She turned toward the hallway and slipped out of the hall into the quieter passage beyond it. The noise of the event dropped behind her. The service corridor branched left toward the powder room, narrow and dim after the brightness of the grand hall.
She turned the corner and nearly walked straight into him.
In the narrow service corridor, with a massive stack of chairs balanced on one shoulder, stood the same man whose single touch had now turned her usually reliable composure into tissue paper. He'd rounded the corner at the exact wrong moment, or the exact right one, and now they occupied the same narrow space, too close to retreat gracefully.
He stopped. She stopped.
The air between them went tight.
This wasn't the crowded hall with people around. This was close. And private. His chest fell and rose as though he was trying not to wake a sleeping beast, and in his eyes was the same intensity that made her forget how to move.
His grip on the chairs tightened. She watched his knuckles go white against the wood.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.
The corridor felt smaller than it had ten seconds ago, the walls pressing in, the air thick with something she couldn't name but could feel humming between them like a live current.
Her pulse kicked up. The warmth in her chest spread, pooling low in her stomach, insistent and undeniable. She should step back. Should say something polite and professional and move past him.
But her feet wouldn't move.
He exhaled—slow and deliberate. Then he shifted the chairs slightly, angling his body to step past her.
The movement brought him closer. Close enough that she felt the heat radiating off him like he was burning from the inside out, and caught his scent when she breathed him in—earth, rain and—
The ache behind her eyes sharpened into a spike. Her vision blurred in an instant.
And then everything shifted.
A woman. Dark-haired. Beautiful. Screaming — not in fear, in fury. A courtyard Iphe had never seen, torchlight flickering against stone walls, the air thick with smoke and something older and darker underneath it. Wolves circled around her, some howling into the dark, others snarling with eyes gleaming with bloodlust. A man in expensive clothes stepped forward, face cold, hand raised. The woman's chin lifted. Her eyes never dropped. Her mouth spat words Iphe couldn't hear.
Blood hit the stones.
And the image vanished.
The corridor came back in pieces. The narrow walls. The fallen chairs. The sound of the event somewhere far behind her, muffled and distant, like noise heard through water. Her hand flew to her nose. Warm. Wet. She pulled her fingers away and saw red.
He dropped the chairs. The crash echoed through the corridor, loud enough to draw attention if anyone had been nearby. But he didn't seem to care. He was in front of her in one stride, hands hovering just beside her arms like he wanted to steady her but didn't trust himself to touch.
"Are you okay?" His voice came out rough.
Iphe pressed the back of her hand to her nose, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to breathe, trying to make sense of what she'd just seen. Her pulse hammered. The woman's scream still echoed somewhere in the back of her mind, fading but not gone.
"I'm fine," she managed. Her voice sounded thin even to her own ears.
He didn't move. Didn't step back. His eyes moved over her face—her bleeding nose, her flushed cheeks, her unsteady breathing—lingering on each detail like he was cataloging damage he couldn't fix.
"You're bleeding."
"Yes, I am. And my head's splitting."
His expression shifted. His brows drew together, mouth tightening at the corners. His hand moved to his pocket, pulled out a clean handkerchief, and before she could process what he was doing, he reached for her face.
Then he froze. His fingers stopped an inch from her skin.