The rain hadn't stopped since Juliette Armand set foot in Scotland.
Fine mist curled over the cobbled streets of Edinburgh, turning the old city into a painting of ghosts and secrets. Her black boots echoed against the pavement as she exited the taxi and stared at the wrought-iron gate that guarded the Armand Estate, her grandmother's estate. Or rather, hers now.
She tightened her grip on the leather strap of her suitcase and let out a shaky breath.
It had been fourteen years since she last stepped foot on this land. Fourteen years since her mother had pulled her away from this cold country and swore they'd never return. Juliette was only ten then, too young to understand what her mother was running from. But old enough to remember the whispers in the walls. The blood-red moon that hung low on the night her grandfather died. The way her grandmother would stand on the cliffside in her black lace gown, murmuring to the wind in a language Juliette didn't recognize.
And now, after all those years, her grandmother was dead.
And Juliette was back.
The iron gate creaked open slowly at her touch, as though the house had been expecting her. The estate sat at the edge of a forested cliffside, its gray stone walls veined with ivy and time. She stood frozen for a moment, her chest tightening. The house was exactly how she remembered it, tall, brooding, alive.
A raven screeched overhead, landing on the statue of a hooded woman in the garden. Her stone hands held a broken mirror.
Juliette's eyes darkened.
The curse.
Her mother always spoke of it like a bedtime story with a bite. The Crimson Moon Curse. Passed down through the Armand bloodline like a whisper no one dared repeat in daylight. A curse born out of betrayal, tied to blood and fire and the moon that turned red every twenty years. And every time it rose, someone in the Armand line died.
Juliette didn't believe in curses. Or at least, she told herself that.
But she hadn't been able to sleep since the letter arrived.
"Your grandmother is dead. You are the last of the Armand line. Come before the next Crimson Moon. Or everything will be lost."
There had been no name signed at the bottom. Only a wax seal, an intricate symbol of a crescent moon pierced by a dagger.
Juliette shivered and walked toward the mansion.
The grand door opened before she could knock.
A man stood there.
Not a butler. Not a groundskeeper.
He was tall, almost obscenely handsome, dressed in a tailored black wool coat with a high collar and a silver pin at the throat. His eyes were a piercing gray, cold and unreadable and his hair was dark, tousled by the wind.
"Juliette Armand," he said, voice smooth as aged whiskey. "You've come."
She blinked. "And you are?"
"Lucien Blackthorne. Neighbor. Executor of the estate."
"Executor?" She raised a brow. "I thought it was a lawyer."
His lips quivered, but not in amusement. "Your grandmother was a peculiar woman. She had peculiar requests."
Of course she did.
Juliette stepped into the house, and the scent of old roses and cedar wrapped around her like a memory. The air was colder inside than outside, despite the fire crackling in the marble hearth of the sitting room. Portraits lined the hallway, women with the same eyes. Armand women. Strong, strange, beautiful, and doomed.
Her gaze landed on one painting that chilled her to the bone.
It was a girl with flame-gold hair, standing in front of a crimson moon. She wore a white gown, stained with something dark, blood, perhaps? Her face was turned to the side, but the shape of her jawline, the tilt of her head…
It looked exactly like Juliette.
"Who is she?" she whispered.
Lucien's eyes followed her gaze. "Evelyn Armand. Your great-grandmother. The one who started it all."
"Started what?"
"The curse."
Juliette let out a hollow laugh, but it died in her throat when Lucien didn't smile.
"You're serious," she said.
He nodded once. "You'll want to rest. The housekeeper will show you to your room. The reading of the will is tomorrow at midnight."
"Midnight?"
"It must be done under the moon."
"What moon?"
His eyes met hers with unsettling calm. "The Crimson Moon. It rises again in three days."
Juliette barely slept.
The room she was given had once belonged to her mother. She could feel it in the way the closet still held the faint scent of lavender, the journals tucked in the drawer, the childhood drawing pressed between the pages of a book. Her mother had drawn a red moon with black lines running down from it like tears.
The same symbol was carved into the windowpane, almost hidden behind the curtains.
She pressed her palm to the glass.
What had happened here?
Why had her mother run and never spoken of it again?
The next day passed in a fog of rain, fading light, and silent halls. The house was a breathing thing. Doors shifted. Shadows moved. Her grandmother's diary, locked in a drawer, was missing when she checked again.
By midnight, the estate was drenched in moonlight, red and heavy.
The will was read in the old library, beneath the stained glass of the Armand crest. The only people present were Lucien, the aging housekeeper Mrs. Dalloway, and a man who introduced himself as Father Emrys, the estate's chaplain and historian.
Juliette sat in a high-backed leather chair, heart thudding as Lucien unfolded the will and began to read.
"To Juliette Amara Armand, I leave everything. The estate. The lands. The keys. The secrets."
She froze. "Keys?"
Lucien handed her a small velvet box. Inside were three rusted keys tied together with a crimson ribbon.
Her grandmother's voice came through the letter, eerie and deliberate:
"My darling girl, if you are reading this, then I am dead. But the curse lives on. You must finish what I could not. The truth lies beneath. Follow the bloodline. But be warned, what you find may destroy you… or set you free."
Juliette's throat went dry.
"What the hell is going on?" she whispered.
Father Emrys crossed himself. "The Crimson Moon is not just a myth, Miss Armand. Your family was bound to an oath long before you were born. Blood for blood. Life for power. Evelyn made a pact. And it demands a price."
Juliette stood up sharply, her chair scraping against the stone floor.
"This is insane."
Lucien rose with her. "It's also real. And you're already part of it."
Outside, thunder cracked across the sky.
And inside, the mirrors began to fog, every one of them.
Except for the largest mirror in the hallway.
In that one, Juliette saw something move behind her.
A woman in white.
Her grandmother's voice echoed again in her head:
"Do not trust what you see. Trust only your blood."
She spun around but no one was there.
Just Lucien, watching her like he already knew.