Rhett:
I wake right as the sun breaks when I hear a knock at Isadora's door. It is a slow, deliberate tap, not the kind meant for polite company.
I’m on my feet before Isadora even stirs. Instinct. My body moves the way a wolf does when it hears the first twig break in a dark wood—quiet, ready.
I ease around her bed, every sense sharpened. The faint scent of singed air still lingers from her nightmare, a heat that shouldn’t belong in this cold stone room. My hand finds the door latch, fingers flexing.
Another knock, sharper.
I pull it open.
Viktor stands there, pale as a winter moon and twice as smug. Black hair glints midnight blue under the corridor torches. Those crimson eyes slide over my shoulder toward the bed like he’s cataloguing every shadow she casts.
“What the hell do you
