EMBER’S POV

There is something exquisitely wrong.

My body registers the details before my mind catches up — the luxurious texture of a dress I don’t remember wearing, the pull of my hair swept up off my neck in a way I never style it, the cool press of metal around my wrists.

I blink, and the world assembles itself in pieces: a long dining table draped in fine linen, crystal glasses catching the light of a hundred candles, silver cutlery laid out with the kind of precision that belongs in a Michelin restaurant, and flowers — dark red roses, cascading from centre-pieces down the length of the table.

I...