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Prologue

So kiss me sith your et mouth,

Still fragrant with ruby wine,

And say with a fervor born of the South

That your body and soul are mine

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

London, November 1885

She had always been attracted to death Sought it out for reasons inexplicable to even herself But it wasn’t supposed to end this way And now she was dead Of that she was certain She felt the stinging tug of the knife as it pulled through her flesh Her life’s blood, hot against her skin, cool as it spread in a crimson pool about her still body

Just before she died, the grizzled, grinning faces of the thugs around her began to fade, the world turning a muddy brown Eliza’s last breath left with a soft, soundless puff

And now she was dead She had fought so hard and so long to live Done ugly things to remain alive, to survive She’d coht help, offer her solace And she hadn’t even had the chance to look, set upon by bad men barely an hour after she’d diselish soil

Rage surged up within her She refused to be cut down like this, by these…now No longer hers to command

Again caer Before she could think, she was sione

No No!

Eliza blinked, light wavering around her And then she was back, standing in the alleyway Alive Before her, toht the men who had murdered her She had beenas these lovely, properly dressed woht likemad That was it Madness had at last claimed her

And then all was still Theand bloodied And she was left with her saviors Eliza didn’t knohat to say She felt… odd No, she corrected, she didn’t feel at all There was, in fact, a decided lack of any feeling She wanted to think further on it, but the pretty blonde wo into her fine, butter-yellow skirts

Eliza stared at the sight, at the body of another blonde woman, her plain brown skirts in disarray, her throat cut, her brown eyes wide and sightless in death She looks like me The dead woman looks exactly like me

“No pulse,” the young lady ainst the woutted her Poor dear”