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Prologue: Hemlock and Hunger
The advertisement appeared in the back pages of the Journal of Toxic Botany, wedged between articles on ricin extraction and alkaloid synthesis:
WANTED: Botanist specializing in poisonous flora. Must be comfortable working alone in isolated conditions. Historical estate restoration project. Generous compensation. Discretion essential. Apply: Ravenscroft Abbey, Cornwall.
Most would have dismissed it. But I had spent seven years studying plants that kill, earning my doctorate on the cardiac glycosides of digitalis purpurea—foxglove, beautiful and lethal. I collected death in terrariums, cultivated toxicity in greenhouses, understood that nature's most exquisite creations were often her most murderous.
The position was perfect for someone like me.
I wrote that evening, my letter brief and professional, listing my credentials without elaborating on why a woman of thirty-two chose to dedicate her life to poisonous plants. Some questions don't have answers that satisfy. Or perhaps the answer is too simple: I've always been drawn to dangerous things.
The reply came within three days, along with a first-class train ticket and a key made of tarnished silver, its head shaped like a coiled serpent.
Dr. Blackwood,
Your expertise is required immediately. The garden has been neglected too long. It grows... restless. Arrive before the dark moon. The caretaker will be expecting you.
E.R., Steward of Ravenscroft
No signature. No details about the project. Just the ticket and that strange key, which felt oddly warm against my palm.
I should have asked more questions.
Instead, I packed my field guides and specimen jars, locked my London flat, and boarded the train west toward Cornwall and whatever waited in that poison garden.
The estate emerged from coastal fog like something from a fever dream—a sprawling Gothic Revival structure perched on black cliffs above the Atlantic. The architecture was all pointed arches and flying buttresses, gargoyles and grotesques leering from every cornice. But it was the garden that drew my eye.
Even from a distance, I could see it was wrong.
A high stone wall enclosed several acres behind the abbey, but vegetation spilled over the top—twisted vines and thorny brambles growing with unnatural vigor. The air around it shimmered strangely, and I caught a scent on the wind that made my pulse quicken: belladonna and hemlock, monkshood and oleander. The perfume of a dozen deadly plants, all blooming out of season.
"Dr. Blackwood." A woman stood at the abbey's entrance, elderly and severe in black silk, her white hair pulled back in a style from another century. "I am Mrs. Erasmus, housekeeper and steward. Welcome to Ravenscroft."
"The garden—" I began.
"Has been waiting for you, yes." She beckoned me inside with one gnarled hand...
Raven Blackwell's past is shrouded in mystery—some say they worked as a mortuary assistant, others claim they're an occult researcher with access to forbidden grimoires. What's certain is that Raven writes from a place of darkness, beauty, and death-positive sensuality that few dare explore. From an undisclosed Gothic Revival mansion filled with arcane books and candlelight, Raven crafts atmospheric tales where vampires seduce, necromancers claim, and demons bargain. Their work draws from the great Gothic tradition—Poe, Shelley, Rice—while bringing explicit sensuality to dark romance.
