Chapter One
Ember
Smoke tastes like pennies and heartbreak.
It curls over the roof of my studio in thick gray waves, eating the night sky, swallowing the little string of lanterns I hung an hour ago to make the place look “festive artisan mountain witch.” Now it looks like a Viking funeral.
“My kiln!” I choke, boots sliding on gravel as I sprint toward the porch. “My molds—my sketchbooks?—”
A wall of heat slams me in the face, shocking me backward.
The porch light pops.
Somewhere metal screams.
No.
No. No. No.
I lunge for the door anyway, hand outstretched, brain doing that bad thing where it shuts off and leaves the survival part to vibes and adrenaline.
A band of steel wraps around my waist and yanks me off my feet.
I yelp, wind knocked out of me, and I’m suddenly airborne, spun, pinned to a chest as solid and hot as the burning building.
“Let me go!” I thrash, hair in my eyes, tears blurring everything. “My books are in there—my pieces—stop, let me?—”
“Not a chance.” His voice is gravel, smoke, and command. “You’re not dying over clay, firecracker.”
He hauls me farther away from the building, boots planted wide, his turnout gear brushing against my jacket. My heels dig into gravel.
“Stop!” I claw at his arm, but it’s like trying to peel a boulder. “Please, my portfolio is in there, I have commissions?—”
“Ember.” He says my name like he’s throwing a rope. “Look.”
He tips my chin toward the studio.
Through the front window, flames roll across the ceiling in a hungry orange wave. The glass cracks. The roof pops again. My little pottery wheel? Gone. My display shelves? Gone. All the hand-painted holiday mugs with stupid little pine trees on them?
My throat closes.
I sag in his hold.
“Yeah,” he mutters, lowering us both until I’m on my knees in the dirt and he’s still braced behind me like a shield. “That’s what I thought.”
I let out a sound I don’t recognize. Half-cough, half-sob, half-wounded animal. Three halves. I don’t care. I press my palms to my eyes.
“This was everything,” I whisper. “I saved for two years. I moved out of the city. I?—”
A gloved hand comes into my line of sight, offering something dark. His coat. Heavy, warm, smelling like smoke and cedar and man.
“I don’t need—” I start.
He ignores me and drops it over my shoulders anyway. The weight of it nearly folds me.
“You’re shaking,” he says flatly.
“I’m not?—”
