"Tell me about your daughter," I said, my voice deceptively calm while my mind raced through possibilities that felt both impossible and inevitable.
Charles blinked, confusion replacing some of the terror in his expression. "Catherine? She's... she's twenty-two. Beautiful, intelligent, far too good for the circumstances we've fallen into. She's been trying to hold our family together while I..." He swallowed hard. "While I've been failing them."
Twenty-two. The right age. The right situation. A daughter whose father was desperate enough to steal roses from cursed gardens, moving to a property that bordered my territory.
The prophecy whispered through my mind again, more insistent now: The rose will bring her.
"And you thought this stolen flower would somehow help her?"
"I thought..."
