The Royal Bathhouse of Gazen Dazardiyak was a marvel of architectural engineering that Nyssa, despite her weeks of service, still found difficult to comprehend.

  In the obsidian mines where she had been born and raised, water was a commodity. It was measured in cups, rationed for drinking, and recycled for cooling the magma drills. A bath was a luxury afforded only to the Matriarchs once a cycle, and even then, it was a shallow basin of tepid, recycled gray water.

  But here?

  Nyssa sat submerged up to her chin in a pool that could have housed a family of Wyverns. The water was crystalline, heated by mana-coils beneath the marble floor to a temperature that melted the tension right out of her bones. Steam curled off the surface, thick and white, smelling of eucalyptus and crushed mint.

  This was the Common Bath, designated for high-ranking servants, palace administrators, and the elite guard. At this hour—deep in the night, while the King prepared for war—it was nearly empty.

  Nyssa brought her knees to her chest, hugging them underwater. Her long, pointed ears drooped slightly, the tips brushing the water's surface.

  She wasn't thinking about grain shipments. She wasn't thinking about the logistical nightmare of moving a legion of undead through a mountain pass. She wasn't thinking about the spreadsheet she had spent six hours perfecting earlier that day.

  For the first time in her life, numbers failed to soothe her.

  Instead, her mind was replaying a single, looped memory. A memory of a man leaning against a desk.

  Lord Renji.

  She closed her violet eyes, and the image burned bright against her eyelids. It wasn't his intelligence that haunted her tonight. It wasn't the way he commanded the room or the terrifying efficiency of his orders.

  It was the heat.

  When he had leaned over the map in Kaelthas’s office, he had invaded her personal space. For a Dark Elf, personal space was a survival instinct. To let someone close was to invite a dagger to the ribs. But when Renji had stepped close, Nyssa hadn’t felt fear.

  She had felt overwhelmed.

  It was an aura. A physical weight. He didn't smell like the other men in the palace—sweat, steel, and cheap ale. He smelled like ozone. Like a storm contained in human skin. He radiated a warmth that seeped into the air around him, a masculine gravity that pulled everything into his orbit.

  Nyssa shivered, sinking lower into the hot water until bubbles rose from her nose.

  He looked at me, she thought, her heart doing a traitorous little flutter in her chest. He saw my ears twitch. And he... he didn't mock me. He didn't dismiss me.

  She remembered the texture of his voice when he said her name. Nyssa. It was deep, resonant, vibrating through her chest cavity like a bass drum. It made her feel small, but also... chosen. Protected.

  In the mines, men were brutes. They were tools of labor, rough and transactional. Renji was different. He was a predator, yes—she had seen the way he looked at the map, like he wanted to devour the world—but he was a predator with control.

  He bit Lady Vexia’s ear, the rumor whispered in the back of her mind. The palace gossip network was faster than any spell. He claimed the Spider General right on the throne.

  Nyssa’s hand drifted up to touch her own ear, the tip sensitive and wet. Her face flushed a deep purple, darker than her skin.

  What would it feel like? she wondered, her thoughts spiraling into dangerous territory. To have that intensity focused solely on you? To have the King of Monsters look at you not as a calculator, but as...

  She shook her head violently, splashing water. Stop it, Nyssa. You are a scribe. A level 15 mob. He is Level 99. You are a footnote in his legend.

  But the warmth in her belly wouldn't fade. It wasn't about logic. It was biology. It was the primal instinct of a lower being recognizing the Alpha, and desperately, hopelessly, wanting to be noticed by him.

  Silence hung heavy in the bathhouse, punctuated only by the rhythmic dripping of condensation from the vaulted ceiling.

  Then, a sound broke the peace.

  It came from the other side of the high, mosaic-tiled wall that separated the Common Bath from the Private Suites—the exclusive domain of the Imperial Consorts.

  It was a wail. High, thin, and utterly miserable.

  Nyssa froze, her ears perking up, swiveling toward the wall. Sound carried strangely in the humid air, amplifying against the tiles.

  "No... no, take it away! I don't want the wine!"

  The voice was hysterical, choked with sobs. Nyssa recognized it instantly. It was the voice of wealth and entitlement, now broken into shards.

  Lady Seiprus Valdoria. The Princess of the Sapphire Coast.

  "My Lady, please," a servant's voice soothed, muffled but audible. "You must bathe. The water is infused with rose oil from your homeland."

  "I don't care about the oil!" Seiprus screamed, followed by the sound of splashing water, as if she were thrashing in the tub. "I don't care about the Sapphire Coast! It means nothing! I mean nothing!"

  Nyssa drifted silently through the water, drawn by curiosity, until she was pressing her ear against the damp tiles of the dividing wall.

  "He refused me," Seiprus sobbed. The raw pain in her voice was startling. "In the garden. I offered him the vintage... the one I saved for my wedding day. And he didn't even look at the cup. He looked through me like I was glass."

  "The King is busy, my Lady," the servant tried. "He has a war to plan—"

  "It wasn't business!" Seiprus wailed. "I saw his eyes! They were dead! Beautiful, cold, dead eyes! He looked at my body—the body wars have been fought over—and he felt nothing!"

  There was a sound of a wet fist hitting porcelain.

  "He isn't like the others," Seiprus whispered, her voice dropping to a trembling hiss. "The dukes, the princes back home... they looked at me like a prize. Like a trophy to be won and put on a shelf. They wanted my dowry. They wanted my title."

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  A pause, filled with ragged breathing.

  "But him? Renji?" Seiprus let out a broken laugh. "He doesn't want my title. He already owns it. He doesn't want my land. He took it. He doesn't need me for anything. He is complete."

  Nyssa held her breath.

  "That is why..." Seiprus sobbed. "That is why he is the only one. The only real man I have ever met. He doesn't want to use me. He just... exists above me. I don't want to be his Consort, Martha. I don't want to be a political piece."

  "My Lady?"

  "I want to be his wife," Seiprus cried, the word tearing out of her throat. "I want to cook his meals. I want to mend his cloak. I want him to look at me and see me, not a diplomatic treaty! But he won't! He walks past me like I'm a ghost! Why? Am I ugly? Is my soul lacking? Why won't he see me?"

  The sobbing resumed, a torrent of grief that echoed off the hard surfaces.

  Nyssa pulled back slightly, her heart pounding. She had expected the Consorts to be arrogant, scheming women. She hadn't expected this raw, bleeding vulnerability. Seiprus wasn't crying because she lost power. She was crying because she had fallen in love with a god who didn't know she existed.

  The crying slowly subsided into muffled whimpers as the servants presumably wrapped the princess in towels and led her away.

  Nyssa stayed by the wall, processing this. He ignored her. And because he ignored her, she worships him.

  Before Nyssa could move away, another sound drifted through the ventilation ducts from the next private suite over.

  This was different. It wasn't the hysterical wailing of Seiprus. It was a low, intense, almost angry weeping. The sound of a woman trying to hold herself together and failing.

  Lady Beitelina Frost-Marrow. The beauty of the North.

  "Stupid... stupid woman," a voice hissed, followed by the sound of fabric tearing. Beitelina was shredding something.

  "My Lady! That is the silk handkerchief! It is imported!"

  "Burn it!" Beitelina snarled. "Burn it all! It is trash! I am trash!"

  "My Lady, please calm down—"

  "Calm? You tell me to be calm?" Beitelina’s voice rose, trembling with a dark, intense passion. "I stood before him. I stood in his path. I offered to wipe the sweat from his brow. A gesture of submission! A gesture of care!"

  "The King is a private man—"

  "He caught my wrist," Beitelina interrupted, her voice dropping to a reverent, terrified whisper. "He caught my wrist, and for a second... I couldn't move. His grip... it was like iron. Like the mountain itself had grabbed me."

  Nyssa could hear the shiver in the woman's voice even through the wall.

  "My father was strong," Beitelina murmured. "My brothers were strong. But they were strong like bears. Wild. Brutal. Renji... his strength is absolute. He held me, and I knew... I knew in that second that if he wanted to, he could snap my wrist like a dry twig. He could unmake me."

  "My Lady, you are frightening me."

  "I looked at him," Beitelina continued, ignoring her servant. "And he smiled. That smile... it didn't reach his eyes. It was a mask. He was hiding the monster inside. He was protecting me from his true self."

  There was a splash, as if she had sunk back into the water.

  "He is the only one," Beitelina whispered, the sound echoing eerily. "The only one worthy to own me. I don't want freedom. I don't want my Duchy back. I want his mark on me. I want to belong to him, body and soul. I want him to look at me and claim what is his."

  A sob broke through her intense monologue.

  "But he let me go. He released my wrist and walked away. He didn't even deem me worthy of being conquered. Am I so beneath him? Is my devotion so transparent that it bores him?"

  "My Lady..."

  "I will make him see," Beitelina vowed, her voice wet with tears but hard as ice. "I will become perfect. I will become indispensable. I will make him look at me with that hunger I saw when he looked at the map. I will be his map. I will be his world. I will not let him ignore me forever."

  The sounds faded as Beitelina presumably submerged herself, drowning her sorrows and her obsession in the scented water.

  Nyssa backed away from the wall, her legs trembling in the water. She retreated to the center of the common bath, the ripples spreading out from her shaking form.

  She stared at her reflection in the water.

  It’s the same, Nyssa realized, a chill running down her spine despite the heat. It’s the same for all of us.

  Seiprus, the pampered princess. Beitelina, the northern beauty. And Nyssa, the scribe from the mines.

  Renji didn't try to woo them. He didn't recite poetry or offer gifts. He didn't play games.

  He simply was.

  He existed on a plane of existence so far above them that his indifference felt like a challenge. His silence felt like a judgment. He walked through a garden of the world's most beautiful women and didn't turn his head, and that very act shattered their egos and rebuilt them into shrines of devotion.

  He ignores us, Nyssa thought, tracing the line of her own jaw. He focuses on war, on numbers, on the horizon. And because he doesn't look at us... we can't stop looking at him.

  It was a terrifying power. A charisma born of absolute, unshakeable confidence. He didn't need their validation. And that made them desperate to give it to him.

  Who are you, Lord Renji? Nyssa wondered. Are you a man? A god? Or something else entirely?

  She stayed in the water until her skin pruned and the water began to cool, lost in the labyrinth of her own fascination.

  Getting out of the bath felt like leaving a womb. The air of the locker room was brisk. Nyssa dried herself mechanically, her movements slow and languid. She dressed in her spare uniform—a fresh pencil skirt, a clean blouse, a modest cloak to ward off the castle's nocturnal chill.

  She felt heavy. Her body was relaxed, but her mind was wired, buzzing with the echoes of the Consorts' confessions.

  She left the bathhouse, her heels clicking softly on the stone floor.

  The corridors of the Palace of Gazen Dazardiyak were different at night. The magical lights were dimmed to a low, amber hum. The shadows stretched long and distorted, creating monstrous shapes in the corners. The air was silent, save for the distant, rhythmic marching of the undead patrols on the ramparts outside.

  Nyssa walked aimlessly at first. She didn't want to go back to her small, lonely quarters in the servant's wing. She felt a restlessness, a pull she couldn't explain.

  She found herself walking deeper into the palace, past the administrative wing, past the barracks, toward the older, deeper sections of the citadel. This was the area built into the mountain itself, where the obsidian was raw and the air tasted of ancient earth.

  She turned a corner into a corridor she didn't recognize.

  It was a dead end.

  There were no windows here. The mana-lights flickered erratically, casting strobe-like shadows.

  At the end of the hall stood a single, massive door.

  It wasn't made of wood or gold or obsidian. It looked like it was forged from a slab of dull, gray metal that absorbed the light. There were no handles. No keyholes. Just a seamless, imposing barrier.

  And it was cold.

  Nyssa stopped ten paces away. Her breath hitched. A cloud of white mist escaped her lips.

  The temperature in the corridor had plummeted. Frost was creeping across the floor tiles, radiating outward from the base of the door. It wasn't natural ice. It was mana-ice, blue-tinged and pulsating with a faint, rhythmic light.

  This shouldn't be here, Nyssa thought. Kaelthas didn't put this on the palace schematics.

  She took a step closer, her boots crunching on the frost.

  Smoke—thick, heavy, and freezing—was curling out from the crack beneath the door. It didn't rise; it spilled onto the floor like dry ice, swirling around her ankles, caressing her legs with ghostly fingers.

  Nyssa shivered violently. But she didn't turn back.

  She felt a pull. A tug in her chest, right behind her sternum. It was the same feeling she got when Renji was near, but different. Darker. Heavier.

  It was a call.

  Come, the silence seemed to whisper. Come and see.

  Nyssa reached out a trembling hand. Her violet eyes were wide, reflecting the eerie blue light of the frost.

  She knew she shouldn't. She was a scribe. She had no combat skills. If this was a trap, or a monster, or a sealed ancient evil, she would be dead in a heartbeat.

  But the obsession that had taken root in the bathhouse, the burning curiosity about the King and his secrets, pushed her forward.

  What are you hiding, Lord Renji?

  Her fingertips brushed the freezing metal of the door.

  The frost flared. The smoke thickened, rising up to engulf her waist.

  And from the other side of the door, she heard a sound.

  It wasn't a roar. It wasn't a scream.

  It was a low, mechanical hum, followed by a sound that sounded distinctly like... static.

  Nyssa leaned her ear against the freezing metal, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, and listened.