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...