E L A R A

By the time twilight sinks into Seraphine, I’ve scrubbed salt from my skin twice and still feel the day clinging. The clinic, the lagoon, the weight of every stare that I can’t wash away. Now it’s not patients waiting for me, but the Valcrosse family. A dinner invitation delivered like a summons. Candlelight, pedigrees, and questions I can’t afford to answer honestly.

The dining hall feels like a gallery designed to swallow me whole. Candlelight trembles against oil portraits and men in naval coats, women with pearls tight around their throats. Their eyes follow me as though they already know I don’t belong.

Marina’s hand had guided me toward a seat halfway down the table, directly beneath the stern glare of Adrian’s grandfather. Too visible. Too strategic. My skin prickles, caught between the weight of old eyes on the walls and new eyes waiting to measure me in flesh.

Then a shadow glides in a soft silk, cool perfume, presence like the hush before a tide. Selene.

“Doctor Quinn,” she says warmly, but her gaze doesn’t linger on me. It sweeps the table, reading every subtle tilt of the chin, every quiet calculation, as if she’s tallying the unspoken rules no one bothered to explain. In one smooth motion she slips the place card from Marina’s fingers, smiling as though it were her idea all along.

“You’ll sit by me,” she murmurs, steering me toward the opposite end, away from the portraits that glare like judges. Her touch at my elbow is light but firm, impossible to refuse.

Relief floods me faster than the wine being poured. I manage a quiet, “Thank you,” which earns me the ghost of a smile which is gentle, knowing, almost conspiratorial.

Selene’s hand lingers against mine a fraction too long, and something inside me jolts. In New York, no one ever shielded me in boardrooms or operating theaters; I was the shield, the one who absorbed the blows. To have someone like this elegant, composed woman who quietly steps between me and the firing line feels foreign. Dangerous, even, because the relief tempts me to lean.

“They like to test newcomers,” Selene says softly, arranging the cards with quiet authority. “I don’t care for tests at dinner. Boring. And cruel.” She glances at me, eyes lit with some private mischief. “Stay close. They won’t dare with me beside you.”

For the first time since stepping into this room, my lungs feel less like they’re caged.

I’m still adjusting to Selene’s soft shield when a scrape of chair legs draws my attention toward the corner. He’s been there all along, half in shadow, sketchbook propped against one knee like it belongs to the furniture as much as he does.

Lucien.

He doesn’t greet me, doesn’t move closer, doesn’t even try to soften the fact that his gaze has been pinned to me since I walked in. His pencil moves in quick, restless strokes, the sound faint but insistent, like the tick of a clock. Only when Selene settles beside me does he lift his head.

His eyes are sharp enough to cut. Not cruel, not kind, just piercing, like he sees beneath skin to the bone.

“You sketch at dinner now?” Selene teases lightly, pouring wine into her glass.

“Better than speaking,” he murmurs, not looking away from me. He turns the page enough for me to see: not my face, not my figure but my hands. Every line, every vein, the tension of fingers curled around a glass I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping too tightly.

Heat prickles up my neck. “You’ve been watching me?” I ask, sharper than I mean to.

Lucien’s mouth curves the faintest degree. “Not all storms are weather.”

The words land heavy, more verdict than observation. My pulse trips over itself, because I know he’s not talking about the squall outside the windows or the gales that carve this island. He means me. He means Adrian. He means the charged silence that’s been following us since the cave.

Lucien’s pencil scratches again, a restless undercurrent I can’t ignore. When his gaze pins me, it’s not hunger or hostility, it’s a scalpel. He studies not just my hands but the tremor I’m fighting to hide, the stubborn set of my shoulders. He sketches truths no one dares to speak aloud, and I hate how naked it makes me feel.

Selene cuts in smoothly, her hand brushing mine under the table. “Ignore him, Doctor. He likes to be dramatic.”

But Lucien’s gaze doesn’t waver, and I can’t pretend it didn’t strike true.

The words won’t leave me. Not all storms are weather.

I lift my glass to my lips, but the wine tastes sharp, metallic, like nerves disguised as tannin. He’s not wrong. There’s a storm inside me that no barometer can measure like flashes of anger at Marina’s polished lies, sparks of heat whenever Adrian looks too close, a pulse that hasn’t steadied since the cave.

Selene’s hand anchors me under the table, but Lucien’s gaze makes it impossible to hide. It’s as if he’s already sketched every fracture line in me, waiting for the exact moment they’ll split.

I hate how much truth there is in his silence. And I hate it more that Adrian is across the table, unaware that his family sees through me in ways I can’t even explain to myself.

Dinner survives the main course without bloodshed, though I catch Marina watching me like a hawk with a ledger. When the conversation tilts toward investments, Selene nudges me gently toward the kitchen, murmuring something about “fresh air.” I take the escape gratefully.

The heat in the kitchen is different, it is rich with spices, and heavy with steam. Staff whirl around us, efficient and silent, until Adrian slides in behind me like he belongs here.

“You shouldn’t be back here,” he says, voice low, cutting through the clatter.

“You shouldn’t either,” I counter, reaching for a ladle. The sauce simmering on the stovetop smells too sweet, too sharp. “Who told them to put sugar in this?”

His brow lifts. “It’s salt.”

I dip the spoon, taste, then glare. “That’s sugar.”

Adrian leans in, close enough that the heat of the stove is nothing compared to him. He tastes from the ladle himself, lips brushing the metal where mine just were. “Salt,” he says again, smug.

My chest tightens. “Arrogant bastard,” I mutter, grabbing the tin on the counter. I flick a pinch of white powder into his direction. It bursts against his shirt, dusting his collar like snow.

For once, he doesn’t look angry. He laughs low, startled, and real. The sound shivers through me, unexpected and disarming.

I reach automatically to brush the flour from his chest, fingers skimming the hard plane beneath linen. Too close. Too intimate. When my hand rises toward his throat, dusting the last streak near the hollow there, the world seems to still.

The stove hisses, herbs crackle in the pan, and the air tastes like pepper and citrus. When Adrian leans in, the brush of his breath mixes with steam, and my fingers betray me—sliding along the column of his throat longer than necessary. His pulse thunders beneath my touch, and I know mine does the same.

His breath catches. Mine stops entirely. My fingers hover against the rapid beat of his pulse.

For one suspended heartbeat, it feels inevitable. Like the cave again. Like drowning, except in something hotter, hungrier.

Then I snatch my hand back, heart thundering. He takes a single step away as if burned, jaw tight, eyes unreadable.

We both know what just happened. Neither of us names it.

The clatter of pans and the hiss of steam swallow our silence until a server slips past with a tray of crystal goblets. I step aside, needing the distance, needing air. Adrian doesn’t follow. His eyes do.

By the time I return to the dining hall, the conversation has shifted into quiet clusters. Glasses raised, laughter too polished to be real. Marina hovers near the portraits, tablet glowing faintly in her hands, her coral smile sharpened to a blade.

A man in a tailored suit leans close to her, voice low, but the words carry anyway, slipping between candle flames and silver.

“Fire the doctor before the Lantern Tide.”

Marina’s lips curve, and she doesn’t look surprised.

The wine in my stomach turns to stone.

It doesn’t just feel like a threat to my job. It feels like a death sentence for everything I’ve barely started to build here.