The ballroom still trembled from her voice.
Annabelle's heels clicked away with finality, her words lingering like incense over a funeral pyre. Around her, nobles whispered behind polished goblets and mask-thin expressions. The Ashfords had been reduced to the cautionary tale of the age, and their disgrace crackled in the air like old magic, raw and inescapable.
But on the far end of the room—half-shadowed beneath one of the floating crystal chandeliers—stood a man who said nothing, who did not blink or join the chorus of shocked gasps and speculative murmurs.
Robert Voidhowl.
Tall. Composed. Dressed in midnight and silence. A wineglass in his hand untouched, his eyes not on Parker, not on Dominic—but on her.
On his daughter.
She felt him before she saw him. The weight of his gaze was not oppressive—it never had been—but it held the certainty of gravity, the quiet reminder that someone knew the girl behind the storm.
She turned. Their eyes met.
He said nothing.
Just… nodded.
