The consequences of her choice are immediate and horrific. Iris makes her father a promise: to remain alone all her life. When a Villarca marries, when they love, when they have a child - she comes and death follows. Her origins are a mystery but her purpose is clear. She is white, skeletal, covered with scars. The Villarcas are haunted, through the generations, by her. And one sunlit autumn day, beside her mother's grave, she forces the truth from her father. Forbidden to speak to other children or the servants, denied her one friend, Iris grows up in solitude. Iris knows it's because of a congenital disease which means she must be strictly isolated. The Villarcas always die young, bloodily. Iris and her father are the last of their name. In 1910, eleven year old Iris Villarca lives with her father at Rawblood, a lonely house on Dartmoor.
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