Velvet Chains

In the suffocating fog of Victorian London, where gaslight conceals more than it illuminates, Ivy Blackwood hunts for the truth. An investigative journalist for the *Chronicle*, Ivy believes she is exposing the city’s most dangerous criminal cabal: The Obsidian Circle. But Ivy is a pawn in a larger, deadlier game. Unbeknownst to her, her editor—a high-ranking government official—is using her keen intellect and access to track the members of the Circle for execution. Enter Lord Sebastian Cross, an enigmatic antiquarian whose library holds secrets older than the Crown. When Ivy infiltrates his estate on Hampstead Heath, she expects a villain; instead, she finds a man haunted by the brother he was forced to kill to protect the world’s forbidden history. Sebastian recognizes the betrayal in Ivy’s mission before she realizes it herself. To silence her, he must imprison her within the labyrinthine walls of his home. But in the velvet shadows of his sanctuary, the lines between captor and ca