|Serena's POV|
The second Gryphon takes my hand, the world falls away.
There's no orchestra. No chandeliers. No crowd murmuring in admiration or envy or suspicion. Just his palm, warm and grounding, closing around mine like it always has—except not like this. Not in the open. Not where someone could see and know. But maybe that's what makes the air charge like this. Like it's caught between sin and salvation.
We walk to the center of the ballroom as if it's ours to claim, and maybe it is. Maybe it always has been, in the dark rooms, behind locked doors, in whispered gasps between sheets neither of us were supposed to be in. Maybe we were always going to end up here—step-siblings with tangled souls and a thousand reasons not to touch, still reaching anyway.
His hand finds my waist. My f
