"I dare you to kill him, Trevor. I dare you." Kaelric's voice sliced through the mahogany-paneled office like a blade pressed against the principal's throat—low, lethal, vibrating with barely restrained violence that seemed to seep from his very pores.
The temperature in the room plummeted so suddenly that Trevor's breath began to mist, and the expensive crystal paperweight on his desk developed a thin skin of frost.
Aria shifted nervously in her velvet-cushioned chair, the rich burgundy fabric suddenly feeling like a cage.
Her perfectly manicured fingers twisted in her silk dress as she watched her brother's predatory stillness. "How about he lives in the dungeons forever then?"
Her suggestion emerged as barely more than a mouse's squeak in a lion's den, the words trembling on her painted lips.
The silence that followed was deafening. Even the grandfather clock in the corner seemed to tick more quietly, as if afraid to draw attention to itself.
