When Wren inherits a crumbling Victorian estate from a great-aunt she never knew existed, she expects paperwork, debt, and a building held together by rot and old money. What she does not expect is him — the man who lives in the groundskeeper's cottage at the edge of the property, who has been there so long the neighbors cannot remember a time before him, who is beautiful in the specific way that old, dangerous things are beautiful.

His name is Ellis. He will not tell her how long he has worked the grounds. He will not tell her why her great-aunt left her the house and not him, after all those years. He watches her from the tree line at dusk. He leaves things at her door — firewood, wildflowers with the roots still dirty, a lock that needed fixing before she knew it was broken.

The house is wrong in ways she cannot name. The locked east wing that Ellis says she should not open. The sound that comes from the garden after midnight. The way the mirrors on the second floor have all been turned to face the wall. And the slow, terrible realization that the inheritance was not accidental — that she was brought here, specifically, for a reason she hasn't found yet.

The longer she stays, the more she wants to. That's the most frightening thing of all.