THORNE AND ASH

Margit Wexler knows better than to trust a woman who looks at her like she already belongs to her.

Disgraced, broke, and desperate for work, twenty-eight-year-old archivist Margit Wexler accepts a position cataloguing the private collection of Countess Odalys Thorne on a remote island swallowed by fog. The manor is crumbling. Its rooms are crowded with centuries of letters, portraits, ledgers, and the traces of women no one seems willing to discuss.

And its owner makes no effort to pretend she is human.

Odalys is beautiful in the way dangerous things often are: cold, controlled, and far too interested in the one woman stubborn enough to challenge her. She gives Margit rules. Margit argues with them. Odalys tests her boundaries. Margit refuses to look away.

But the deeper Margit digs into the manors history, the harder it becomes to ignore the pattern buried inside its archives. Women have come before her. Women Odalys wanted. Women whose stories end inside these walls.

Margit should leave.

Instead, she stays.

Every conversation becomes a contest. Every touch feels deliberate. Every warning only sharpens Margits need to discover what Odalys wants from her—and why some secret part of her wants to surrender it willingly.

When an old enemy of Odalys arrives at the manor and centuries of buried violence begin to surface, Margit realizes she is no longer merely cataloguing the history of a monster.

She is becoming part of it.

How much of herself will Margit willingly give to the woman who wants everything—and what happens when being possessed begins to feel dangerously like being chosen?