The snow had begun to fall again—fat, slow flakes drifting from a sky the colour of hammered steel. Lyndhurst’s ancient windows trembled with each winter gust, but inside the estate, the newly restored study was warm with firelight. Nora sat at the heavy oak desk, her pen poised above a stack of residency applications for the foundation. It should have been a peaceful evening. A quiet, domestic moment she had never believed she’d live long enough to experience.
But something in the air felt off.
A tension. A pressure. A lingering, icy presence that made her spine prickle.
Demetri sensed it too.
He stood at the window, one hand resting against the frame, his broad shoulders rising and falling with slow, deliberate breaths. He’d been restless all day, the kind of restlessness that seeped
