The chamber was suffocating with silence.
The torn piece of emerald satin lay between Damon and Elias like a curse, glowing in the torchlight. My fingers trembled as I held Cael and Lina closer, their little faces buried in my shoulder. My heart was still racing from the attack, but it wasn’t the intruders who haunted me now. It was the fabric. That soft, unmistakable fabric.
Talia’s gown.
“You know what this means,” I whispered, my voice shaking but sharp.
Damon’s eyes flicked to mine, storm-dark and uncertain. “Serena—”
“No,” I cut him off, the anger surging up like fire in my veins. “Don’t tell me I’m imagining it. Don’t tell me it’s coincidence. She did this.”
Elias’s jaw tightened as he dropped the fabric on the table. “It’s hard to deny. That cloth didn’t just appear out of now
