Damon
The hairpin burned a hole in the corner of my desk.
It sat in the open, harmless in appearance—silver, slender, shaped like a crescent moon—but it may as well have been a dagger.
It wasn’t just a trinket. It was Natalie’s. I remembered the curve of it in her hair the night she died. And now I’d seen it again, gleaming in Elena’s braid the night we met.
I didn’t want to believe it was hers at first. But denial never served Kings.
I turned the pin over again, slowly, letting the weight of memory settle like sediment in my chest. I hadn’t touched that grief in years. And yet…
Why would Elena wear this?
And worse—how did she get it?
“Send her in,” I said, not looking up.
Ronan opened the door, and the servant girl shuffled in behind him. She was young—maybe sixteen—with trem
