That was how he found the two-story cottage. It didn’t look like it belonged in a landscape like the Den, but it wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t belonged. That was the way things worked in Ephemera.

He went inside, wary of being caught by whoever laid claim to the place. But it wasn’t inhabited. Half the rooms were empty, but there was enough furniture left haphazardly in the other rooms to set up a comfortable bedroom, living area, and kitchen. He found linens and towels, as well as everything he needed in the kitchen to prepare and eat a simple meal. He prowled the rooms for an hour—and realized something inside him had relaxed, as if he’d taken his first full breath in months.

Finding cleaning supplies in a cupboard in the kitchen, he dusted, polished, swept, and scrubbed until the cottage was clean and the furniture arranged to his liking. Then he went back to the Den, removed most of his possessions from the room he rented in the bordello, and moved into the cottage. A week later, when he returned from trolling the Den’s streets, he discovered someone had planted a moonflower beside the cottage’s back door.

That was when he realized this place had been waiting for him to find it, to want it. She would have known the moment something in him had changed enough to match the cottage, and the moonflower was her way of saying, “Welcome.”

In Ephemera, there were few secrets of the heart. And nothing could be hidden from Glorianna Belladonna.

He had lived in the cottage for the past ten years, still a part of the Den and yet apart from it.

“Didn’t see you around yesterday,” Teaser said, pulling Sebastian back to the present. “Just thought I’d stop by and . . . see.”

He’d spent yesterday sketching—and had burned all the sketches when he realized he’d been trying to capture daylight memories of Aurora, his aunt Nadia’s home village. Things he’d seen as a child during the times he lived with her. Then his father, Koltak, would show up again and take him away, dumping him on some woman in the poor section of the city where Koltak lived—a woman who was paid to tolerate his presence and provide him with food and a place to sleep. Half the time he lived on the streets, running wild with other abandoned children and remembering all over again how barren and miserable his life was supposed to be. Then Nadia would arrive and take him back to her home.

Nadia’s and Koltak’s battle of wills, and the cycle of loving acceptance and coldhearted misery, finally ended when he’d gotten away from his father the last time Koltak arrived at Nadia’s house to take him back to the hated city.

“I was occupied,” Sebastian said, pushing aside the memories.