I woke to warmth.
Not the kind of clammy, stifling heat from our apartment when the old radiator refused to shut off during summer, but soft, even warmth that seeped through thick blankets and into my bones. For a long moment, I lay there, caught between sleep and panic, trying to figure out why everything smelled so… clean? Like cedarwood. Like smoke from a distant fire. Like money, if money even had a scent.
My eyes cracked open.
The ceiling above me wasn’t cracked plaster, stained yellow from years of leaks. It was carved wood, dark and polished, beams stretching across like ribs of some old cathedral. The bed beneath me wasn’t my lumpy mattress at home, but something enormous, draped in layers of velvet and fur so soft it almost made me sink. A rug thick enough to swallow my bare fe
