Three steps behind the Price family, the Heavenchild contingent stood in their own shadowed cluster, silent as a gathering of wolves who had just realized the deer they were hunting had grown claws — and fangs.
Elliot Heavenchild occupied the fore, silver-haired and immaculate, his public face an impenetrable mask — flat enough to reveal nothing, yet somehow conveying that any soul foolish enough to attempt reading it would live to regret the presumption.
Marcus stood at his right shoulder, jaw clenched so tightly the muscle along his temple twitched with every measured breath. Half-hidden between two towering marble columns, eyes wide and hands clasped tightly before them, lingered Paige and Brielle.
And drifting behind the twins, once more clad in her deliberately unremarkable maid's uniform — soft, full-figured, and utterly invisible to anyone who did not know the ancient terror she truly embodied — walked Anahita.
Marcus saw what Anderson saw.
