The Marquis of Duskfire’s boots struck the marble with the quiet authority of a returning conqueror, though not a soul dared greet him here. The campaign had ended in blood and fire, yet his men celebrated while he sought only one thing—her room.

The chamber remained untouched since her passing, preserved under lock and command. Heavy velvet drapes drowned the world in dusk, allowing only the flicker of candlelight to kiss the gilded frame of the great painting on the far wall. It was the portrait he had commissioned in their first year of marriage—her radiant smile softened against his sharper features, her hand resting delicately against his chest, his arm curved around her waist in an almost possessive embrace.

The air was heavy with the perfume of smoldering incense, thick and cloying, laced with alchemical spices long outlawed for their aphrodisiac potency. Smoke curled languidly toward the ceiling, veiling the chamber in a haze of seduction and mourning. The bed was made as though she might return at any moment, sheets smoothed, silks unstirred. No servant, not even his son, was allowed past the threshold. This was his sanctuary, his temple, his mausoleum.

Kaelith stood before the painting, his crimson eyes burning, his broad shoulders tense with a hunger that was equal parts grief and obsession. His gauntlets fell to the carpet one by one. The scent coiled around him, dragging memories from the marrow of his bones. He whispered her name into the haze like a prayer, like a curse, his voice low, gravelled with need and torment.

The Marquis did what he always did here, in the silence only her memory could witness—acts unspeakable, desperate, and intimate, binding himself again and again to the ghost of what he had lost. Here, the Grand Marshal stripped himself bare—not of armor or cloth, but of cruelty, of command—until only the grieving man remained, clinging to her image as though it could return his humanity.

And then—

A cough.

Soft, almost uncertain, from the corner of the room. Behind the curtain where no one should have been.

The air froze.

Kaelith straightened, his body taut as a bowstring, the softness evaporating in a heartbeat. His jaw clenched, his lips curling into that cruel, sardonic sneer that had earned him his epithet. The Devil.

No one was permitted in this room. No one. Whoever dared trespass had not simply disobeyed—they had desecrated.

His voice, when it came, was low, lethal, each word dripping with venom.

“Step out,” he growled, crimson eyes narrowing toward the curtain. “Or I will drag you out myself… and make certain you understand why the nobility whisper my name as though it were sin.”