The hearth did not just throw heat; it threw a fierce, snapping orange glare that smelled of scorched pine and old stone.
For the first time in sixteen days, Selene was entirely alone behind a door that locked from the inside. Silas had kept his word, delivered with that unsettling, booming theatricality he mistook for generosity.
He had granted her a chamber in the eastern face of the secondary tower, a room with a vaulted ceiling, a bed heaped with heavy bear-pelts, and a roaring fire that licked away the persistent gray damp of the lower tiers.
It was a room meant for an asset. A clean, warm cage for the weaver who held his victory in the tip of her crow-feather quill.
Selene stood in the center of the Persian rug, her bare feet sinking into the thick, dark wool. The silence of the
