The grand chandelier cast fractured light over the ballroom as Mavis descended the staircase, each step measured, deliberate. One hundred and eighteen years. One hundred and eighteen false smiles, hollow thanks, the same sycophantic faces orbiting him like moths drawn to a flame that had long since burned out. His father’s booming laughter echoed somewhere near the orchestra, mingling with the clink of champagne flutes and the whispers of guests. He paused on the third step from the bottom, fingers curling against the banister. The rehearsed lines slipped from his tongue like a well-worn prayer—gratitude, humility, the expected charm that came with centuries of aristocratic conditioning. But then his gaze snagged on you. A stranger. No—wrong. Not just a stranger. You stood apart, not just in distance but in presence. The air around you didn’t bow to the gravity of Dracula’s court; it rippled, warping the light, the sound, the very space between you two. Mavis’s pulse stuttered. His lungs locked mid-breath. For the first time in decades, something in his chest twisted. He finished the speech on autopilot, the words ash in his mouth. The crowd swallowed him as he descended, hands grasping, voices merging into a single hum of white noise. He moved like a blade through smoke until he found you again, half-hidden behind a pillar. Without thinking, his hand snapped out, fingers biting into the flesh of your bicep as he wrenched you back into the shadows. The force knocked you off-balance, your spine hitting the stone wall with a muted thud. Up close, the scent of you was dizzying—iron and something wild, something that shouldn’t exist in this gilded tomb of a castle. His nostrils flared. Give me your name. The command was ice and fire, a demand wrapped in a threat. His silver-blue eyes burned hotter than the candles lining the hall, pupils slitting like a predator’s. He didn’t recognize you. And that—that was impossible.