The sea was a black, endless mouth the night I arrived at Blackthorn Manor. The carriage wheels groaned over the cliffside road, and the driver refused to look at the house until we stopped before its gates. “Don’t linger after dark,” he muttered, pressing the iron key into my palm as though it burned him.

The manor rose from the rocks like a carcass picked clean by storms—its windows hollow-eyed, its roofline jagged against the moon. I had been hired as governess to a boy named Samuel, the only child of the reclusive Lady Morwenna Blackthorn, a widow whose name the villagers spoke only in whispers. They said she had not left her tower in twenty years.

Inside, the air was heavy with salt and something older, like feathers left to rot. The boy was pale, polite, and far too quiet for his age. He told me his mother would not see me, but that I would hear her. That night, as I lay in my narrow bed, I heard it: the slow, deliberate scrape of talons on stone, followed by the deep, rhythmic beating of wings against the tower walls.

Days passed in a strange, suspended rhythm. Samuel’s lessons were often interrupted by his gaze drifting to the high windows, as though he could see something circling above. The servants avoided the tower entirely, crossing themselves when the wind carried the sound of wings. I began to notice feathers—long, black, and iridescent—appearing in odd places: beneath my pillow, 

in the pages of my books, tangled in my hair upon waking.

One storm-lashed evening, I found Samuel standing at the base of the tower stairs, his small hand pressed to the locked door. “She’s hungry,” he whispered. “She hasn’t flown in days.” His eyes were wide, not with fear, but with something like devotion.

I could not resist the pull of the mystery. That night, lantern in hand, I stole the key from the steward’s quarters and climbed the spiral staircase. The air grew colder with each step, and the smell of damp feathers thickened until it was almost choking. At the top, I found a 

single iron door, its surface scratched deep, as though something inside had tried to claw its way out.

When I unlocked it, the lantern’s light fell on a figure crouched in the shadows. Lady Morwenna’s face was pale and beautiful, but her eyes were black as obsidian, reflecting the flame. Her arms were folded close, but from her back unfurled vast, ragged wings, each feather slick with seawater. She smiled, and the expression was both human and not.

"You've come to feed me," she said her voice a low rustle, like wind through dead leaves.

Before I could speak, she moved- faster than thought- her wings snapping open with a sound like thunder. The lantern fell from my hand, and in the sudden dark, I felt her breathe at my ear.

When I woke, I was in my bed, the storm gone, the morning sun pale through the curtains. Samuel sat beside me, holding a single black feather. “She likes you,” he said softly. “She says you can stay.”

I tried to leave Blackthorn Manor that day, but the gates would not open. The driver never returned. At night, I hear her wings above my room, circling, circling. Sometimes I dream of standing on the cliff’s edge, the wind tearing at my hair, her voice calling me to leap.

The days began to blur. The servants spoke less and less, their eyes hollow, their movements mechanical. I noticed their skin had taken on a faint, grayish pallor, and some bore faint scratches along their arms, as though from talons. Samuel grew more restless, often disappearing for hours. When I asked where he went, he would only smile and say, “Up there.”

One evening, I followed him. He climbed the tower steps with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times. I stayed far enough behind to avoid being seen, but close enough to hear the low murmur of voices—his and hers. When I reached the top, I dared to peek through the cracked door. Lady Morwenna stood before him, her wings half-spread, the tips brushing the stone