Elena's POV
"Don't move."
Damian's voice was low, almost lazy, but his hand found my wrist before I'd even registered I was stepping backward. His fingers were warm. Too warm, considering how cold everything else in that lobby had suddenly become.
The five strangers hadn't moved either. They stood in their loose half-circle by the front desk, coats too heavy for the weather, faces arranged into the kind of stillness that wasn't calm so much as coiled. Their eyes held that same impossible silver I'd seen once in a dream I'd been trying to forget for two days.
"Damian." One of them said his name like a title.
"You're on private property," Damian said. He hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to. Something underneath it had changed, a current running low and constant, and I felt it in
