The storm broke just after midnight.
It wasn’t the rain that woke Amelia. It was the silence—unnatural, sharp, like the breath held just before a scream. Her pulse stuttered as her eyes flew open, the shadows in the room stretched long and thin by the flickering lantern in the corner.
Her body ached. The wound at her side throbbed in time with her heartbeat, but it was the weight on her chest—the heaviness of everything unspoken—that made it hard to breathe.
Across the room, Lucian stood by the boarded-up window, his silhouette rigid against the lightning-bleached night. He hadn’t slept. She could see it in the tight set of his shoulders, the way his hand hovered near his weapon like a second instinct.
Dominic sat slumped in the armchair, head tilted back, mouth set in a grim line even
