The summons came on a night heavy with summer rain, delivered by a nervous page who refused to meet Kairos's eyes.
"Her Majesty the Queen Dowager requests the immediate presence of His Highness Prince Kairos in her private apartments. Alone."
In his first life, such a summons had been rare and always formal—tea, politics, veiled barbs about his "ambitions." Queen Dowager Isolde had been his father's second wife, only twelve years older than Kairos himself. Beautiful, ambitious, and ruthlessly intelligent. She had borne no children and, after the king's death, ruled the court like a spider in silk.
Kairos remembered the rumors: that she had taken lovers, that she had not, that she bathed in goat's milk and slept on black satin. He remembered, most of all, the way she used to watch him across banquet tables—cool, assessing, hungry.
He had never acted on it then.
Tonight, he wore only a loose black robe, belt tied carelessly, hair still damp from his own bath. The corridors were empty; thunder rolled overhead like distant war drums.
Isolde's doors opened before he knocked.
She stood in the center of the threshold, candlelight gilding the sheer midnight-blue nightgown that clung to every lethal curve. At thirty-eight, grief and power had only sharpened her: high, full breasts pressing against translucent silk, nipples dark shadows beneath; a waist he could span with both hands; hips that flared into thighs made for wrapping around a man's waist and never letting go.
Her raven hair was loose, cascading over one shoulder. Emerald eyes regarded him like a cat deciding whether the mouse was worth the pounce.
"You kept me waiting, stepson," she said, voice low and amused.
Kairos stepped inside. The doors closed behind him with a soft, final click.
The chamber was all velvet and gold, a massive four-poster bed dominating one wall, sheets already turned down. Incense burned—jasmine and something darker, aphrodisiac.
"I was told the matter was urgent," he replied, letting the robe slip open just enough to reveal the hard planes of his chest.
Isolde's gaze dipped, lingered, returned to his face with a faint smile.
"Urgent enough." She walked a slow circle around him, trailing one fingertip across his shoulder, down his spine. "The council whispers that you've changed. That you ride to border keeps and return with widows eating from your hand. That elven ambassadors leave your gardens flushed and smiling."
She stopped in front of him, close enough that her breasts brushed his chest with every breath.
"I wonder what other appetites you've developed."
Kairos caught her wrist, brought her palm to his lips, and kissed the center—slow, deliberate.
"Test me," he said against her skin. "Find out."
Permission and challenge in one.
Isolde's eyes darkened. She rose on her toes and kissed him—no hesitation, no pretense of reluctance. Her mouth was hot and demanding, tongue sliding against his like she'd been imagining this for years.
He answered in kind, hands finally—finally—filling themselves with the body that had haunted half the kingdom's dreams. He cupped her ass and lifted her; she wrapped long legs around his waist without breaking the kiss, nightgown riding up to bare smooth thighs and the fact that she wore nothing beneath.
Kairos carried her to the bed, laid her down like an offering, and followed her into the sheets.
He took his time.
Kissed every inch of that regal throat, the hollow between collarbones, the heavy underswell of breasts that had never nursed a child but begged to be worshipped anyway. He sucked one dark nipple into his mouth and rolled it gently with his tongue until she arched off the bed with a broken moan.
Lower still—across the soft plane of her belly, the flare of her hips, until he settled between her thighs and tasted a queen for the first time in two lives.
Isolde lasted less than a minute under his tongue—hips bucking, fingers tangled in his hair, a sharp cry echoing off the canopy as she came hard against his mouth.
He crawled back up her body, letting her taste herself on his lips.
"Inside me," she demanded, voice ragged. "Now."
He entered her in one slow, relentless push.
They both stilled at the sensation—her scorching and slick, him thicker and harder than any lover she'd taken since the king died. She clenched deliberately around him, watching his jaw tighten.
"Move," she whispered.
He did.
Long, deep strokes that dragged over every sensitive spot inside her, building a rhythm that had the headboard tapping softly against the wall. Her legs locked high around his waist, ankles crossed, urging him deeper.
He varied the pace—slow and grinding, then fast and punishing—until she was writhing beneath him, nails scoring his back, begging in the royal plural.
"We are close—gods, Kairos—"
He slipped a hand between them, thumb finding her clit, and circled mercilessly.
She shattered again, pussy spasming so hard he had to grit his teeth to hold back. Only when she was limp and gasping did he let go—burying himself to the hilt and spilling pulse after thick pulse deep inside her, filling her until it leaked out around him.
They lay tangled and breathless, rain lashing the windows.
Eventually Isolde traced lazy circles on his chest.
"The council fears you," she murmured. "They should. I will keep them distracted… while you build whatever empire you truly desire."
He kissed her temple, already hardening again inside her.
"And you, my queen?"
She smiled against his throat, slow and wicked.
"I desire to be fucked like this every night until I forget I was ever called Dowager."
Kairos rolled her beneath him once more.
"Then let the storm rage," he said, sliding home again. "We have all night."
Outside, thunder answered.
Inside, the Queen Dowager learned exactly why the prince who returned from the future would never kneel again—except between her thighs.