ADRIAN’S POV
The way she said my name sounds so familiar. Like she had known me for years, slow and unmistakable, like a door swinging open into a room.
I had heard that exact cadence before. But the way the syllables fell. The particular rhythm of my own name in someone else’s mouth.
I looked at Selene Arden across the firelight and for the first time, let myself look properly beyond the face. But it gave me nothing, and I understood now with sudden clarity that the face was never going to.
But at everything underneath the face, the exact angle she held her shoulders. The way her hands stayed perfectly steady when everything else in the room felt unsteady.
“Serena used to fold her hands exactly like that,” I said quietly, “when she was holding something back.”
Selene’s hands did n
