Chapter 13
The house has no real windows.
It took me three weeks to notice. Three weeks of walking golden corridors, sleeping in a too-soft bed, eating meals that appear on silver trays when I don’t venture to the dining hall.
Three weeks of existing in Croesus’s domain before I realize: there’s no natural light anywhere.
No sunrise. No sunset. I keep watching, waiting for it to change, but it doesn’t.
It’s just the eternal golden glow of the house itself, pulsing like a heartbeat through the walls.
The only way I can tell time is with my phone, which charges but has no service.
Seems a cell tower is too much to ask for in another dimension.
Time moves strangely here. I know this because I’ve been counting. Six hours of sleep feels like ten. Even my Sunday calls with Luna don’t feel like they are actually on a weekly schedule. The clock on my nightstand says it’s Tuesday, and my body insists it’s been a month since I arrived.
The house is alive or something close to it.
Aware in the way a sleeping animal is aware, not conscious, exactly, but responsive.
The corridors shift when I’m not looking.
I think rooms appear randomly, but I’m not entirely sure, and I’m not willing to face Croesus to ask when he hasn’t summoned me since my last assignment.
I’m trying not to think about Croesus’ vault I’d found when I first arrived. About souls drifting like fireflies in the dark. About Barnes’ light joining them one day, one more point in a constellation of the damned. Except, this one I helped add.
I’m failing.
So I walk. Through corridors that curve when they should be straight. The house seems to tolerate me. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind: tolerate. Like I’m a guest it hasn’t decided whether to digest or display.
I turn a corner and nearly walk into someone.
“Careful.” The man catches my elbow, steadies me. “The house gets testy when people run into each other. Thinks it’s a design flaw.”
I step back, look up. He’s tall, maybe six feet, with a lean build that comes from years of activity rather than gym work.
Dark hair, gray at the temples, worn a little longer than fashionable.
Hazel eyes that reflect all this gold beautifully.
He’s wearing simple clothes: dark pants, a gray button-down with the sleeves rolled up, no shoes, with his socks matching his shirt.
There’s something old-fashioned about him, like he learned to dress in a different era and never quite updated.
“Sorry,” I say. “Still learning the layout.”
“You’ll never learn it.” His voice is dry, almost amused. “The house changes. By the time you memorize one path, it’ll give you three new ones. Best just to accept you’re perpetually lost.” He tilts his head, and those hazel eyes narrow slightly. “You’re new. The sin eater.”
“Raven.” I don’t offer my hand. Something about the way he’s looking at me makes me wary. Not threatening, exactly, just...assessing. “And you are?”
“Nathaniel. Most people call me Nat.” He doesn’t offer his hand either. “I work here. Have for a while.”
“Doing what?”
“This and that. Verification, mostly. Making sure contracts are accurate. Checking that people mean what they say.” His mouth quirks. “Truth-seeing. It’s a gift. Or a curse. Depending on the day.”
Oh. Oh.
I take an involuntary step back, and he notices. Of course he notices. Probably sees the spike of panic in whatever aura I’m giving off.
“Relax,” he says. “I’m not going to announce your secrets to the house. That’s not how it works.”
“How does it work?”
“I see lies. Deceptions. Hidden truths. Things people are trying to bury.” He crosses his arms and leans against the wall. The golden surface seems to ripple slightly under his weight, accommodating him. “But I don’t broadcast them. I just...know. It’s involuntary. Like breathing.”
“And you can’t lie yourself?”
His eyebrows rise. “And you just know that...”
“Lucky guess.” I mirror his posture, crossing my arms, trying to look more confident than I feel. I knew a truth seeker once. Another angelic “gift.” “So what do you see when you look at me?”
“Nothing.”
I blink. “Nothing?”
“Nothing hidden.” He sounds almost surprised himself.
“No deception. No buried secrets trying to claw their way out. Just... you. Raw and honest and here because you don’t have a choice.
” He pushes off the wall. “It’s refreshing, actually.
Most people in this house are about ninety percent lies held together with desperation and gold. ”
“I have secrets.” The words come out as if I’m trying to convince him.
“Everyone has secrets. But you’re not hiding them. You’re just... carrying them.” He studies me for another moment, then seems to decide. “Come on. I’ll show you the library. You look like you could use somewhere quiet to think.”
“How do you know I want—”
“Because everyone who comes here wants somewhere that isn’t here.” He starts walking, and after a moment, I follow. “And the library is the closest thing this place has to a sanctuary. Even Croesus doesn’t disturb people there. Much.”
We walk in silence for a while. The corridors shift around us; left becomes right, straight becomes curved, but Nat navigates without hesitation. Like he’s memorized not the paths themselves but the logic of how they change.
“How long have you been here?” I ask finally.
“Hundred years. Give or take.” He says it as if it’s nothing. Like a century of servitude is just a footnote in his biography.
“A hundred years.” I try to wrap my head around it. “That’s...that’s longer than most people live.”
“Yeah, well. The contract was clear. Service until the debt is paid.” He glances back at me. “I knew what I was signing. Unlike most people who walk through Croesus’s doors, I actually read the fine print.”
“And you still signed.”
“Had my reasons.” His voice goes flat. “They seemed important at the time.”
I want to ask what those reasons were. Want to know what could be worth a century of your life? But the set of his shoulders tells me the subject is closed, and I won’t push. Not yet.
We reach a set of double doors carved with images I can’t quite make out. They shift and change like the house itself, showing different scenes depending on how you look at them. Nat pushes them open without ceremony.
The library beyond is vast. I’d glimpsed it during my short tour with Auric, but now, inside, it’s incredible.
Shelves stretch up into darkness that the golden light can’t penetrate, filled with books and scrolls and tablets in any way the written word can take form. The air smells of old paper and ritual magic. The ozone-adjacent scent I get when I strip sins.
There are reading nooks scattered throughout, deep chairs, cushioned benches, tables with lamps that glow without flame. A few other people occupy them, hunched over texts, scribbling notes, lost in research. They don’t look up as we enter.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“Yeah. That’s the usual reaction.” Nat walks deeper into the space, and I follow like a kid in a candy store.
“Croesus has been collecting for three thousand years. Books, scrolls, tablets, hard drives. If it contains knowledge and if he can gain it, it ends up here.” He gestures to the section on our right.
“That’s the mythology section. Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, pretty much every pantheon humans have ever worshipped.
Over there”--he points left– “is practical magic. Spells, rituals, wards, curses. If you want to learn how to do something supernatural, it’s probably in there somewhere. ”
“And that?” I nod toward a section in the back, cordoned off with golden chains.
“Forbidden knowledge. Dangerous texts. Things Croesus doesn’t want people reading without supervision.” Nat’s expression darkens. “Don’t go near that section unless you want to answer some very uncomfortable questions about why you’re interested.”
Good to know. “Auric told me it was open to use, but it still feels like I shouldn’t be here?”
“Technically, you need Croesus’s permission.
But,“ He gives me a knowing look. “If you’re discreet about it, no one’s going to stop you.
Most of the people who work here spend half their time in the library, anyway.
It’s the one place we can pretend we’re doing something useful instead of just.. .existing.”
There’s bitterness in his voice. A century’s worth of it, crystallized into a single sentence.
“You hate it here,” I say quietly.
“I tolerate it here. There’s a difference.” He moves toward one of the reading nooks and settles into a chair. “Hate requires energy I stopped having about fifty years ago. Now I just... endure. Count down the days until my contract expires. Try not to think too hard about what I’ve become.”
I sit in the chair across from him. The leather is soft, worn smooth by countless other readers. “How much time do you have left?”
“Eight years. Four months. Seventeen days.” He says it without hesitation. “Not that I’m counting.”
“What happens when the contract ends?”
“I leave. Walk out the front door and never look back.” He stares at the shelves in front of us, but I don’t think he’s really seeing them. “Go back to the world and figure out who I am when I’m not defined by the deal I made in 1924.”
1924. Jesus. He’s been here since the twenties. Since before the Great Depression, before World War II, before everything that’s shaped the modern world. He was here when my mother was born. When I was born.
“Do you regret it?” I ask. “The deal?”