Lucian:
The ballroom drowns itself in velvet and violins, a sound too polished, too sweet for a place as damned as Ashwyck. I stand in the shadows at the back of the hall, mask half hiding my face, drink forgotten in my hand. I don’t dance. I don’t smile. I don’t entertain the curious stares of the sycophants in their gilded masks.
I watch her.
Isadora.
My lost little raven.
My curse. My tether. My undoing. She glides across the floor in crimson, the gown Kai chose for her hugging her body like sin sculpted in silk. The others take their turns with her—Rhett’s possessive growl, Silas’s ghostlike grace, Kai’s playful glimmer—but my eyes never leave her. I don’t need to touch her to feel her. Her pulse thrums in my veins like it belongs to me.
And then—something colder cuts through th
