Cosima Blackshaw had buried a hundred men, but never one still breathing. When Thomas Shelby came to her with smoke in his voice and a plan stitched in sin, asking for a casket for a man not yet dead, she looked him in the eye and told him no. Death...
The bed was cold, Thomas reached for her in the first grey hush of dawn and touched nothing—only the wrinkle of sheets, a hollow stillness. The other side of the bed had gone untouched for a time. He sat up at once, already knowing.
He checked the halls, the stairs, the bath, the garden—each shadow turning darker, more foreboding. When he reached the front door and saw it swinging slightly in the wind, barefoot prints pressed in the morning frost.
His chest locked.
She's gone.
Cosima walked like someone chasing a memory.
Barefoot, in only her nightgown, hair tangled down her spine, she drifted through the morning fog without coat, without sense. Her pale feet were bloodied from thorns, but she didn't feel them. Her hands hung at her sides like forgotten things.
She crossed the broken path to Blackshaw House, its windows dark and still.
Past the chapel. Past the withered graves. Past the dying ivy that once bloomed like a crown over the family crypt.
She didn't remember choosing to go to the lake.
But somehow—there she was. Wyrmwood Mere lay hushed and unmoving, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Mist coiled above its surface. The trees bowed inwards, heavy with dew and silence.
Cosima stepped into the water like she'd done it before, like she belonged to it.
She didn't know why.
Her nightgown clung to her like skin as the water climbed higher—knees, thighs, waist. Her breath hitched but she didn't stop. It felt like dreaming, or drowning.
The lake was cold and bottomless and she felt weightless, unmoored, like she might disappear if she just-
