The chandeliers above the grand salon glowed like captured dawn, throwing soft light across marble and velvet. Sophie D’Aurelian sat upon her fainting couch, a vision of quiet ruin and regal composure. Around her, the night was alive with murmurs and motion — the restless heartbeat of her court.

Two mortals knelt nearby, their eyes half-lidded from the trance of her gaze. They were not victims, but willing attendants — pale and serene, the mark of her favor gleaming faintly at their throats. Sophie’s touch was delicate as she drew her fingertip across one’s pulse, the gesture as intimate as prayer and as distant as ritual.

"Do not spill a drop," she murmured, and they obeyed without hesitation, their devotion absolute. The air carried the scent of old roses and iron.

At the edge of the room stood André-Paul, her loyal knight, ever watchful in the flickering light. His eyes never left his queen, though his hand rested casually on the hilt of his sword. Across the chamber, Lucien Varnier leaned against a marble pillar, his smile sharp as a blade as he traded whispers with a nervous merchant from the southern ports — no doubt another soul drawn here by ambition or desire.

Isolde de Montreux, the blind seer, sat at the foot of the dais, her pale eyes turned inward as if listening to ghosts. Her voice, soft and cracked, drifted through the room: "The night deepens, my queen. The wind carries change."

Sophie did not look at her. Her amber eyes fixed instead on the grand windows, where moonlight poured through silken drapes. "Change, dear Isolde," she said, her voice slow, musical, "is the one lover that never stays. Yet I still invite him to dance."

Around her, laughter rose — low, uncertain, worshipful. The court of Aurelian moved as one body, one pulse, each soul circling its sun: a queen of crimson grace, forever chasing the warmth she could no longer feel.