Dravenna Ashford.
Even the name sounded like a warning carved into dragon bone. Dravenna—from the old tongue for dragon. A label that had trailed her through decades of quiet conquests, through the years when she'd made Paradise itself flinch and look away, through whatever black abyss had finally dragged her down to play puppet in this gilded cage.
Dean of Ashford Elite Academy. Puppet.
Phei had walked in expecting a monster.
What he got was something infinitely worse.
She was soft. Delicate, almost, in that obscene way only genuinely lethal things can afford to be.
She looked like the kind of woman who could erase your entire family tree with one bored phone call and still make it home in time for afternoon tea and a light murder mystery.
And then her eyes found him.
Phei took an involuntary step back.
Fuck.
