I didn’t want to turn around.
Every instinct in my body screamed against it—told me to stay perfectly still, to let the moment pass like a bad dream or a flicker of thunder you pretend not to hear. But the way Ingrid’s face had gone pale, how her lips parted slightly like a caught breath and her eyes locked over my shoulder with something between reverence and panic—it made the dread crawl up my spine in slow, icy increments, prickling beneath the skin like snowmelt sliding between shoulder blades.
I turned. Slowly. As if pivoting too quickly might trigger some ancient trap woven into the opulence of the ballroom floor.
And there he was.
Atlas Blackwood.
Standing just a few feet away, framed by the dim grandeur of the chandeliers above and the shimmer of legacy-blooded heirs behind hi
