The mansion felt different the morning after Vanessa’s midnight gathering.
It wasn’t the furniture, or the polished marble, or the golden chandeliers that caught the light the same way they always had. It was the air. Thick, weighted, charged with a kind of silence Sierra couldn’t name. She woke with it pressing against her chest, as if the house itself had absorbed Vanessa’s whispered warning from the night before and was now holding it inside its walls.
Damien’s bed was warm, his body heavy and protective beside her, but even his presence couldn’t ease the chill that had settled in her bones. She lay there listening to his even breathing, watching the soft morning light creep through the curtains, and wondered how long they could keep doing this. How long until Vanessa’s game became a
