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The key felt like a weight tied to my heart, as if it was chained around that muscle and pulling it into the depths of the blackest sea. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I twisted the key between my fingers as I tried to force myself to move toward it.

“Are you going to look inside?” Andrues asked as he pulled his hood over his head.

It was snowing, but I hadn’t noticed when it started, hadn’t felt the cold flakes hitting my skin. The only thing I could feel was this twist in my stomach, the gut-wrenching feeling that thishouse—the house that was once my dream—would now become my cage.

A cage whose iron bars were intricately carved from every hateful word, every selfish action, every emotional and physical bruise I had left on the ones I loved.

“W-will you come with me?” I whispered the words, forcing the question from my mouth, embarrassed that I even had to ask it—that I was scared to do this alone.

His gaze scanned the side of my face but I didn’t dare look at him, too afraid of the pity I would find in those blue eyes. A sharp gasp left my lips and I flinched, my eyes shooting down to the warmth that brushed against my hand to see Andrues fingers slowly intertwine with mine.

His silent answer; his quiet presence pushing me forward.

Dragging my eyes from our hands, he took that first step for me as I sucked in a deep breath and followed.

My grip tightened as we walked across the clearing in silence, the snow dancing around us and our boots crunching against the frozen ground. I glanced toward him from the corner of my eye to see snow flakes catching in his raven lashes.

His cheeks had begun to flush from the cold and I watched as his lips parted, his breath flowing between them like smoke swirling in the air, and for a single moment my heart stuttered in my chest at the sight.

He pulled my hand up toward his mouth as we approached the stone steps leading up to the doorway, his lips brushing over my knuckles and blowing hot air onto my fingertips.

A shiver slid down my spine.

Not from the cold, not from the winter chill, but the feeling of his lips dusting over my skin. His gaze met mine before I could avert my eyes and I pulled away from him, the movement sharp and uncontrolled. The corners of his lips tilted up as he turned toward the locked door in front of us.

Something in the way he looked at me felt comforting, felt . . .good, and the feeling made my body instinctively recoil into itself.

I cleared my throat, trying to shake the painful pulse from each beat of my heart as I pushed the key into the lock and turned.

A sound somewhere between a squeal of joy and a painful gasp choked out of my throat as I pushed the door open to see a home.

Not an empty, lonely, skeleton of a house.

Not a prison.

A home.

There was love inside these walls.

Standing there, in that open doorway, with the afternoon wind blowing gusts of snow against my back, a solitary tear fell down my cheek.

And for the first time, I wasn’t ashamed of it.

Andrues’s hand fell to the small of my back, his palm applying a small amount of pressure and giving me a gentle push forward, just enough for him to close the door as my eyes drank in the space.

The foyer was open and round, with a staircase to the right that curved up to a den and a second one to the left that curved toward a hallway with doors lining each side. In the center of the room sat a round, black stone table with a book propped into a stand, draped open with a dagger set across its pages. I walked closer, my fingers gliding over the walls painted in the darkest crimson I had ever seen. My eyes fell to the pages of the book, sliding over the longhand and feeling the rough texture of the pressed paper sing to every nerve in my fingertips.

There was something about books, about reading. The way you could disappear into them, hide between their pages for just a moment when the pain was too much.

I think books saved me these last few months.

Pulling my eyes away from the page, I looked down the long corridor in front of me and stepped around the table, following it to the back house. Tapestries hung on the enclosed walls, shadow boxes of moths and butterflies with their wings pinned open, scattered between them—perfectly aligned and color coordinated with each other.

The hallway opened up into a kitchen that was brightly lit from the light pouring through two glass doors at the back of the house. They led out onto a covered porch that overlooked the forest and a small river cutting through the ground, twisting and turning between the trees.

It was everything I had ever wanted.

It was more than I had ever imagined.