The ride back to the mansion was quiet, but it was not calm.
Elara sat by the window, her fingers resting lightly against the cool glass as the city lights stretched and blurred outside. Gold and shadow slipped past in silence, but her mind refused to rest. Every moment from the evening replayed itself with sharp clarity. The whispers. The smiles that looked polite but felt sharp. The questions that were never just questions.
She had answered carefully. She had kept her voice steady. She had not broken under the weight of their attention.
Yet something inside her had shifted.
It was no longer about a single event or one night of survival. It was something deeper. Something wider. A system. A game. And she had stepped into it without fully understanding the rules.
Beside her, Dante rem
