The Bride In The Portrait

"Some loves are written by fate. The rarest ones are rewritten by choice."

For generations, the women of the Ashbourne family have discovered a hidden oil painting in their gallery predicting the exact man they are destined to marry. Vivienne Hart doesn’t believe in curses. As an art conservator in London, she trusts chemical solvents, cracked varnish, and hard logic. But when her grandmother dies and she returns to the decaying granite halls of Ashbourne Estate, she uncovers a freshly worked canvas hidden beneath a velvet drape. The woman in the emerald silk dress is undeniably Vivienne. The man standing beside her is a devastating stranger. And the inscription in gold leaf bears tomorrow’s date. Enter Lucien Vale: the reclusive, infuriatingly composed owner of the neighboring basalt manor her family spent centuries warning her to avoid. He knows the cadence of her voice, the stubborn tilt of her chin, and a secret that chills her to the bone: he has seen her portrait before, twenty years ago, when he was just an eleven-year-old boy. When the oil paint begins to shift, bleed, and warp reality in real time, Vivienne discovers the true horror of Blackmere. The painting doesn't predict love, it demands a sacrifice. One of them must die before the varnish cures. As an ancient debt threatens to drag them both into the dark, Vivienne realizes Lucien has spent his entire life preparing to surrender his soul to save hers. To break the cycle once and for all, she will have to do the unthinkable: step inside the canvas and wage war against fate itself.