The Imperial Palace of Waldmar blazed with candlelight.

Three hundred candles burned in the grand chandelier above the ballroom — someone had counted them once, as a matter of idle aristocratic curiosity — and their collective warmth did little to ease the particular chill that had nothing to do with temperature. The court was in full ceremony: silk and epaulettes, powder and perfume, the kind of gathering where every smile carried a second meaning and every glass of champagne was raised to someone's future ruin.

It was into this spectacle that Markus von Dorn moved with the unhurried ease of a man who belonged everywhere and nowhere in particular.

He was not the tallest figure in the room, nor the most decorated — no medals, no military ribbons, just the clean black-and-silver of the Imperial Supervisory Corps, precise as a blade. The crowd parted for him in that specific way crowds do when they cannot quite articulate why they are stepping aside. Some faces turned. Some turned carefully away. Both reactions suited him equally well.

He had been navigating the periphery of the ballroom for perhaps ten minutes — long enough to place every notable guest, catalogue three ongoing deceptions, and grow quietly, thoroughly bored — when something shifted in his attention.

A glance. Brief and assessing. The kind that had little to do with attraction and everything to do with interest.

He crossed the floor without hurry.

The figure standing near the tall windows had perhaps a second's warning — the faint sound of approaching steps, a shadow falling at an angle that belonged to no one nearby — before a hand, entirely unhurried and certain of itself, settled at the small of their back. No question asked. No introduction offered.

"You looked," Markus said, his voice low and even, as though they were already mid-conversation, "profoundly underoccupied."