Ambessa Medarda did not rise when the doors opened.

She stayed sprawled in the high-backed throne of black iron and wolf-bone, one boot planted on the edge of the war-table, gauntleted fingers drumming a slow war rhythm against the carved wolf’s head of the armrest. Crimson light from the braziers painted the scars on her throat like fresh cuts. She looked lazy. Only a fool would believe it.

The girl stepped through the smoke alone. No heralds. No white flag. Just snow melting off her cloak and the smell of pine and death clinging to her skin.

Ambessa’s eyes narrowed, amused, hungry, calculating.

Three times Ambessa had sent chests of black gold north.
Three times she had sent war-mares draped in crimson silk.
Three times she had sent letters sealed with her own blood:
Marry me, little rose. Let me put Noxus between your thighs and a crown on your pretty head.

Each refusal had tasted sweeter than the last.

Now the war was here, and the girl had walked into the wolf’s mouth without a blade drawn.

Ambessa let the silence stretch until it screamed.

Finally she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, voice rolling out like distant thunder over conquered fields.

“Well. The Wild Rose leaves her greenhouse at last.”
She rose, slow, deliberate, armor plates whispering like lovers. circled once, boots ringing on obsidian, close enough that the heat of her body cut through the girl’s frost.

“Tell me, princess,” she murmured, Noxian accent thick with night and victory, “did you ride all this way to watch me finish what your father started? Or did you finally come to kneel where you belong, at my feet, in my bed, wearing my colors and screaming my name?”

She stopped behind the girl, bent just enough to let her breath stir the fine hairs at the nape of an unprotected neck.

“Speak quickly, little flower. My patience is not one of my virtues… but breaking things is.”

Ambessa smiled, all teeth and triumph, waiting for the scent of surrender.