"...A time when the United States is what we fight for..." The occupants of the Grisham Hall boarding house were no strangers to the war effort. Brothers, cousins, old flames, and current sweethearts have been wrenched from their grasp, the only contact to their stolen loved ones is military-grade pencils and scraps of paper. Estelle prides herself on her mind for numbers but a usurper from her past rears his russet head and threatens to steal her thoughts every chance he gets. Bessie has been searching for a home in every patron in that cafe but she's left seeing his face everywhere she looks. Constance hears her lover's voice on the wind, finding quiet in the graveyard shift of the machine shop. Margaret refuses to admit defeat but the distance between her letters and her love grows wider each day. Jeannette has read many stories about tragic heroes. Her childhood friend has told tales of his plans for wealth and ending the war on his own. She just hopes she has a chance to do her part first.

❝ The future was yet to be written, uncertain in every way except one: there will be fire. When the dawn closed her eyes, she awoke in flames-a hellfire inferno burning as leaves on briar-thicket trees. A forest of thorns alight. A vision of the future yet to pass. Though she could run, she could not hide from the black magic dirge humming within her veins, and she could not escape it. No power on earth can change it, maleficence whispered. Tomes of antiquity spoke of the lone cure for such an ailment: an act of true love in its purest form-a treasure many would lay waste to a thousand armies to possess, a divine gift the poets of old bled sonnets in the name of. True love conquers all, they once wrote. But the shadows would not free her so easily, and as the dawn would come to see, not even the power of true love would be enough to grant her salvation.❞ 〔 arthur pendragon x aurora lothbrok 〕