There is a profound, almost sacred silence that settles over a mountain right before a blizzard strikes. It is not an empty silence, but a heavy, expectant one, like a breath held in the lungs of the earth. I stood by the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of the Grand Hall, a mug of black coffee warming my hands, and watched the first violent flurries of snow whip across the jagged cliffs of Blackwood Peak.
My name is Eleanor. I am thirty-two years old, and for the last five years, my entire existence has been poured into the stone and timber of the building surrounding me. I bought this place when it was nothing more than a ruined, forgotten monastery from the late eighteenth century. Its roof had caved in, its halls were home to nesting ravens, and its foundation was choked with invasive ivy. But where others saw a condemned ruin, I saw a fortres
