EMBER’S POV
The car climbs for what feels like a year, and I’ve given up asking how much longer somewhere around the second switchback, when the trees finally let go of the road and I see it.
I don’t know what I expected.
Something old, probably.
Something with gargoyles and a moat and a name that sounds like a curse, because that fits the man whose hand has been wrapped around mine since the plane, like he thinks I might evaporate if he loosens his grip.
What I get instead is black glass and steel stretching out over a bottomless drop. The whole place glows gold from the inside, just hanging there in the dark.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s not a house.”
“It’s home.” His thumb keeps moving over my knuckles. Slow, steady, around and around, the way you’d check a bruise hasn’t gotten worse.
