EMBER’S POV
Knox finds me a couple of hours later, after Queenie’s left and the light’s gone gold across the mountains.
I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of the enormous bed we share, pretending to sort the day’s spoils and actually just running my palm over the ridiculous soft weight of a coat I absolutely did not need, feeling that dangerous, unfamiliar thing again.
The one I keep waiting to be punished for. Peace.
He stops in the doorway.
“Ember.”
“Mm?”
“We need to discuss the gate.”
“Do we, though?” I don’t look up. “Or could the gate simply be a beautiful, unspoken mystery between us, a thing we never—”
“It’s six feet tall.”
“It’s abstract.”
“Ember.” He comes into the room, and there’s a slow, deliberate danger to the way he moves, and I finally look up, and his face i
