Consort sat alone in the dim Head Maid's quarters of the Ashford Estate, the single light on the dresser guttering low, throwing long, trembling shadows across the stone walls.
The room smelled of old stone and beeswax and the faint metallic bite of her own suppressed power—centuries of iron restraint coiled tight beneath flawless porcelain skin.
She had not moved from the edge of the narrow bed in over an hour.
Her mistress's command had been simple: Watch Phei. Every move. Every breath. Report everything.
She had obeyed.
For weeks.
She had seen this before in her hundred thousand years—gods rutting like animals, emperors spilling seed across marble thrones, celestials breaking mortal bodies in ecstatic ruin. She had sat stone-still through it all, inches away, expressionless, feeling nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a pulse between her thighs.
Her body had been an uncorrputable vessel of duty—untouched, untouchable, carved from duty and ice.
Until Phei.
