Amelia's POV...
I reached the top of the stairs. One step. Two. Three. My arm still throbbed where he'd grabbed me—five distinct fingerprints already darkening into bruises. My palm still stung from the slap, a sharp, tingling heat that wouldn't fade.
I shook it off. Focused on the door ahead. On the devil waiting behind it.
The hallway was quiet now. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm, when everything is wet and broken and waiting.
My hand reached for the handle.
The door opened before I touched it.
They stood there. Both of them. Framed in the doorway like a painting I wanted to burn.
Lucian first—pale, almost gray, the color of someone who'd lost too much blood and hadn't gotten it back. Bandages wrapped around his shoulder, stark white against his skin. A small spot of pink had seeped through, fresh. But his eyes—those green eyes, the same ones I saw in the mirror every morning—were sharp. Alert. Watching.
