Elena's POV

The moment the whispers began to ripple through the crowd, a quiet, insidious current beneath the surface of what had once been a perfectly ordinary afternoon, I felt it before I understood it. Something was wrong.

It wasn’t the volume of the murmurs that unsettled me, but the direction of them. Conversations were no longer scattered; they were converging. On me.

Through the shifting bodies and curious faces, I saw Stella moving toward me.

It wasn’t dramatic. She wasn’t ...