Phei moved down the corridor like a blade of black frost given form—silent, unstoppable, the violet strip-lights carving long, predatory shadows that seemed to crawl ahead of him, hungry.
Eira drifted just behind his left shoulder, her small crystalline body humming with barely contained tension, wings half-folded, razor edges glinting in the dim light.
The moment the lackeys saw him, the entire line—twenty-two boys in dark shirts, a dozen girls in shimmering dresses—bristled like cornered animals. They knew. David bleeding out on marble inside. Emily already half-broken, drugged, and about to be raped by three legacy princes who thought money and names made them untouchable.
They could smell the violence coming off Phei in waves.
They couldn't let him pass. Orders were orders. Paige's word. The princes' word. Their lives.
