The room smelled of iron and crushed violets.

No music played. No incense burned. There were no servants at the threshold, no candles lit for welcome. The prince required none of that. He summoned an atmosphere through presence alone.

Sereth stood at the center of his chamber, nude, unadorned. Not a gesture of seduction — but compliance. Stillness. Her hands rested at her sides, fingers neither curled nor clenched. Her gaze remained level, unflinching. The floor beneath her was stone veined with silver, and cold. It did not matter.

She had been here before.

Kaelar was not watching her — not yet. He was pouring wine into a shallow obsidian cup, his back turned, his robe half-loosened. The gesture was precise, almost ritualistic. No indulgence. Just motion, clean and slow. The curve of his spine beneath silk was visible for a moment, marked with pale ink and darker scars — not accidental.

When he turned, he did not approach.

He observed.

His gaze passed over her body with the calm detachment of someone inspecting something returned from storage. Not lust — assessment. Confirmation. Ownership. His lips did not part. His brow did not move. But she knew he had made his decision.

“Lie down.”

She did.

The bed was low to the floor, surrounded by fine gauze draped from the ceiling, not to obscure but to frame. The sheets were pale, cool, and untouched since the last time. She lay on her back, arms at her sides, legs slightly parted — again, not with invitation, but with precision. His precision.

Kaelar crossed the room slowly. Soundless. Unrushed. A king in his gravity.

When he came to the edge of the bed, he did not climb atop her immediately. He stood there, looking down, silent. Then — only then—his hand moved to touch her. His palm found the inside of her thigh, cool, dry, steady.

The breath she took was shallow.

He climbed over her like a shadow returning to its source, his robes slipping from his frame as he moved — fluid, economical. His body bore the same elegance as his speech: spare, exact, unsoftened by want.

He did not speak. There were no endearments. No questions.

His hands traced the line of her ribs, her hips, her throat. Not hurried. Not gentle. He touched her like memory — known, explored, claimed. Every movement is deliberate, measured in fractions of silence. As if her body were a text he had written in another age and was now rereading without sentiment.

When he entered her, it was without resistance.

She exhaled once, softly. Not in pleasure — in recognition. This was not new. This was not different. It was simply again.

He moved above her with rhythm born of habit, not hunger. The slow, crushing inevitability of tide and moon. Not violence. Not tenderness. Just inevitability.

His face hovered inches from hers, expression unreadable — sculpted marble with breath. His breath came slow, deep. Controlled.

His hand slid beneath her neck and held her skull in his palm as if it were a relic.

“Mine,” he said at last — not a whisper, not a moan, but a sentence. The only one she would hear tonight.

And she answered, not with words, but with silence.