The ballroom went utterly silent, and into that silence Lucius stood so fast that his chair struck the table, and Seraphine’s hand slipped from his arm, and Lenette stared up at the descending woman as though at a total stranger, and Thea slowly lowered her phone — though the livestream, unnoticed, went on recording.

“That can’t be her,” Lucius whispered.

But it was.

Isadora reached the bottom of the staircase, and one by one, all across the room, the most powerful people on the Gulf Coast rose to their feet, and the applause rolled toward her like a tide.

It was the strangest sensation, walking down those stairs.

For eight years she had made herself smaller in every room she entered, had trained her whole body to occupy as little space as possible, to defer, to soften, to disappear.