Eve’s POV
The studio was alive before a single word was spoken.
It wasn’t just noise, though there was plenty of that. It was heat. It was light. It was vibration. It was the way bodies packed into rows seemed to create their own weather, their own pulse, their own storm.
The air carried the scent of fresh paint and polished metal, layered with perfume, sweat, and the faint, sharp bite of electric equipment warming up. Above them, a grid of stage lights burned like artificial suns, bright enough to make even the calmest person feel exposed.
Eve sat with her spine straight, her hands folded neatly on her lap, her face composed in the way she had taught herself to master over years of kitchens and boardrooms, over years of being watched.
But under the calm, her senses were wide open.
T
