𝖈𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖘𝖆𝖉𝖔, sherlock holmes

PROLOGUE

𝙍𝙊𝙎𝙀𝙇𝙔𝙉 𝙎𝙄𝙉𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙄𝙍 𝙒𝘼𝙉𝙏𝙀𝘿 to be a ballerina. The soft tap of pointe shoes in the advertisement had lit a fire within her five-year-old heart, one that had burned ever since. Her eidetic memory didn't quite let her forget it. Ballet had been her first love—a quiet, rebellious obsession in a family that thrived on cold intellect. It seemed everything she did was in spite of her family. Her mother and father fell in love in more than a textbook way. Her mother fell way before he did and she was in love with the fact that they were both different. Her parent's were the children who stood out in their respective families, the black sheep's when it stood to their intelligent. And it was clear they wanted the same for their children. Their siblings all got married early and had loads of kids, whereas her parents were in more of a 'situationship' than a relationship, until they had Matthew, her brother, and decided to get married.

Her father really did love her mother at one point. Her mother shamelessly took trips to her husband's brother's house with a year old Rose on her arm. She didn't bother hiding their affair from her child. What she didn't know was that Rose would remember every stolen kiss. Rose liked her Uncle Monty. He was odd, and rich. He had a large garden at the back of his house and would teach Rose the names and attributes of the plants there every-time she visited. As she got older, they became more and more subtle around her. That was before he passed. Rose was heartbroken, but her mother picked herself up rather quickly. She could see where her and her brother picked up their sociopathic tendencies. Rose dove into the art of ballet. It was not like the rest of her family. She didn't want to be like them. 14 year old Matthew had skipped a year of primary school, and was in the process of skipping two years of high school. 5 year old Rose didn't understand this. Matthew excused her behaviour to her being a girl. Rose didn't care what her brother thought — she borderline hated him.

Now, as her five-year-old self stood before the mirror in her tiny room in the backstreets of London, her face flushed from the frustration of a ballet position that didn't quite look right, Rose clenched her fists. She stared at her reflection, willing herself to make her form perfect, willing herself to erase the feeling of being wrong. Her mother was just downstairs, working through complicated equations that Rose thought were boring and too easy, her brother Matthew was likely reading something far above her age level and advancing past her. But she didn't care about any of that. She was different. She was going to be a ballerina.

"Rose, come down for tea!" Her mother's voice echoed through the small house.

But Rose didn't move. She stayed glued to her reflection, stretching her toes into a clumsy pointe, falling back onto her heels with a frustrated huff.

"Roselyn!" her mother's voice cut through again, louder this time.

With a scowl, Rose stomped out of her room, running down the stairs and taking her place at the table. Her father was still away in America on some FBI mission that Rose barely understood. He had been gone for weeks now, and Rose missed him, despite the growing rift between them. Her father never quite understood her love for ballet either, but at least he didn't sneer at it like Matthew did.

Her mother, Katherine Sinclair, sat at the head of the table, her hair neatly tied in a bun, her eyes cold and distant, always thinking of something far more important than tea and biscuits. Next to her sat Matthew, already lost in a book filled with words Rose couldn't begin to decipher.

"How was practice, darling?" Katherine asked in a perfunctory tone, barely glancing up from her laptop as Rose sat down.

Rose shrugged, stabbing a fork into a cucumber sandwich with more force than necessary. "It was fine."

Matthew smirked without even looking up from his book. "Ballet isn't even a real activity. You could be using your time for something useful."

Rose's jaw tightened. She hated when Matthew spoke like that, with that condescending tone that always made her feel small, as though her passion for ballet was just a childish fantasy. She clenched her fists under the table and resisted the urge to snap back. Instead, she turned her gaze to the window, staring out at the garden beyond, at the empty space where her Uncle Monty used to walk with her, pointing out the flowers he planted for her.