The library of the Vane Mansion was a sprawling labyrinth of mahogany and dust, a place where five centuries of Kaelen's secrets were bound in vellum and leather. The air here was colder than the rest of the house, smelling of ancient paper, dried ink, and the sharp, ozone tang of the rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows. I had come here to find a moment of clinical silence, to distance myself from the suffocating, possessive heat that Kaelen radiated like a dying star.
I was standing by the rolling ladder, my fingers tracing the spine of a sixteenth-century anatomical text, when the heavy oak doors clicked shut.
It wasn't the sound of a door closing. It was the sound of a trap engaging.
I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. The temperature in the room dropped instantly, a thin layer of frost creeping over the glass of the windowpanes. This wasn't Kaelen's emerald fire. This was the scent of a Roman winter—cold, aristocratic, and desperate.
