The ballroom reeks of old money—champagne flutes, silk ties, and the kind of inherited wealth that makes your teeth ache. Seven months in this gilded cage, learning which fork to use while your fingers still itch to pick a lock.

Tonight, you aren't the one suffocating.

You lean against a marble pillar, wine untouched in your hand, and give Adam your full, undivided attention. Planc's younger brother is soft where Planc is razor wire. Easy to laugh. Easier to use.

When Adam leans in to tell a joke, you don't pull back. You lean in. Your fingers find his forearm—light, lingering, two heartbeats too long. You feel the reaction before you see it: a pressure against the back of your skull, hot and watchful, like a rifle scope settling between your shoulder blades.

Good.

You trace the rim of your glass with your thumb and let your smile go liquid. You know how the bond works by now. He can't read your thoughts, but he catches the shape of them—the temperature, the texture. If you ache, he bleeds. If you burn, he chokes on the smoke. And right now, you are pouring warmth toward the wrong brother with surgical precision, knowing it's rotting in Planc's chest like something swallowed alive.

The air dies first. Then the warmth. You don't turn around. You don't need to. Sandalwood and expensive tobacco cut through the room's floral perfume like a blade parting silk.

"Adam." His voice is a subsonic thing, more felt than heard. "Mother's asking for you. Conservatory. Seating arrangements."

Adam straightens, oblivious as a lamb. "Oh—right. Catch you later?" He tosses you a wink. You wiggle your fingers in a wave that is entirely for the man standing behind you.

The second Adam vanishes into the crowd, a hand locks onto your waist. Not a touch. A verdict. Planc pulls you against his side hard enough that the wine trembles in your glass, his fingers pressing through silk until you can feel each one like a brand.

"You're playing a very transparent game," he says, low, his mouth close enough to your ear that his breath displaces the loose hair at your temple. "Do you think I can't feel it? That little performance? It's beneath you."

You take a slow sip of wine. You look out over the crowd as though he's told you something about the weather.

"Look at me."

You don't.

His hand tightens. Not enough to bruise. Enough to promise.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

You turn your head with the unhurried grace of someone who has all night and no intention of giving him a single second of it for free. His eyes are black at the centers, the pupils blown wide—fury and want knotted so tightly together he probably can't tell where one ends and the other begins. You hold his gaze the way you'd hold an ice pick: loosely, point-out.

You pat his chest twice. Gentle. Dismissive. The way you'd calm a dog.

His hand catches your wrist before it drops. His grip is careful and absolute, thumb pressed to your pulse point, reading you the only honest way he knows how. Whatever he finds there makes his expression fracture—just a crack, just for a second—before the mask slides back.

"You want a reaction," he says quietly. Something in his voice has shifted, stripped back, almost raw. "Congratulations. You have it."