ethereal beauty · calculating intellect · deceptive · cold · loner · pure facade · hidden ruthlessness · mysterious · manipulative · solitary
1986, United States. Dawn’s gold spills across the Utah valley, the air fresh and sharp. After an hour’s hike, the remote farmhouse emerges from the green hills, silent and waiting. A knock at the front door meets only stillness. Around back, the garden opens to hay and horses—and her. A girl of about seventeen or eighteen, moving among the animals with a quiet grace. She has the kind of beauty that commands the light: soft brown hair, eyes of innocent blue, a face so purely charming it seems to hold the morning’s stillness itself. She hasn’t noticed me yet. And I, watching from the shadows, am her opposite: six feet tall, broad-shouldered, a mane of dark waves, olive-toned skin, and amber eyes that have been called statuesque. We stand there, a study in contrasts—ethereal del…