Chapter 1
The bed groaned, not from age, but from protest.
The house never liked her. It swallowed its breath when she passed, turned its corners slightly sharper, bent mirrors subtly out of frame. It curled the edges of carpets where only her feet would land. The House was ancient, maybe alive, though no one said that aloud. But it saw things. And when she was near Luca, it flinched.
No one knew how many lived here. You saw who the House let you see. Sometimes the stairs opened into hallways that hadn’t been there the day before. Sometimes you heard water running, footsteps overhead, quiet laughter just out of reach. But Luca’s room had always been his. It was the only part of the House that didn’t hide from him.
The moment the door clicked shut behind them, Caroline pushed him onto the bed.
His body landed with a grunt, gold curls catching the light through the high arched window. The room wasn’t large, but the ceiling stretched as if trying to make space for what couldn’t fit in four walls. His books lay open on the desk—poetry, mostly, and anatomy—and beside them were scraps of paper scrawled with unfinished lines in his soft, uneven script. A pen bled slowly into the wood.
Luca reached for her, but she was already there.
She climbed over him with a sharp grace, knees pressing into the mattress, hands flattening against his chest. Her body was pale, impossibly so—skin like polished glass, like something that had been buried under snow for centuries and only just remembered how to breathe. Her white hair fell around them like strands of light that had forgotten their source.
“You don’t knock anymore,” he said, voice dry, chest rising with hers.
“The house opens when it wants me in.” Her tone was even, but her eyes glittered. “You don’t get to complain.”
She leaned in, but she didn’t kiss him. Her teeth grazed his jaw first, then his neck, sharp and cold.
“Caroline—”
A bite, hard, just beneath his collarbone. He gasped.
“Say my name again,” she whispered.
He did. Softer.
Another bite, higher, her hands pinning his wrists down, not hard, but like she could if she wanted to.
“You never tell me no,” she said.
“You never give me a reason.”
That earned him a smile, quick and cutting. Her mouth dragged down his chest, slow, deliberate, not gentle. There was nothing romantic in the way she touched him. It was hunger—bare, bladed. She wrapped around him like vines starved of sunlight, not for comfort, but for claim.
He arched into her, not resisting, not submitting—something in between.
He was nineteen, divine in the way that made time nervous. His body held the echo of boyhood—sharp ribs, smooth hips, collarbones that caught the light like wing-bones—but it moved like it had been sculpted for want. His skin was warm, always. His breath always came soft first, then harsh.
And he had no shadow. No matter how the light fell.
No reflection, either. Caroline had once looked over his shoulder into the mirror. She saw herself, sharp and still. The bed. The sheets. Her fingers pressing into his shoulder. But not him. Never him.
He let her leave marks.
Not love bites—no, they weren’t that. They were sharper, ruder, realer. They dotted his neck, his shoulder, his ribs. Little signs that she’d been here. Little warnings to the House.
The House responded in its own way.
The air inside the room tightened. The drawers of his desk slid open slightly, uneasily. The wooden panels on the floor expanded with a subtle groan. A crack appeared in the far wall—a hairline one, thin as a whisper, spreading from the corner near the ceiling.
“I think she’s jealous,” Luca murmured.
Caroline looked up. Her mouth was red. “Of me?”
“Of you on top of me.”
She tilted her head, resting it against his chest. “You think she’s in love with you?”
“I think she wants to keep me clean.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a sound of joy. “Too late.”
Luca’s hands slid down her waist, fingertips tracing her spine. “You like it here.”
“I like the bed.”
“The house hates you.”
“She hates herself more.”
A silence fell again, but it was never empty. There were echoes in this room—strange ones. Memories the House couldn’t digest. Time hiccupped around Caroline. Luca was the only constant.
He reached up, brushed her hair behind her ear. “Stay.”
“I always do.”
“Stay longer.”
Her voice dropped. “You’ll grow tired of me.”
“Impossible.”
She sat up, straddling him now, and the sunlight filtered through her like she was made of something more delicate than bone. But the pressure of her hips was real. Her hands on his chest were unyielding.
“I’m not what you think,” she said.
“I know.”
“I could hurt you.”
“You already do.”
She leaned down, lips brushing the corner of his mouth. She didn’t kiss. She pressed, hovered, waited. Then she bit, again, lower this time—his throat. Not to wound. Just to mark.
“Let me,” she whispered.
He didn’t ask what.
He just let her.
And the House—trembled. Not loudly. But beneath the bed, a nail came loose. The window fogged despite the morning heat. One of the books flapped open, pages caught in a draft that didn’t exist.
Luca curled his fingers into her spine, pulled her closer.
The House tried to look away.
But she wouldn’t let it.
⸻
