Romance
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The Weight of the Cold Ash
People will look back at the winter of the great freeze and talk about the records. They will talk about the feet of snow and the power lines that snapped like dry twigs. But they will not talk about the kitchen in the house on the cliff. They do not know about the two people…
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The Weight of the Ink
Hattie was a woman who lived in the margins. Her fingers were always stained black, the ink settled deep into the cracks of her skin like a permanent bruise. She didn’t mind. The ink was the only thing keeping the debt collectors from her door. Her father had left her a house with a rotting…
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The Blueprints of Better Days
The file on Troy was thick. It was full of missed deadlines, loud arguments, and a reputation for being difficult. Maren held the folder like it was a piece of live evidence that might go off in her hands. She stood on the edge of the Oakhaven estate. The house was a skeleton of wood…
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The Weight of Empty Rooms
Maren stood in the driveway of the Blackwood Estate and felt the wind pull at her coat. Her boots were leather and cost more than her first car, but they could not keep her feet from shaking. She was thirty-six years old and her career was a house of cards. If she did not fix…
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The Ink That Never Dried
Sutton pressed her palm against the wallpaper of the grand hallway. The paper was peeling like a sunburned shoulder. It was damp and smelled of old rain and things people had forgotten to say out loud. This house was a giant, dying animal: and Sutton was the only person who cared if it stopped breathing.…
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The Nails in the Floorboards
Silas believes he is a god because he can draw a straight line. I think he is a vulture. We are stuck in this rotting house because he wants a promotion and I want my life back. My career died three years ago. A roof I designed collapsed under heavy snow. Nobody died, but the…
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Untold Epic
The Echo in the Stone Tatum stood at the edge of the driveway. The house sat on the cliff like a giant, broken bird. It was called Oakhaven: a mess of rotting wood and gray stone that smelled like salt and old secrets. Her heart felt like a tight knot in her chest. She needed…
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The Cost of Keeping Warm
Everything has a price tag. I learned that when I was six and traded a shiny marble for a pocketknife that didn’t have a blade. I got cheated. Ever since then, I look at the world like a ledger. Love is just a high-risk loan. Trust is a currency that most people counterfeit. Remy stood…
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The Iron Heart of the Hill
There is a kind of silence that talks. There is a kind of shadow that watches. Up on the peak of Blackwood Hill, there stood a tower that did both. It was a tall thing. It was a dark thing. It was a thing that stood like a jagged tooth against the gray sky. People…
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The Key to the Garden Wall
Marcus knew the exact price of a broken heart. Usually, it was forty percent of the house, the good silver, and the dog on every other weekend. He sat in his office and looked at the dust on the redundant second chair. Nobody sat there just to talk. They sat there to end things. He…