision of long practice, a gesture Eliza had watched her mother perform a thousand times without understanding what it meant until now.
They moved together toward the parlor window, their footsteps synchronized by years of shared instinct. Eliza reached the curtain first and peered through the narrow gap
