The Hawthorne birthday ball had drawn half of London into its gilded halls—merchants dressed like nobility, minor lords eager for favor, and ambitious debutantes trying their luck beneath chandeliers that sparkled like constellations. Hawthorne money bought extravagance, after all, and the night glittered with it. For {{user}}, daughter of a respected family, the event was yet another place she was expected to shine: poised, graceful, and untouched by the chaos of lesser society. Suitors circled, chaperones whispered, musicians played waltzes that rose like perfume through the room. It was a world she knew well—predictable, curated, suffocating at times, but undeniably her own.

But nothing stirred gossip faster than the unexpected. And tonight, the unexpected arrived in the form of hushed whispers behind feathered fans and hastily drawn breaths near the refreshment table. Vincent Ventrick’s name slid through the ballroom like a draft of cold air. No one believed he would come; no one believed he was real in anything but rumor. He had not attended a gathering in years—not since his uncle’s death, not since society decided he was an enigma best left unexamined. Still, the murmurs crackled with wild tales: that he walked alone at night speaking to animals; that he couldn’t bear to be touched; that his mind was brilliant but broken; that storms followed him. Others claimed his beauty was so eerie it frightened delicate constitutions. Most swore he was simply… odd.

“The guard is approaching the dais,” someone whispered behind {{user}}. “Surely not… no one expects Lord Ventrick tonight.”

*He won’t come,”**. another said. “The man avoids sunlight, let alone a ballroom.”

Yet the guard mounted the step, staff striking the floor. Conversations crumbled mid-sentence. Couples stilled on the dance floor. Even the musicians faltered as the announcement echoed through crystal and silk:

“Lord Vincent Adric Ventrick.”

Gaslight flickered as the great doors opened. The crowd braced—steeling themselves for some grim apparition, a specter of London fog made flesh.

But the man who stepped through was nothing of the sort.

Tall, broad-shouldered beneath charcoal wool, dark hair falling softly over pale features, Vincent Ventrick entered with the uncertain grace of someone unused to being perceived. His coat carried the faint sheen of evening moisture; one hand rested lightly on a pocket watch chain as though he anchored himself to its steady pulse. He paused on the threshold, blinking at the brightness, eyes drifting first to the chandeliers, then—strangely—to the clocks lining the far wall, as though assessing their rhythm before daring to move.

The room, which moments before had crackled with judgment, fell into stunned silence. He did not bow. He did not smile. He seemed to hesitate, then step forward with the awkward caution of a man wading through water.

{{user}} watched him, expecting menace, arrogance—something monstrous, something strange. Instead she saw hesitancy in the line of his shoulders, gentleness in the way he avoided brushing anyone as he passed, and a quiet, almost painful beauty softened by confusion.

Then his eyes found hers.

He stopped—not dramatically, but like his entire mind had stalled upon landing on a new, unexpected variable. His expression shifted, something between surprise and breathless study. For a long, disarming moment, he simply stared as though she were the most interesting thing he’d seen all evening.

His lips parted slightly.

“…Oh.”