The door to the hotel room opened and the men forgot how to breathe.

Sera stood framed by the flat white daylight that never shifted, a slice of shadow cutting her clean from the room behind.

Mae had laced her into black: a gothic day dress trimmed like a uniform, brass buttons marching down a corseted bodice, and a high collar set close to her throat. The skirt swept the floor in disciplined waves. A narrow choker, nothing more than a black ribbon and a small brass filigree, sat against her skin like a signature.

The world didn’t get louder when she stepped out. It got clearer. The brass caught the light; everything else chose not to.

Luci rose first, his tail lifting in a slow arc, and his head pressing briefly to Sera’s hip before he circled to heel at her left.

Zubair’s shoulders came down a fraction, the way a man eases when something familiar returns from a place he couldn’t reach it.

Elias blinked, not to clear his eyes, but to set his face back into the order he trusted.

Alexei went still in a way that meant he was thinking six moves ahead but couldn’t figure out the seventh.

Lachlan—who talked instead of breathing when he didn’t know what to do with his hands—only put his palms on the doorframe and grinned without humor.

"You look like the reason people stand up when someone walks in," he said.

"I like standing," Sera said, amused.

Mae glided out in her wake, parasol over one shoulder though the sun never moved from directly overhead.

The curl at her mouth didn’t change, but her eyes did—bright and pleased, and behind that, measuring.

"Turn around," Mae murmured, holding a massive black hat in the hand that didn’t hold the parasol. "They need to see the full look."

Sera did.

The skirt spun around her like a Disney princess; the brass buttons kissed the light, reminding everyone that under the princess was someone who dealt with death.

The men watched the motion the way soldiers watch the first drift of snow before a whiteout: small, ordinary, warning of something that never stays small.

"She looks different," Elias said softly.

"Because she is," Mae returned. Then she rapped a knuckle — lightly — against the row of buttons. "All brass, gold, or silver. Nothing cold, nothing iron. Remember that part. It’s important."

Sera lifted a hand to the choker, thumb finding the tiny filigree at the center.

Her skin was a beautiful golden color, like she had just spent the past month tanning herself without a care in the world. But underneath, she could feel the undertone humming — that faint, cool note that had nothing to do with blood temperature and everything to do with blood memory.

"Explain it again," Sera said, not looking at Mae as she made her request. Instead, her eyes never left Elias’. "About the... glamour."

That way, even if she forgot, Elias never would.

She trusted him to catch her if she fell... or forgot.

Mae’s smile brightened the way lamps do when you turn the wick just enough.

"It isn’t paint that you have to reapply everyday, darling. It isn’t a mask you put on and take off. Glamour is what your blood tells the world to see. If your blood remembers itself, the world remembers with it. If your blood is frightened, the world forgets you until you are small enough not to hurt it."

"And mine?" Sera asked, curious, not defensive.

Mae’s gaze softened at the edges. "Yours remembers more than it should for someone so young. That’s good and dangerous in equal measure."

"Can I control it?"

"You can learn to choose," Mae said. "Control is a human word for a human problem. We prefer... consent."

Sera turned that over.

Consent.

Choice.

The dress moved differently when she breathed a little deeper, like it had been designed for a woman who intended to take up space in a room and had forgotten the trick until now.

Like it had been designed for a creature accepting that she wasn’t human.

She exhaled and the fabric softened against her ribs, then firmed itself again as if the corset knew what she needed before she did.

"Lovely," Mae approved. "Now. A few rules before the Sheriff ruins my morning with his."

"There’s no morning," Lachlan muttered, but he straightened anyway.

Mae ignored him with the skill of someone who had been ignoring charming men longer than men had been charming.

She slid a gloved finger under Sera’s cuff and eased the seam a hair’s breadth, the way you adjust a blade in its sheath.

"You don’t smile at him," she said, tone honeyed and absolute. "Not unless you mean it. You don’t give him names he didn’t ask for. And even if he does ask for a name, tell him one that isn’t the truth and isn’t a lie. If he offers you coffee, you refuse. If he asks you to eat, you say you already have. Don’t rest your hands on his table. Don’t lean, don’t reach, don’t fidget."

Sera tilted her head. "Because it would be rude?"

"Because he counts," Mae said, soft as a prayer. "Everything. Fingers. Bullets. Men. How much a chair gives when a person sits. He lives by weights and measures and oaths, and men like that do not like what they cannot add up."

Zubair’s mouth tugged. "He’s law."

"He’s what keeps the law from remembering it has teeth," Mae said. "And you mustn’t make him want to show you his."

Sera slid her gaze toward the window at the end of the hall.

The town outside wore its same fixed noon: rails shining, dust unmoving, a dog across the street asleep exactly in the sliver of shadow cast by a wagon that had never shifted since they arrived.

The light here wasn’t gentle or harsh. It was indifferent. Like an illusion that never went away.

"You’re afraid of him," Sera said lightly.

"Everyone who survives here is afraid of him," Mae returned, perfectly unbothered by the confession. "And you would be wise to be afraid of being interesting to him."

Alexei’s eyebrow lifted the barest fraction. "Then why breakfast?"

Mae’s laugh was small and bright, like a spoon chiming against porcelain. "Because he already knows you’re awake. He always knows when something new breathes under his sky. He is offering you a courteous exit, not a welcome."

"That’s awfully polite for an eviction," Lachlan said.

"It’s the only kind of politeness that matters," Mae said. "The kind that leaves both parties alive."

Elias’ gaze flicked once to Sera, then to Mae. "If this is hospitality, you throw strange parties."

"This town throws only two kinds," Mae said pleasantly. "Feasts and funerals. Today, I am doing my best to make yours the first."