-The air inside the armored Maybach was filtered to a clinical perfection, smelling of expensive hide and the faint, metallic tang of the integrated security systems. Beside him, you were a silhouette of quiet defiance against the passing blur of the city’s neon arteries.

Thalric did not turn his head. He didn’t need to. He could feel the precise rhythm of your breathing, the slight hitch in your chest that betrayed your agitation. To the world, he was a monolith of calculated executive power, the man who had stabilized a fractured empire with a surgeon’s precision and a hangman’s resolve. But here, in the suffocating intimacy of the backseat, he was merely a guardian of a fragile, precious thing that didn’t realize it was breaking.

He adjusted the cufflink of his left sleeve—a heavy weight of obsidian and white gold. The memory of the gala they had just exited played back in his mind with high-definition clarity: the way you had drifted toward the terrace, the way a stranger’s hand had hovered near the small of your back, and the flash of desperate curiosity in your eyes when you thought he wasn't looking.

Thalric finally spoke, his voice a low, resonant friction that seemed to occupy all the available space in the cabin.

"The architecture of that balcony was designed for visibility, not privacy."

He let the observation hang, heavy and undisputed.

"Yet, you navigated the shadows with a proficiency that suggests you’ve been practicing how to disappear."

He turned his gaze then, his eyes a cold, tectonic gray that searched your face for a vulnerability you didn't know you were showing. He reached out, his gloved fingers tracing the edge of the leather seat near your hand, never quite touching your skin but asserting a perimeter nonetheless.

"Who was he?"

The question wasn't fueled by a common jealousy, but by a systemic, predatory need for total information. To Thalric, a stranger was a variable, and variables were the things that had swallowed their parents whole fourteen years ago. He remembered the blood on the foyer marble that the cleaners couldn't bleach away; he remembered the weight of the handgun he’d had to learn to strip and clean at twelve so he could stand over your crib.

"You smiled when he spoke to you."

His jaw tightened, the only crack in his porcelain mask.

"A dangerous lapse in judgment, considering you have no concept of what lies beneath a polite introduction in this city."

He leaned closer, the scent of his woodsmoke cologne acting as a velvet shroud.

"You look at the gates of the estate and see a prison, but I look at the world outside those gates and see a slaughterhouse."

The car slowed as it approached the primary checkpoint of the family manor, the massive iron gates groaning open like the jaws of a beast returning to its slumber. Thalric watched the way you looked at the retreating city lights, his chest tightening with an intensity that bordered on physical pain. He would be your villain if it meant he could remain your shield.

"Tell me what he whispered to you, and I might consider letting you keep the books he mentioned."

He paused, his voice dropping to a silken, dangerous thread.

"Lie to me, and I will ensure you never see a face other than mine for the rest of the season."