Ophelia slammed the door to her cottage behind her.

She grunted and huffed as she fell into it. Leaning back, she squeezed the package in her arms. Her eyes lowered to it.

How dare they?!

The thought of it made her want to vomit. She was supposed to be free, be on her own. She made more than enough money to live in the Vistas comfortably. She could buy out the luxurious penthouse the Manchester’s gifted her if she wanted and barely tap into her savings.

She had everything that should have promised her a life she wanted (a title and money) but like all things in the city, she should have known better than to have trusted it.

Honorable Ophelia, they called her.

She was a vault of secrets, a cemetery of forgotten faces. But her honor wasn’t from good deeds, it was because she was sealed shut. Sure, they had barely begun to understand the vastness of her powers, she barely knew them herself, but despite her gifts for decomposition, her real value was that she didn’t talk.

Ophelia lowered her gaze to the package in her arms. How could she be so livid now? There was nothing honorable about her. She was no better than a member of the cleaning staff. Instead of dusting, she decayed. Instead of scrubbing the floors, she stifled secrets.

Her honor was in her servitude and in her silence.

Ophelia’s shoulders relaxed as she let go of the last of her pride and anger. She moved to the back of her cottage. In her kitchen, the kettle sat cold on her table. She switched it and her satchel with the package before she went to the stove. She pried open the grate and tossed in a match she had struck.

It bloomed slowly. The shade of it reminded her of marigolds. Then her mind wandered past her anger to earlier, to the body in the garden with golden curls. They had buried her in her linen shift, which went as easily as her skin. The rest of her clothes were as a mystery to Ophelia as was the young woman’s name.

She had been lucky with Johannes. He killed like a cat-- efficiently, cleanly. There was never gore or gaping wounds. She had spotted hints to how his victims died, but as a whole, the shock of their death was that they were dead, and to Ophelia, that wasn’t all so surprising.

Ophelia dropped the kettle on the stove and slammed the grate shut.

“Lucky,” she gagged on the word before she fell into the chair at the table, hands to her head.

There was nothing to be lucky about. He was a murderer. He is still a murderer. He had no intention of stopping and his family grew ever more distraught at the thought of the kind of person he was.

But how could she judge? His first kill was at 16, hers was at 12. All eight of them.

She ran her hands over her face. Her shoulder’s tightened again as Johannes’ smile curled and eclipsed her. Unnaturally wide and pristine, his maw reminded her of sea creatures. Nearly as tall as Mavus, Johannes was slim but sturdy. He was as indomitable as a marble column, and just as deadly when he fell.

Her hands fell to the table and coiled into fists. Her gaze drifted. Johannes’ smirk grew until it gnawed on her sanity.

One day, it’s going to be you in a grave, if you’re lucky. If they give you that much dignity.

Ophelia slid forward until her head rested on her arm. She looked across the table to the things on her kitchen wall. The stalks of dried herbs. Glass-jarred micro-terrariums lined shelves. Mushrooms grew in glass boxes. She followed a line of condensation as it rolled down the inside of one habitat.

Behind her, the kettle grumbled. As she collected the things for her tea, she finally pushed the thought of Johannes from her mind. His face and smile shifted. The eyes grew more green. The hair a darker and straighter strawberry-blond styled with care and precision. The aura grew more radiant.

Sunlight.

It washed over her as warm and comforting as the tea she brought to her lips. She closed her eyes. The illumination cleansed the crawl up her spine and relaxed the coil twisting in her gut.

When she eased her eyes open, finally relaxed, Ophelia focused on the still wrapped package. Begrudgingly, she reached for it and slid it to her. In a single pull of the knot, the package peeled back. Folded into perfect squares, was a perfectly white, starched linen uniform.

She shuffled through them with growing anxiety. Breeches, shirt, stockings, plain metal buckle for her shoes. Another folded package lie between folded clothes. She plucked it with suspicion, though she could already figure what it may contain.

Though the uniform was new and pristine, it was dated. The white was not a terribly common colour, even for those who were poorer. This city relished in sun and color, even undershirts and linens were softly dyed chromatic. But white, was used for one real purpose only.

They expected her to become filthy.

The knot in her stomach slowly twisted again as she pried back the folded envelope. She dipped her fingers in and pulled out ribbons in various fabrics, but all a single color.

Crimson.

Ophelia hardly held it to her eyesight before the insult washed over her. She shoved the envelope back in the package and hid it under the folds of white, before she folded the paper over the uniform. She pushed herself away from it and the table, hopeful that if she didn’t see it, it would cease to exist for a few minutes longer.

But as she moved around her kitchen looking for something to eat, she could feel it on the table, like a white-hot flame. And, like all flames, she grew nervous at the thought of keeping her back to it.

Ophelia looked to it once over her shoulder. The glimpse of white was enough to stir her heart. She abandoned everything there. Her still steaming kettle and cup of tea left to freeze on her table as Ophelia scrambled back to her door.

She pulled on her hooded woolen over-cloak with a single yank off the hook as she stormed out to do her job for the second time that day.