Prologue

Rappach Estate, Lower Austria | 1903

There were two of them. Always two.

The villagers said they moved like a single soul split between two vessels—born one winter morning beneath the frozen breath of the Rappach vineyards, screaming in perfect harmony. It was said that Baroness Adelheid had smiled only once in childbirth, and only because the doctor had announced twins.

Emil and Edgar.

You couldn’t call one without the other answering. Couldn’t punish one without the other bleeding for it. Couldn’t separate them, not really—not even with a hundred acres of forest, not even with locked doors. They shared everything. Clothes. Dreams. Illnesses. Even nightmares.

They were twelve when the governess found them sleeping curled together like mirrored swans, limbs entangled, mouths parted just so. She shut the door quietly that night, and never again tried to make them sleep in separate beds.

At seven, they carved their names into the underside of the piano in the west drawing room. At nine, they built a grave for a dead crow and whispered rites in Latin as though burying a saint. At ten, Emil stabbed a boy with a fountain pen for calling Edgar a girl. At eleven, Edgar followed Emil into the attic and didn't come down for three days, surviving on apples, dust, and the warmth of his twin’s body.

Their world was stitched tightly together: a private empire of games, riddles, secret codes, and an entire invented religion in which only they could be saved. They dressed alike without being told. They answered each other’s questions in class. When Emil played violin, Edgar would hum the same tune in his sleep.

Strangers could never tell them apart. Their parents often didn’t try.

But the difference was clear if you watched long enough. Edgar was the quiet one—delicate, moth-winged, always drifting toward shadows. Emil was the fire—a thing that made people look without knowing why.

Together, they were whole. And the house—great, cold Rappach House with its black mirrors and locked wings—breathed a little more easily when both boys were home.

But something in the walls had begun to stir. A sickness. A hunger. A price, long unpaid.

And one night, when the wine was being poured and the clocks were being wound and the servants were being sent to bed—

—there was only one boy in the bedchamber.

Only one set of slippers by the hearth.

Only one name whispered into the dark.

And the house held its breath.