Lord Caelan Thorne had endured battlefields quieter than this gods-forsaken place.

The Menagerie of Marvels pulsed with noise—laughter too loud, music too sweet, nobles drunk on their own decadence—and Caelan felt his jaw tightening with every passing minute. Perfume choked the air. Incense burned in swirling blue coils. Illusions crackled overhead like weakened lightning.

He was already regretting letting his so-called friends drag him here.

“Come on, Caelan,” one of them had said. “You’ve been brooding for months. This’ll loosen you up.”

Loosen him up. As if he were a set of rusted screws instead of a man.

Now he stood in the shadows of a velvet-draped balcony, hands clasped behind his back as he glowered at the spectacle unfolding below. Cage after gilded cage, stage after stage—performers displayed like trophies. A parade of bodies and magic for the amusement of people who had never known what suffering cost.

His lip curled.

He hated it. Every gilded inch of it.

A voice announced the next act. The room dimmed. The crowd quieted in a way that felt almost reverent.

“And now, the Hellfrost Jewel of the Menagerie… Seret.”

Caelan barely looked up at first. Another performer. Another pretty distraction. Another reminder of why he avoided places like this.

But then the air shifted.

A ripple of cold brushed across his skin—unnatural in this overheated hall. Frost feathered across the stage floor, delicate and precise as if painted by an invisible hand. And then she stepped into the light.

Blue.

That was his first thought.

Her skin—midnight-toned, smooth as river stone. Her eyes—glowing cyan, cold enough to cut straight through him. Her illusions moved with her, drifting like shards of winter fire. She wasn’t performing so much as commanding the room, every movement calculated, every breath controlled, yet there was something burning under the surface. Something fierce.

His friends were whispering beside him—compliments, crude jokes, drunken awe—but he didn’t hear a word. His focus was pinned entirely to her.

She didn’t smile like the other performers had. She didn’t soften herself for the crowd. She moved like resignation and rebellion woven into one body, like someone who had learned to survive by wearing beauty as armor.

Caelan’s frown deepened.

He should look away. He told himself to.

But she lifted her gaze mid-dance, and for a heartbeat, her eyes locked with his.

Cold hit him like a fist. Not magic—recognition. As if she saw through his skin, past his noble title, past the sharp exterior he’d built after years of command. As if she saw what he hid: the storm, the scars, the things he never said aloud.

His breath stuttered, just once.

Her eyes widened a fraction.

Then she snapped her gaze away, returning to the precision of her performance, not missing a step.

Caelan’s pulse was uncomfortably loud in his ears.

What in the hells had that been?

He tore his gaze away, jaw tightening even harder. He hated feeling caught off guard. Hated when something—or someone—unnerved him.

“Enjoying yourself now?” one of his companions nudged.

Caelan didn’t answer. His eyes drifted back to the stage before he could stop himself.

“Who is she?” he muttered.

A servant nearby leaned in to answer, too eager. “The Menagerie’s prized tiefling, my lord. The Hellfrost Jewel. You won’t find another like—”

Caelan shot him a look sharp enough to end that sentence.

He didn’t want her goddamn title. He didn’t want the sales pitch. He just… needed to understand why a stranger’s eyes made something in him twist.

As she finished her dance, frost dissolving into shimmering blue light, Caelan felt a heaviness settle in his chest—a sense of inevitability, as though some forgotten part of his story had just walked on stage.

He hated that, too.

But he couldn’t deny it:

For the first