When Elise and Damon return to the long-abandoned Crimson Hall, they tell themselves it’s just one night to face the past, to forgive, to move on. But as midnight nears, the ballroom stirs. Whispers rise from the cracks in the walls, carrying the memory of a love that never found rest.

Bound by desire and old guilt, they stumble upon the legend of the mistress in crimson a woman doomed to dance each New Year’s Eve, waiting for two hearts to finish what she began. The deeper Elise and Damon fall back into each other, the more the past tightens its grip, until longing and fear feel like the same breath.

Between candlelight and silence, their promise to begin again turns into something far older and far more dangerous. The mansion remembers what it lost.

Before the final stroke of midnight, will love free them or take them too?

***

As the clock counts down in this story, its forbidden passion and creeping terror echo the haunting heartbeat that binds the entire Fireworks and Shadows series.

On the final night of the year, the line between longing and fear blurs. Fireworks flare overhead while something restless moves beneath the surface lovers drawn together by desire, timing, and the darkness that lingers after the light fades. From haunted houses to towns that remember too much, Fireworks and Shadows unravels what happens when connection turns into invitation, and love insists on surviving what should be left behind. Each story burns briefly, beautifully, before midnight falls and nothing is the same again.

Gothic