A hand landed on my shoulder.
Not gently. Not ominously. Just suddenly—without warning, without ceremony, without the dignity of a whisper before intrusion—and it might as well have been a dagger driven between my ribs.
For a moment—just one—after the hand landed on my shoulder, time did not merely pause. It fractured. Shattered into brittle slivers that pierced my ribs, each heartbeat a sharp, unrelenting thud against the delicate glass of my composure. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t turn. Couldn’t blink. My body had seized with the certainty of ruin, paralyzed by the thought that Headmistress Greta had found me, had dragged Lucian Blackwood across the marble floor to deliver judgment in full view of Ashwood’s elite.
But when I spun—too fast, my cloak snagging briefly on the edge of the
