The sound behind me is small, barely more than a brush of leaves against bark, but every sense in my body snaps to attention. My pulse slams upward. My breath seizes.
I turn fast, boots scraping across the gravel.
A figure steps away from the trees near the far end of the courtyard. For a heartbeat it looks like nothing more than shadow. Then it moves again, slow and deliberate, peeling itself out of the darkness as though the night had been holding him.
Adrian.
His eyes gleam under the courtyard lights. Wild. Bright. Wrong. His smile is stretched too wide and too calm for the violence he has already committed tonight.
“Well,” he says, voice light, almost casual. “There he is. My heroic brother.”
My fists tighten.
He walks closer with an easy sway, hands loose at his sides, as if he
