Her hands were trembling. She couldn't make them stop.
She lifted them slowly. Turned them over. Palms up. Palms down.
Nothing.
They looked the same as always. Small. Rough from years of work. The cuts from the broken whiskey bottle had scabbed over, thin lines of dried blood cracking when she flexed her fingers.
But they had glowed. She hadn't imagined it.
Cora pressed her palms together, squeezing hard, like she could force whatever had happened to happen again. Her heart was still racing, her breath still shallow. The memory of that heat,the way it had cracked open inside her chest and flooded outward.
The lamp had exploded. She'd done that. Somehow.
How?
She didn't have answers. Only questions that spiraled into more questions, each one more terrifying than the last.
Werewolves. He'd said werewolves. Like it was normal. Like he was telling her the sky was blue.
And now her hands were glowing.
What did that make her?
She tried again.
Cora focused on her palms, willing something to happen. She thought about the moment before the lamp shattered ,the fear, the memory of Mr. Abernathy's hand on her throat, the way reality had tilted sideways.
Nothing.
Her hands stayed dark. Ordinary.
She slammed them against the floor, frustration burning through her. Glass bit into her palm. She hissed, yanking her hand back. Fresh blood welled from a new cut, black in the dim light.
Stupid.
She pressed the wound against her shirt, applying pressure. The sting grounded her, pulled her out of the spiral threatening to drag her under. Pain she understood. Pain was familiar.
Magic or whatever this was wasn't.
A memory surfaced.
She was eight years old. St. Jude's. One of the older boys had cornered her in the stairwell, shoving her against the railing, his face twisted with cruelty. She remembered the fear. The helplessness. The way her chest had burned, just like tonight.
And then he'd flown backward.
No one had touched him. He'd just moved. Hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He'd looked at her with wide, terrified eyes, and then he'd run.
She'd told herself she imagined it. For years, she'd buried that memory, convinced herself it was a trick of perception. Adrenaline. Fear making her see things that weren't there.
But what if it wasn't?
Cora's head snapped up. Her body tensed, pressing harder against the wall, making herself small. The door swung open, and light flooded in from the hallway, too bright after the darkness.
The same woman from before.
She carried no tray this time. Just a broom and a dustpan. Her gaze swept the room, taking in the broken glass, the shattered lamp, Cora huddled on the floor. No reaction. No surprise.
She stepped inside and began to clean.
The glass scraped against the marble as she swept. She didn't look at Cora. Didn't acknowledge her existence.
Cora watched her move.
Every motion flowed into the next like water. And she was fast she wasn't showing of, but Cora could see it in the small things. The way her hand darted out to catch a rolling shard before it could escape. The way she crossed the room in fewer steps than should have been possible.
Not human.
The word settled in Cora's mind with a weight that made her stomach turn.
"What's your name?"
Cora's voice came out rough. Scratchy from screaming earlier.
The woman didn't pause. Didn't look up. Just kept sweeping.
"Please." Cora tried again. "I just want to know your name."
Nothing.
"Can you at least tell me where I am? What this place is?"
The woman straightened. For one moment, Cora thought she might answer. Their eyes met—the woman's gaze flat and empty, Cora's desperate and searching.
Then the woman turned away. She walked to the door, dustpan and broom in hand, and stepped into the hallway.
"Wait—"
The door closed.
The lock clicked.
Cora let her head fall back against the wall. Her eyes burned, but the tears still wouldn't come. She was too tired. Too empty.
She looked down at her hands again.
"What am I?" she whispered to the empty room.
The room didn't answer.
The night crawled by.
Cora didn't move from her spot on the floor. She drifted in and out of something that wasn't quite sleep. Every sound made her flinch. Every shadow made her heart stutter.
She kept seeing Damien's face. The way he'd looked at her when the lamp exploded. And something else underneath. Something she couldn't name.
He'd shielded her. When the glass flew, he'd moved to protect her. She didn't understand that. Didn't understand any of this.
Tomorrow. We'll continue this conversation.
His words echoed in her head.
Dawn came slowly. Gray light crept through the windows, turning the room from black to charcoal to the pale blue of early morning. Cora watched it happen, her body stiff and aching from hours on the hard floor.
She needed to move. Needed to think.
She pushed herself up. Her legs protested, pins and needles flooding her calves. She stumbled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, avoided looking at her reflection.
The food from yesterday was still on the table. Untouched. Her stomach cramped at the sight of it.
She couldn't afford to be weak. Whatever was coming, she needed strength to face it.
She lifted the cover off the plate.
Across the estate, in a study lined with books he'd never read, Damien sat in darkness.
The curtains were drawn against the rising sun. A glass of whiskey sat untouched on the desk in front of him. His bandaged hand throbbed,a dull ache he barely noticed.
He couldn't stop thinking about her.
The way she'd looked at him. Terrified but defiant. The way she'd told him to kill her if he was going to, her voice steady even as her body shook. The way her scent had wrapped around him, he couldn't think straight.
And then
Her hands.
He'd seen many things in his hundred and twenty-two years. Witches. Demons. Creatures that didn't have names in any human language. He thought he'd seen it all.
He hadn't seen anything like that.
The power that had exploded out of her was raw. Uncontrolled. Ancient in a way that made his wolf pace restlessly beneath his skin. She didn't know what she was. That much was obvious. But he was starting to suspect.
The witches had been hunted to near extinction. His father had made sure of that. The Culling had wiped out entire bloodlines, erased centuries of magical lineage in a single, brutal campaign.
But not all of them.
Some had hidden. Some had survived.
And somehow, impossibly, his mate was one of them.
Damien lifted the whiskey. Drained it in one swallow. The burn did nothing to quiet his thoughts.
This changed everything.