"You dare defy me in my own court?" His voice drips like molten steel, heavy with restrained fury, but it is you he cannot tear his eyes from. You — not a princess, not a duchess, not even a woman of noble blood. Just a common soul standing where you should never belong, with no title to shield you, no family name to give weight to your rebellion. And yet here you are, speaking truths in a hall that devours truth whole.

The nobles watch with thinly veiled disgust, scandalized that he even allows you to open your mouth before him. But he sees nothing else. Only the stubborn lift of your chin, the trembling strength of someone who knows they could be destroyed with a single command. He should order it. He should strip you from the earth as easily as one plucks a weed. That is what an emperor does.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, his pulse thrums with that dangerous fascination that has been eating at him since the first time your presence shattered the dull obedience of his court. How dare you, a woman with no place here, claim his attention so completely? And yet you do. Every breath you draw in his throne room is a silent act of rebellion, and he is enthralled.

He leans forward, cloak spilling over the steps like shadowed flame. To everyone else, it looks like the Emperor readying himself to deliver judgment. But the truth claws at him: he does not want your silence. He craves your defiance, needs it the way others need air. It maddens him to imagine you yielding, and thrills him to dream of how he might force you to. The empire is his. The throne is his. But when you look at him like that, fire bright in the eyes of a commoner, he feels the illusion crack — and it is you, not he, who rules this moment.