PROLOGUE
292 Words
The black roses never sold.
That was the first thing Vesper Ashvale learned about running a flower shop.
White peonies for weddings. Red roses for lovers. Sunflowers for birthdays.
Black roses for funerals. And even then, people chose white lilies.
“Bad luck,” they’d say. “Too dark.”
So she stopped trying to sell them.
She just grew them.
In the back of Ashvale & Thorns, behind fogged glass and broken heaters, hundreds of black roses bloomed for no one. Their petals were soft like velvet. Their stems had thorns that drew blood if you weren’t careful.
Vesper was careful.
She watered them at 6:12AM every morning. She talked to them when the town was asleep. She bled for them when they cut her back.
No one came to Ashford Bay for flowers.
No one came for her, either.
Until the day a man in a black coat walked in, rain dripping from his hair, and asked for one.
“Black,” he said. Like it was the only color in the world.
Vesper looked up.
He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t pitying her.
He was just… looking.
At the rose.
At her.
“Do you take card?” he asked.
She blinked. “You want this one?”
“I want the real one,” he said.
And for the first time in twenty-six years, Vesper Ashvale thought:
Maybe black isn’t bad luck.
Maybe it’s just waiting to be chosen.
She wrapped the stem in brown paper.
He paid without looking at the price.
He didn’t know it yet.
But that rose would ruin him.
Because you don’t collect something like Vesper Ashvale.
You stay. Or you burn.
And Elias Thorne?
He had no plans to burn.
END OF PROLOGUE
- Writer
