Fairholme’s voice came across the ballroom like thunder.

“Take your hands off her.

Now.”

The room went dead silent.

It was the kind of silence that falls when a great many people realize, at the same instant, that the ground has shifted and they do not yet know how.

Every person in that ballroom had spent the evening arranging themselves in careful relation to Lysander Fairholme’s power — angling to be noticed, to be favored, to be near.