The room had once been a ballroom.
You could see it in the bones—the ceiling still bore the faded scars of painted cherubs long since lost to smoke and time. Cracks ran through the gold leaf like veins under old skin. Moonlight filtered through the tall windows in fractured beams, silver and cold, pooling on the worn parquet floor that once pulsed with life.
Now, it echoed with ghosts.
Rafe stood at the center, hands clasped behind his back, unmoving.
The chandeliers above him hung like cages, their crystal teeth catching the moonlight and throwing it back in broken fragments. The walls, once lined with laughter and strings of champagne-soaked ivy, now reflected only silence. Every mirror captured his figure—still, shadowed, expressionless—and multiplied it into infinity.
But it wasn’
