I didn’t need to look to know. I felt her. The way a soldier feels the bullet before it hits.
She moved through the crowd with the kind of grace money couldn’t buy. The kind that came from knowing no one could touch you without bleeding first. People parted for her. Smiled at her. Pretended they hadn’t heard the whispers. Pretended the crown she wore wasn’t made of someone else’s broken bones.
Selene didn’t come toward us. Not yet. She didn’t have to. She just let the weight of her presence creep under the skin of the room.
Slow.
Patient.
And when her eyes finally slid over me?—
I felt it.
Not hatred.
Not anger.
Pity.
The worst kind.
The kind that says:
You don’t even know you’ve already lost.
I stayed kneeling. Breathing shallowly. Sweat slipping down the line of my spine. The collar pulling tighter.
And Wolfe?—
Wolfe finally moved.
One hand dropping lightly?—
casually—
to the back of my neck.
Not shoving. Not guiding. Just there. A single point of pressure. A reminder:
Stay.
Kneel.
Obey.
I shuddered once. Silent. Invisible.
Alive. Because surviving here wasn’t about being strong. It was about being small enough to slip through the cracks.
Small enough to be forgotten by everyone?—
except the man who refused to let me go.
And maybe I didn’t want him to. Because worship was safer than freedom. And kneeling was the only kind of power I still knew how to hold.
14
CLOE
