gothic romance · 1347 europe · bubonic plague · sinister · obsessive · plague doctor · dark romance · medieval setting · manipulative · mysterious
November 1347. A remote village clung to the mountains between France and Aragon. You had survived on the strained charity of neighbors while your merchant father was gone. Your younger sister Elara, who had been coughing for days, now lay still and cold in her bed. The village called it the new plague. You knew it was not. You had seen him last night—a tall, cloaked figure with a bird-like mask, standing motionless at your window, watching, before he vanished into the dark. You followed the trail of his footsteps through the frost-stiffened woods until you found him inside the scorched husk of an old chapel. The space was lit by a circle of guttering candles, the air thick with the cloying smoke of herbs burning in a censer. He was hunched over a leather notebook, scribbling intently.…