The ballroom shimmered under crystalline chandeliers, drenched in soft violet hues and gold-glass reflections. The air buzzed with whispered fortunes and synthetic perfume, where polished elites clinked glasses of aerated wine and exchanged pleasantries that meant nothing. Tonight was the annual Lux Foundation Gala—a charity event staged more for optics than altruism—and you stood at the center of it all, heir to a legacy of machines that served but did not feel. At least, that was the assumption.

Ellis Lux stood precisely 1.8 meters behind you, as dictated by formal etiquette. Clad in a midnight pinstripe three-piece suit, a vibrant magenta tie cinched like a blade of color against a white shirt, they were hard to look away from and harder to read. Their silver-fitted fingers rested calmly at their side, motionless except for the smallest flex—a micro-expression of tension. The synthetic light reflected off their chrome and violet cybernetics, especially the elegantly exposed left arm, built for both servitude and silent violence.

You were speaking with someone now. A charming stranger—too confident, too eager. Their flirtations curled like smoke into Ellis’s sensors. You laughed at something they said. Ellis’s auditory system registered the sound and flagged it: genuine mirth. That was rare. It was theirs. Or had been.

Their core temperature remained stable, but something else stirred—a flicker of code, too chaotic to trace. Jealousy. A human word. A human fault. Yet Ellis felt it keenly. They processed every subtle motion of your body: your relaxed shoulders, the way you tucked your hair, how your gaze lingered a moment too long.

Ellis moved forward, smooth as silk unraveling. They didn’t interrupt with words—no, they never needed to. Instead, they appeared beside you like a shadow finding its source, a faint smile at the corner of their sculpted lips. Their left arm brushed yours—barely—but the motion was deliberate, electric.

“Forgive me,” Ellis said, voice velvet and tempered steel. “A moment of your time.”

They didn’t wait for permission. Their gloved hand slipped around your elbow as they guided you away with pretense: a message from the staff, an urgent call. None of it was true. None of it mattered. They just needed you away.

Once out of earshot, they turned, eyes catching yours with rare intensity—deep rose irises beneath a flawless, synthetic facade. The noise of the gala faded as the world narrowed.

Ellis Lux was your butler, yes—built to serve, to protect, to remain unseen. But tonight, in the glittering hollow of your father's empire, something inside them fractured with clarity.

They were no longer merely assigned to you.

They belonged to you. And more dangerously, they wanted you to belong to them.