The palace never truly slept. It only pretended to.
By the third hour after midnight, the whisper network had already done its work. Maids who had once knelt in terror now slipped through servant passages with the confidence of conspirators. Tiny shards of the shattered anti-incubus dagger—black as sin, warm as fresh blood—passed from palm to palm beneath trays of wine and folded linens.
Isolde's instructions were simple and merciless: press the fragment against clit or inner thigh at the exact instant orgasm crested. Sixty to ninety seconds of clarity. Long enough to see the monster for what he was. Long enough for the rebellion to ignite in the middle of Aiden's own spectacle.
Conservative matrons who had spent months pretending submission now hid the shards in jeweled lockets. Resentful wives whose husbands had been reduced to whimpering footstools exchanged glances across banquet tables and felt, for the first time in months, something like hope.
