Embers of a Selfish Heart
Three weeks after receiving a summons he should have burned, Damon Castellan crosses the salt-rotted threshold of Thornhaven and finds decay thicker than the brine on the wind. The Ashworth fortune is gone. The family name is in tatters. And waiting at the heart of the ruin is Vesper Ashworth, the woman he walked away from without a backward glance. She greets him with the composure of a survivor and the fury of a woman wronged, and she makes it clear that whatever Damon came to claim, she will not surrender without a fight. As the estate's buried debts surface alongside older, more dangerous secrets, Damon discovers that Vesper has been holding Thornhaven together with nothing but spite and grace. Hadrian Pike, the solicitor who sent the summons, knows more than he is telling. Mags Tremaine, the housekeeper who has outlasted three generations of neglect, watches from the shadows. And Irina Castellan, Damon's sister-in-law, waits in the wings with ambitions of her own. Every door Damon opens releases another ember of the past. Vesper is no longer the girl who could be dismissed, and the man who has come to collect an inheritance is forced to reckon with what he abandoned, what he destroyed, and what he is willing to burn to reclaim. Thornhaven will not yield to either of them. They will have to choose whether they survive it together, or watch it drag them both down.