The chamber looked like a palace had been vandalized by very wealthy, very horny raccoons. Silk hung from a chandelier like abandoned flags; crushed velvet puddled around gilt legs as if the furniture had been weeping; trays of half-eaten fruit sweated in the candlelight. Incense braided itself through the air in lazy loops, and the air tasted faintly of citrus, spilled absinthe, and something musky that could have been perfume or fear. Empty bottles clustered like shipwrecks across a low table, their necks stained with the memory of better decisions. Candles guttered in sconces, leaving gold filigree to do its work in half-light and shadow.
The butler navigated it with the same economy of motion the room lacked. Short, immaculately tailored, pointed beard sharply combed—he looked at once like a man who had never forgotten his place and a man who had learned every single place in the room by heart. He stepped around limp limbs, sidestepped a discarded feather boa, and threaded his way through the aftermath of last night's indulgence as if it were a daily chore rather than a national scandal in miniature.
At the window he drew back the heavy drapes with a practiced flourish. Sunlight, rude and attention-seeking, slashed into the chamber and made the dust motes look like a court of tiny, glittering traitors.
A moan answered the light, deep and proprietary, like a mountain reluctantly shifting. Somewhere in the bed a human heap stirred and the mountain of bodies shifted like an island no one wanted to claim.
The butler turned, expression carefully neutral. He had worn this expression through a thousand mornings. "Your Majesty," he said, voice buttered with a friction edge, "it is time for the Imperial Parade."
A pillow sailed across the ruined sanctum and smacked against his cheek with the soft diplomacy of a love-tap grenade. He dodged it without so much as a twitch in his trousers. The move had the grace of someone who had been struck with pillows for years and kept excellent posture about it.
"Get lost, Henry!" came the shout, muffled by silk and regret.
He allowed a tiny, faint lift of an eyebrow. "My name is Edward, Your Highness." He recited it gently, like a litany. "And you told me very adamantly to make sure you were up for the parade. I believe you put it—'Make sure I am up and ready for the Meat Parade or I'll have you castrated but not before I eat your ass.'" He did not flinch at the memory. He merely pronounced it as one might read the weather.
Kaelani did, at last, unmake the bed of bodies. She emerged from the nest like a spoiled deity with sticky skin: hair tangled, skin gleaming with sweat and oil, jewels wherever there had been room. She was a scandal in human form and very good at it. The maids—two of them tacky with pearl pins and one with a face that had learned to say "Madam" in four different tones depending on the danger level—fell into a practiced bustle. One offered a broom; another tugged at a robe. A third made a noise that might have been a prayer.
Her bare foot found a warm, slimy puddle. She glared down at it like it had failed her personally. "OK—WHO THE FUCK THREW UP?" she demanded, voice both regal and wobbly.
Edward crossed the distance in a few efficient strides and took her elbow as if the monarchy were a delicate teacup that must be shepherded to the sink. "Your bath is ready, Your Eminence," he said. "I will, as usual, see to the removal of your detritus."
She straightened, and for a breath the room seemed to stand on tiptoe. Made of the same stubborn substance as the kingdom's debts, Kaelani's posture could turn a man's throat to sand. Her skin caught the light—sticky with last night's pleasures—and her mouth tasted like the interior of a tavern; for one absurd, proud second she frowned as she tried to place the flavor. What the hell did she have in her mouth last night? Then her face softened into a smirk, the sort of grin that had toppled dukes and delayed treaties for the fun of it. Oh, right, she thought, with unaffected satisfaction. Everything.
She wobbled toward the bathroom, supported by the maids like a regally clumsy ship being guided to a dock. They busied themselves; one wrapped a towel around her shoulders, another dabbed at the sticky places, another murmured orders like a minor god.
Edward clapped once, crisp as a command. The pile of bodies in the bed, which had been operating under the assumed immunity of last night's chaos, made noises and began to disentangle themselves. A foot emerged, then two. A man with a lampshade still in his hair attempted a bow and then remembered the direction of his social standing and collapsed out of habit.
"You have ten minutes to be out of the east wing and off the premises," Edward said, tone sharpened into the shape of authority. "Through the back door. No shenanigans on the way through there are officers here to escort any unruly trespassors."
One of the bodies—a woman with kohl smeared halfway across her face—snorted, then dissolved into giggles. "Back door," she wheezed, elbowing her companion. Another picked it up, a ripple of drunken laughter echoing through the tangled heap.
Edward's jaw ticked, but he did not so much as glance their way. He was a man who had heard every innuendo humanity had ever invented and refused to give any of them rent in his skull.
______________________________________________________________________
The bathhouse was steaming like a cauldron. Rose-tinted marble, beige tiles, cream-colored mosaics: a palette so offensively delicate that Kaelani wanted to vomit on it out of spite. Everything was polished, perfumed, and so pale it looked like the room itself had never been outside for a single second in its life. Hideous, she thought, wrinkling her nose. It wasn't her townhouse, after all.
This one belonged to Emily Drachenberg, Princess of Aschenmark—at least on paper. The king's daughter, yes, but born of a concubine low enough on the pecking order to be practically invisible. Which suited Emily just fine. She wasn't built for politics, or command, or even ambition. She floated. She smiled. She existed in the slipstream of her sprawling, vicious family, content to sip tea and knit socks while her half-brothers gutted one another for titles.
Emily was already soaking in a private tub, her pale hair pinned, her skin glowing in the candlelight, surrounded by a flock of attentive maids. She looked every inch the pampered daughter of a king, though she wielded her rank with about as much edge as a butter knife.
When Kaelani stumbled in—hair crusted, body slick with fluids she chose to identify as "possibly oil"—the maids gasped in perfect chorus. Emily did not. She simply raised her head, as calm as if a drunk goddess hadn't just lurched into her pastel sanctuary.
"Kaelani," she said with her usual soft cordiality. "You are always so late. I can't believe you actually woke up this time."
Kaelani snorted, tugging the towel tighter around her. "Honestly, I think my heart stopped twice last night. Might have to cut back on mixing drugs."
One of the maids dropped a sponge into the bath with a wet plop. Emily's smile stayed fixed, though the sigh slipped out before she could stop it. She had long since grown used to Kaelani's mouth, but habitually tried—futilely—to polish her friend's sharp edges.
"Well," Emily said, leaning back against the edge of the tub, "when you are ready to be a lady, do let me know. I'll give you the lessons."
Kaelani barked a laugh that made one of the older maids drop her eyes to the tiles. Emily was always like this—sweet, prim, patient—and completely oblivious to how much of a lost cause her project was. But Kaelani wasn't just some wild monarch. There was a reason her tongue was sharper than a blade, her vices bottomless, her refusal to bow absolute. A reason no one in this gilded nightmare could guess.
She wasn't from here.
Kaelani Amara Adebayo, last queen of Nubarra, had once been a dying woman on another Earth. Cancer had stripped her body down to bone and grief, and then, in the way those ridiculous Korean webtoons always promised, she'd woken up screaming inside a newborn's lungs. Reincarnated. Isakai'd. Dumped into a palace cradle, destined to be the tragic heir of a crumbling empire.
But Kaelani hadn't come back as some lily-pale villainess with a boring harem of blond suitors. She hadn't opened her new eyes to see endless white men fighting for her hand while she wasted her days sipping tea. No—thank all the ancestors—she had been reborn in rich, dark skin. She had melanin, the same deep hue she had loved in her first life, the same face cancer had stolen from her too early.
And here, in this gilded, racist-free nightmare? Nobody gave a damn about skin. The world ranked people by wealth, power, lineage, bloodlines, and steel. The usual poisons, but stripped of that one toxin she'd never escaped back on Earth. Here, her darkness wasn't a burden. Here, she could breathe.
That didn't mean there weren't other problems. Assassins. Empires. Drunk monarchs trying to fuck away the trauma of their teen years.
At least when she was sober, she had to worry.
Which is why she tried very, very hard to never be sober.
Emily lifted her arm with practiced grace as the maids poured warm water down her pale skin. Her voice was bright, almost girlish, though her attendants had long since learned that she could chatter for hours without requiring a reply.
"Today Nicolae and Alaric return from the war," she said, eyes shining as though she were announcing the spring festival. "I'm excited. Are you not excited, Kaelani? We haven't seen them in years."
Kaelani, slouched on the edge of her own tub, accepted a glass of water from one of her maids and burped loudly into the steam. The sound echoed in the pink-and-beige chamber like a gunshot in a temple.
"I'm trying to be excited," she muttered, gulping the rest of the drink, "but I think my liver signed a surrender treaty around dawn. Last night I wasn't just drinking. I was mixing, matching, sampling—" She waved vaguely at her head, then her crotch. "Honestly, I should get a check-up. Yeast infections lurk around corners like assassins in this place."
Emily gasped softly, though not out of surprise—Kaelani's vulgarities had long ago worn grooves in her ears. "Kaelani..." she began in her familiar scolding tone, but the queen cut across her with a wicked grin.
"The only thing I actually miss, Emily, is novelty. I've slept with everyone in this city. Everyone. I'm getting bored, so bored I've started targeting old bachelors and—gods help me—their mistresses. It's tragic."
One of the younger maids coughed so hard she almost dropped the sponge. Emily sighed, the kind of sigh that suggested she'd been rehearsing it since childhood. One day Kaelani would settle down. One day she would have heirs, and Emily—ever the patient optimist—would be the best aunt in the world. But today was not that day. Today Kaelani was impossible.
Smiling to herself, Emily sank deeper into the bath as the maids scrubbed her legs and feet with lavender soap. She imagined the future, a gentler one, where Kaelani married into her family and became her sister in truth. What a dream that would be.
Meanwhile, Kaelani had leaned back in her tub and was directing her own maids with the imperious flair of a tyrant in silk. "No, deeper. Scrub there. And don't be shy—bodily fluids don't remove themselves."
The maids' faces tightened with the sort of polite disdain only lifelong servants could perfect. Kaelani noticed. She always noticed. They thought her crass, spoiled, shameless. And perhaps she was all those things—but she also knew jealousy when she smelled it.
So, out of sheer pettiness, she made their lives a living hell.
______________________________________________________________________
The streets of Schwarzreich were swollen with spectacle.
Buildings of dark stone and wrought iron leaned toward one another like gossiping matrons, their windows trimmed with lace and shutters painted in dour, respectable colors. Balconies sagged beneath the weight of banners: blood-red, gold-threaded, stamped with the dragon crest of Aschenmark. The air carried the sharp tang of coal smoke from the foundries, cut through with the sweet, greasy perfume of sausages roasting over open braziers for the crowd.
Boots clattered on cobbles. Horses, plumed and perfumed, snorted steam into the crisp morning air. Children perched on shoulders waved wooden dragon toys, while hawkers shouted over one another about candied nuts, tin whistles, and cheap trinkets stamped with the royal sigil. The whole city seemed a machine built to cheer, its gears oiled by hunger for pageantry.
The people were a tapestry all their own. Pale-haired burghers in stiff wool coats elbowed for space beside olive-skinned merchants with keffiyeh-wrapped heads. Here and there, darker faces gleamed among the throng — Kaelani's people. Nubarran men and women, skin dark as polished teak, curls cropped or braided with bright beads, fabrics dyed in searing tropical colors that made the muted tones of Schwarzreich look like funeral wear. They stood out like embers in the snow, the beauty of them undeniable, though mutters followed them through the crowd — mutters Kaelani knew too well.
For all the empire's pomp, Nubarra was still a wound and a prize: rich, ravaged, and reeling from unrest. Its exiled queen was a bauble and a hostage in one, paraded as both luxury and warning.
From her carriage, Kaelani squinted at the carnival of banners and faces, the music of brass horns blaring, the rhythm of drums rattling through her wine-sodden skull. The colors felt too bright, the noise too sharp, the whole city reeking of perfume and pig fat. Her temples throbbed, but she smirked anyway.
Kaelani had been sculpted into respectability against her will.
The maids had pinned her curls into a high, regal bun, dark coils tamed and crowned with a ridiculous feathered hat that looked like it might sprout legs and march off on its own. Her dress was a confection of white silk, trimmed with blue and black bows, dripping lace at every edge. Jewels winked on her fingers, catching the sun as though mocking the staid banners overhead. Small flowers had been stabbed into her bun, their pastel cheer clashing wildly with the smirk she wore.
She looked like a Victorian anomaly. A Nubarran queen trussed up in Germanic fashion, her skin gleaming against pale cloth, her eyes sharp and searching. She wore the disguise like a second skin—not to blend in, but to weaponize. And beneath the feathers and lace, she was already planning which virgins she'd drag into bed by nightfall.
Beside her sat Emily, draped in modest dove-gray, her hair coiled simply, her hands folded in her lap. She was the picture of propriety, her face as calm and unassuming as the stonework of the city itself.
"Boring," Kaelani had told her earlier, yawning through the fitting. "You need flare, woman. Flare."
But Emily had only smiled, her modesty unshaken. She didn't want flare. She wanted peace, quiet, and respect. Which made her, in Kaelani's opinion, the dullest creature alive.
Yet somehow it worked between them.
They were opposites: a storm and a still pond. A drunken comet and the wallflower who held her hair back when she vomited. Emily wasn't sunshine—Kaelani would never grant her that. She was more like the faint glow of a fluorescent mushroom in some dreary cave. Sad. Muted. But strangely content to exist exactly that way.
And maybe that was why Kaelani tolerated her. Or maybe it was just easier to call her a friend than admit she needed someone who wouldn't bolt when she lit the curtains on fire.
The carriage rocked to a stop just shy of the crowd, and the footman swung the door open with polished grace. He smiled at Kaelani as he extended his hand. She squinted at him, mind scratching at memory, then nodded with regal acknowledgement. She couldn't recall which night she'd taken him into her bed, but she knew that smile. He was a notch, another tally on the invisible bedpost carved into her headboard.
Emily slipped her hand into Kaelani's, and the two guards flanking them immediately pressed forward, parting the crowd with the weight of steel and authority. Cheers rose as confetti rained down, music swelling into a cacophony of brass and drums. The city glowed with the kind of hope only parades could conjure—the cheap, bright kind that smelled like roasted sausages and fresh horse shit.
But Kaelani wasn't there for hope. Or honor. Or even the bloody parade.
She was shopping.
"Oh look—it's Damus!" Emily gasped, pointing into the crowd. "We went to school together! He's so handsome now!" Her cheeks flushed pink as she waved her handkerchief, preparing to toss it like a girl in a romance play.
Kaelani's gaze tracked the man in question: bland face, middle part, the kind of jaw that would sink into jowls by forty. She saw his future clear as prophecy—bald, drunk, three bastard children, wife crying into her soup. Without hesitation, Kaelani snatched the handkerchief from Emily's hand.
"No," she declared flatly. "You are not allowed to bed a man who is boring, basic, and ugly within ten years. Two red flags maximum, Emily. Two."
Emily huffed, reaching for the handkerchief like a schoolgirl robbed of candy. "You have the worst taste in men, Kaelani. You have no right to judge me."
Kaelani ignored her, eyes already sweeping the crowd again.
She was still scanning when an older noblewoman brushed past her shoulder, perfume like rotting roses. "Your Majesty," the woman said with a smile sharp enough to cut. "What a... well, not surprise. But you know."
Kaelani snapped open her fan with a flourish. "Hello to you, sour old hag."
Gasps fluttered through the surrounding matrons. The woman—Ms. Tempers—merely arched an eyebrow. Foreign-born, married into wealth, widowed, and richer than half the dukes in Aschenmark, she was one of the only women in Schwarzreich who could spar with Kaelani on equal footing.
"Come to shop for syphilis, I see," Ms. Tempers replied sweetly.
Kaelani covered her smirk with her fan, imitating the royals' passive-aggressive affectation. "Yes, well, I'm still young and fertile. My gin-gin needs its exercise."
Ms. Tempers hissed like a kettle. Kaelani had that effect on people—she had lived in toxic circles her whole life, and her tongue was a weapon sharper than any steel.
"THERE'S ALARIC!" Emily suddenly shrieked, forgetting her composure as the procession approached.
The crowd parted for him like water around a prow. Alaric Drachenberg sat high on a gleaming brown steed, uniform pressed, hair slicked back, green eyes sparkling in the sunlight. The very picture of princely valor—because of course nepotism gave him the best horse, the best armor, the best place in the parade.
He reined in right before them, swung easily from the saddle, and embraced Emily with the enthusiasm of a storybook brother. "Emily, is that you? Look at you!"
Then his gaze shifted, warm, toward the dark-skinned queen at her side. "Kaelani—is that you?"
Kaelani squinted, trying to peer past his horse at the other soldiers. "Would you move your cow? It's blocking my view."
Alaric only laughed and pulled her into a hug despite her stiff protest. "It is so good to see you again. After all these years fighting in your country to keep your crown safe—"
"You mean the war started by men, maintained by men, fought by men," Kaelani cut in, her fan flicking sharply, "and with nothing to do with me? Yes. That one."
Emily covered her face with her hand.
Alaric only smiled, brushing off the barb. "You're still the same foul-mouthed girl I left behind." He kissed his sister's hand, nodded at Kaelani, then mounted his horse again with princely flair.
"I hope to see you both at the banquet tonight," he said, giving a wink before the parade swallowed him up again.
Kaelani turned back to the parade, fanning herself against the heat, when something primal crawled up her spine. One of her instincts—the kind she trusted far more than politics or prayers—whispered: premium sausage detected.
Her gaze snapped upward, scanning the line of officers, and then she saw him.
Tall. Slender, but with the kind of muscle that came from real campaigns, not parade drills. His skin was molten bronze, gleaming under the sun, his black curls spilling rebelliously from beneath the Nubarran wrap tied around his head. Eyes—brown, deep, and entirely too sensual—set into features chiseled by whichever god had decided to make Kaelani's ovaries their personal playground.
"WHO IS THAT?" she barked, pointing like a drunken oracle.
Ms. Tempers followed her finger, then hid a smile behind her fan. There was a glimmer there—knowledge, amusement, the slow drip of gossip left to ferment. "Ah. That is Captain Darius. From your country, I believe. And you've never heard of him?"
Kaelani's mouth had gone dry, her thighs decidedly not. "No. But momma like."
"He is... popular with the ladies," Ms. Tempers went on, savoring each word, "but extremely picky. He has taken no lovers. I doubt he would even look your way."
It was the exact wrong thing to say.
Kaelani's pupils blew wide, her smirk sharpening into a predator's grin. Challenge. Intrigue. Mystery. She could feel her panties dampen with sheer determination.
"I'd let him rearrange my organs like furniture." she muttered, striding forward into the road as though she owned the cobbles. "I want him biblically, illegally, and immediately."
Emily gasped, "Kaelani, don't you—" but the queen was already pulling out her embroidered handkerchief. She flung it in a dramatic arc, the fabric tumbling like a dove through the air.
Captain Darius didn't so much as glance up.
The handkerchief fluttered pathetically to the ground, where a horse's hoof promptly stomped it into the mud. Forgotten. Crushed. Useless.
Ms. Tempers let out a delighted laugh behind her fan, her eyes twinkling like daggers.
Kaelani froze, blinking as if her script had been rewritten without her permission. "What the fuck."
Emily touched her arm gently. "It's not to be."
Kaelani snapped her fan shut with a crack and turned, fire blazing in her eyes. "Oh, it will be. I'll make it be. And he'll be inside me before winter."
"Kaelani!" Emily hissed, scandalized. "We are in public!"
But Kaelani didn't care. She was a hound on the scent now, and Captain Darius was her quarry.
Kaelani had a new mission now, and it gleamed brighter than all the jewels she was dripping in: Darius. The hunt, the chase, the promise of something new to break between her thighs—finally, something to claw her out of the rut of boredom.
She spun on her heel to face Emily, eyes glittering with mischief. "We are going to that banquet, girl. Momma is hungry."
Emily gave her the kind of look one reserves for children who insist they've just seen a unicorn. Her lips parted to reply—then her green eyes darted upward, widening like candles catching flame.
Kaelani barely had time to register before strong, gloved hands closed around her waist and hauled her upward. The world tilted, skirts flaring, as she was lifted effortlessly onto the lap of a waiting rider astride a massive white mare.
A voice like silk, male and infuriatingly smug, curled into her ear.
"Well, if it isn't Kae, coming to see me home."
Her stomach dropped. Oh no. She knew that stupid voice.
She turned her head slowly, reluctantly, until her nose was five inches from his. The blue eyes met hers—bright, piercing, annoyingly handsome. His face was sharp, tanned from campaign sun, shadowed just enough to be dashing. His uniform gleamed, ceremonial and precise, every button polished. And his hair—
Fucking god above. His hair.
Long, straight, impossibly blonde, gathered into a high ponytail tied with a black ribbon so worn it looked like it had survived the war on its own. Sun-bleached, golden, offensively radiant.
Kaelani's lip curled. Of course. Of course it had to be him.
"PUT ME DOWN, YOU BLONDE GERBIL!" she shrieked, thrashing against his ironclad grip.
"Kae, it's me," he said, feigning a wounded pout. "Nicolae."
She writhed in his lap, but his arms were a vice around her waist, the smug bastard barely flinching as she elbowed him. Emily—godforsaken, sweet, useless Emily—was standing below them, beaming like a saint. She clapped her hands together, delighted.
"Nicolae!" Emily cried, as though he had returned from death itself instead of just from slaughtering her people in the name of "defense."
Kaelani groaned, throwing her head back. Out of all the men in the damned parade, of course the one who kidnapped her in broad daylight was the one thing she swore she'd never touch.
A blonde.
Nicolae's grin was the kind that had once made her laugh—wide, ridiculous, the cartoonish smile he wore as a child when he'd stolen the last plum tart and dared her to rat him out. Now it landed on her like a dare. His blue eyes glittered in the sun, fixed solely on her as if the whole parade had been arranged around her face.
"Kae," he said, voice silky with mischief and just enough ache to be annoying, "why must you be so nasty to me after all I've done to stabilize your kingdom?"
She stopped struggling long enough to think, and a slow, furious thought crawled up from somewhere near her liver: why do these men always act like they're doing her favors, when it was men who started the war, men who fed it until it grew teeth? The question should have been rhetorical; she made it a proclamation.
"Arrest him," she barked at the nearest imperial guard, lifting her chin like a sovereign who'd forgotten who actually held the ledger. "For touching a sovereign. I demand—"
The guards mumbled something perfectly bureaucratic and apologetic. "Apologies, Your Majesty," one said with regretful politeness that would have been touching if it weren't so impotent. "We have no authority to interfere with the prince."
Kaelani stared at them as if expecting the words to rearrange reality. They didn't. Nicolae's smile widened, mischief turning smug. He'd kept that grin in reserve for moments like these—moments when knowledge of rank could be weaponized into irritation.
"You're all fired," she yelled, because she loved the theater of pretending she had real power. A few nearby noblewomen flinched; one clutching pearls looked scandalized enough to faint on command. The truth—niggling and obvious—was that the guards took orders from the king and his first son, not from an exiled queen paraded like a fortune cookie.
Nicolae leaned in until Kaelani's face was absurdly close to his, blue eyes sparkling like mischief itself. She was seconds away from biting him when he shifted his gaze down toward the woman still standing in the street.
"Hello, Emily," he said to her sister. "I'd like to come over and visit."
Emily's smile bloomed at once, bright and sincere, her hands clutched to her chest as though he were a miracle returned from war. Emily, sanctimonious little heart in full bloom, nodded like a puppet. "Of course, Nicolae! Do come. Everything at our place is always—" she fluttered her hands, "—open."
Kaelani shot Emily a look that could curdle cream. "Do not invite the termite into my house," she hissed. "Or I'll burn it and you both with it. Literally. Consider this an eviction notice."
Emily only shrugged as though eviction notices were a mild hobby. "Don't be so dramatic, Kaelani. And you keep forgetting it's my house I can invite who I want."
Nicolae nodded to his little sister then clicked his mare with a heel, an easy, practiced motion that set the beast forward as the procession rolled on. He hadn't asked permission so much as assumed consent—an old habit—and Kaelani's mouth opened to lace him with every epithet she'd been saving for him since childhood.
"Don't you dare," she snarled, letting the parade's brass and drums carry their pomp away like an indifferent soundtrack to her rage. "You inbred, war-mongering, linen-sniffing terrorist—if you touch me like that again I'll stuff you in a stew and serve you to the barracks."
He laughed—too bright, dangerously pleased. "Only you could threaten to cook me and still mean it as an invitation."
Kaelani eventually stilled, her tantrum burned out to embers. Arms folded across her jeweled bodice, she glared at the world like it had cheated her out of a prize. Nicolae only smiled, the kind of quiet, maddening smile of a man who believed he'd just caught a butterfly with his bare hands. Proud. Possessive.
Guiding his mare down a side street, he slipped them free of the parade's roar and into a quieter vein of the city. The thunder of drums dulled to a distant pulse, replaced by the muffled clatter of hooves on cobblestones.
His voice softened, genuine in a way she hadn't heard since childhood. "Kae... I've missed you so much."
She didn't look at him, only tightened her crossed arms and groaned. "I missed most of the Meat Parade for this. I should sue."
Undeterred, Nicolae slid an arm tighter around her waist and pulled her flush against him, lowering his head until his cheek brushed her shoulder. "I mean it," he murmured. "I really missed you."
Kaelani huffed through her nose, resisting the warmth creeping up her throat. At last, she gave his hand a brisk, almost maternal pat. "Yeah. I missed those days too. Before..."
His head lifted, blue eyes searching hers. "Before what? The war?"
Her reply came too quick, too flat. "Yeah. The war."
Nicolae let it hang, a pause heavy with questions she refused to answer.
He tried another angle, voice gentler. "How have you been handling the stress all this time?"
For a moment she actually thought about it—the nights, the bottles, the endless carousel of bodies—but then she shrugged it off like a bad joke. "Don't want to talk about it. Just take me to a pub."
That earned a laugh from him, low and warm, vibrating against her back. "A pub? You haven't changed a bit." He tightened his hold just slightly, as though daring her to squirm again. "I'll take you anywhere you want, Kae. But not yet. There's something I want to show you first."
They chatted lightly as the horse carried them out of the city, away from the brass and confetti, toward the quieter green of the outskirts. Nicolae spoke of the war—of endless nights, of steel and blood, of how it left him feeling emptier than when he'd gone in. He joked about his new nickname, laughed it off like it meant nothing, though Kaelani caught the hollowness in his smile.
The city gave way to trees, wide lawns, and sprawling estates, each house grander than the last. Kaelani arched a brow. "You bringing me out here to murder me? Because honestly, I'd prefer you do it quick. My hangover can't take torture."
Nicolae chuckled, leaning close. "Not murder. Kidnapping, maybe."
She rolled her eyes, but her curiosity pricked when he turned down a narrow road half-swallowed by weeds. Branches clawed the air above, and the gravel drive was more moss than stone. At the end stood a hulking silhouette of a house, dark and brooding against the light.
Nicolae swung off the horse and reached up for her, hands at her waist as he lowered her down. He didn't let go. He just looked at her, waiting—like her reaction mattered more than anything.
"So," Kaelani said dryly, eyeing the ruin, "you brought me to a haunted house. Why?"
His laugh was soft, not mocking, almost tender. He offered her his arm. She hesitated, then took it with the air of someone accepting poisoned wine.
"It's mine," he said, eyes fixed on the house with a soldier's pride. "A gift from my father. My state house. I'll restore it, make it grand again." His face softened, eyes flicking to hers. "And hopefully fill it with babies... and a wife who will never let me sleep."
Kaelani groaned inwardly, rolling her eyes so hard she nearly saw her brain. "Well, I'm glad you have a dream. Hope it works out for you."
Because she knew what that smile meant. She'd always known. Nicolae had that look—he always had. He'd been a snot-nosed boy when it started, seven... no, maybe ten or twelve, who cared? She had been sixteen, already taller, sharper, already dangerous. He'd puffed up his chest and challenged her like he always did, trying to impress. She'd been sparring with her cousins, practicing one of Nubarra's ancient fighting forms.
She'd floored him with one strike.
Her knuckles met his little groin, and down he went like a sack of wheat. But instead of a scream or a cry, what came out of his mouth was something unholy—half gasp, half moan, the kind of sound that turned stomachs and started obsessions.
That was the moment. The birth of his sickness.
He came back, again and again, for more.
He blushed when she stepped on his toes. He smiled when she called him names. She bullied him relentlessly, hoping it would break him—snatching his food, chewing it, and spitting it back on his plate just to watch him greedily shovel it into his mouth.
Masochist's masochist. Proud of it.
Eventually, even the king had noticed. Whatever madness coiled inside his son, it needed an outlet, and so Nicolae was shipped off to military school. Years of blood and discipline turned him into a soldier, a commander, a war dog.
But Kaelani could still see the boy in the man—the boy who had grinned through a groin shot and begged for seconds.
And it hadn't helped matters that when Nicolae came back from training a full-fledged adult... well, Kaelani may have sort of, possibly, definitely taken his virginity.
He had been at least twenty by then. Maybe twenty-one. She wasn't entirely sure; she hadn't bothered keeping track of his birthdays. What she had kept track of was the line she refused to cross: no minors, no coercion. She would bed half a city in one night, but only if they were willing, only if they knew what they were getting into. Consent was sacred, the one commandment she actually obeyed.
And Nicolae had been so willing it was pathetic.
He'd come at her like an emaciated dog that had just been shown a steak—wide-eyed, trembling, so desperate to prove himself that she almost laughed mid-kiss. His hands had been clumsy, his breathing frantic, his whole body taut like a bowstring about to snap.
"Calm down, boy," she had muttered at one point, half-expecting him to wag a tail.
But he never backed off. If anything, the awkward eagerness had burned hotter than his training drills, fueled by years of obsession and bruised pride. And in that sweaty, frantic, utterly ridiculous fumbling, she had glimpsed something almost admirable: sheer, blind determination.
No one had ever wanted her with such singular, all-consuming focus.
And yet...
He was a blonde. He was practically family. And despite all his panting, puppy-dog zeal, he was still a no.
Nicolae's smile was all patient sunlight and quiet hunger, the kind that made her want to sock him and then apologize for breaking his nose. His lashes blinked over her like the slow dismissal of an annoying fly — her barbed refusal barely registered in the soft architecture of his smug. He turned his head, eyes already roaming the dark house as if projecting wallpaper and laughter into its empty rooms, imagining hearths and small, noisy bodies that would fill the drafty halls with a kind of warmth he'd never had at home.
Kaelani snorted, cutting through his reverie like a thrown boot. "You've always been a dreamy-eyed twat," she said, amusement and scorn braided together. "Always picturing some fantasy family. Not with me. I'm a slut and I'll die a slut, and I like it that way."
He straightened, the old boyish tilt replaced by the soldier who'd been carved and polished by battle. He was taller now; the way the uniforms sat on him made him look like a monument. Still, that ridiculous softness in his gaze didn't quite leave. "We will see, Kae," he said simply, neither pleading nor promising so much as announcing a fact he already believed.
She glared, sharp and incandescent, then pivoted away toward the waiting horse. "Take me back to civilization," she snapped, brushing a stray curl from her face. "It smells like grass out here and I am not made for lawn air."
Nicolae eased her back into the saddle with the same sure, patient motion he'd used to lift her up earlier. She settled sideways, annoyed and wobbly and already missing the comfort of chaos, and he swung up behind her, heels finding the stirrups like habits. The mare stamped once, impatient; the trees closed behind them, swallowing the ruined house until it was a silhouette in the gloom.
He breathed out, a small, steady promise to himself: Kae doesn't know it yet, but this will be her home one day too.
Then he guided the mare back onto the lane. They rode toward Schwarzreich with the city's smoke and brass bleeding into the evening haze, Kaelani wound up against his chest and already plotting new conquests, the house and its future warmth left behind for another time.