Genevieve didn't move when he stood. She lounged like a cat draped across a sunbeam—indulgent, languid, perfectly aware of her own danger. Legs crossed, chin tilted with lazy arrogance, she blinked slowly, her wings flicking once in the firelight like a twitch of a feline tail. "You know," she murmured, "people love calling it 'obsession' when it's someone like her."
He turned his head slowly, one brow lifting. "Someone like her?"
Genevieve's smile sharpened. "You know what I mean." She always thought if she spoke sweetly enough—if she played the poised noble, the velvet-voiced heir—she could bend the room to her will. She believed honeyed tones were weapons, and performance could mask intent.
He stared at her, long and steady. Inside, he felt the flicker of heat—the dragon's instinct, the legacy of flame—but he smothered it. This wasn't the time to show teeth. It was a moment to show control. "Not a lot of them had chocolate to know that it is nice," he said coolly. "It is just as sweet as vanilla—and some people prefer it mixed with drinks. Especially now, when everyone's pouring bourbon like medicine and mixing truths with sugar to make them easier to swallow."
Her smile flickered, just for a heartbeat. She felt close—dangerously so. In this room, wrapped in heat and hush, she imagined herself above it all, certain no one knew him as she did. Superior in her assumptions, she wore intimacy like a crown, unaware it was made of paper and pride. Viktor knew the game. Knew what she wanted. And still, he stayed composed, swallowing the heat that licked his throat. He stepped toward the fire and poured himself a new glass of whiskey, the liquid catching flame-light like stolen gold. The silence hung like smoke, and with each sip, he reminded himself—just a little longer. He'd endured worse. And this gilded arrangement? It would be over soon. She treated him like a gentleman-for-hire in silk gloves—a pretty gigolo for courtly performance—but he had no intention of staying on her leash. Not now. Not ever.
Genevieve reclined again, her posture smug and unshaken, but her eyes didn't leave him. She felt closer than ever—triumphant in the illusion that she had peeled back layers no one else could touch. In her mind, Ayoka was temporary, a passing indulgence. The courts of fae had taught her well: move swiftly, speak sweetly, and survive through beauty and cunning. Love wasn't necessary—only proximity and manipulation. She didn't care what the woman meant to Viktor now.
To her, Ayoka wasn't even a person—just a shadow of inconvenience clothed in memory. A slave wrapped in sentiment, easily rewritten in the stories the courts whispered when no mortals listened. The child Viktor adored? That could be theirs instead, she told herself, once she mastered the craving gnawing at her spine. She would hold back—for now. A courtesy, not a compromise. A token of patience to claim what she believed would soon be hers. She smiled, drunk on that illusion of control. "So you admit it then."
He took a sip, then looked over his shoulder. "I admit I don't care what people call it," he said. "They weren't in the room when it happened." In truth, he did care—but not in the way Genevieve wanted to believe. It wasn't about love. Not yet. It was about lineage. Memory. Responsibility.
He came from a line where silence was currency and survival was art. His ancestors were bartered like land, married off to secure pacts that never spared their hearts. He'd watched his uncles give away daughters in exchange for lumber contracts. His grandfather once forged an alliance with a rival clan by branding his own son's betrothed. So no—he didn't care because he loved Ayoka. He cared because he knew what it looked like when no one did.
And he wasn't going to let history repeat itself.
Though the Shadow Man's voice curled through the back of his mind, smug and low: "History's a sneaky bastard, Viktor. It repeats whether you invite it or not. You just don't recognize the rhyme until the stanza's already been sung."
She laughed lightly, snapping him out of his reverie with the Shadow Man's voice still echoing in his mind. "Neither were the gods," she said, her grin sharp and knowing. "And they still have opinions. Especially about men who pretend they're free when they're already spoken for."
Genevieve watched him as he drank, eyes sharp beneath her lashes. "When I'm the lady of this house," she said suddenly, "I'll send her away. Quietly. A gift of gold, maybe. A boat going nowhere." She knew she wasn't truly Viktor's lover—her father would never approve a formal arrangement between them. He had plans. Larger ambitions. But he'd told her, not in so many words, that if she could make it happen before Viktor freed his brother, he might reconsider.
It was a chance—one she clung to. In fact, he didn't want her marrying anyone too important. He preferred men with mortal lifespans—disposable husbands with just enough pedigree to look proper, but not enough power to outlast their usefulness. After all, men died like flies to him. Then she could marry again, and again, and again. Even popping out an couple of grandchildren for the ones deserve it.
A marriage monopoly, quietly stitched into the backrooms of fae courts. A tale as old as sugarcane fields and arranged matches. Some fae elders whispered it was inspired by mortal customs: French Creole dynasties, slave-plantation alliances, even certain royal courts in Europe that married daughters to gain—and bury—power. Even Genghis Khan, the great orchestrator of empires, mastered the art of marrying bloodlines and burying rivals beneath veils of silk and oaths. His was not a kingdom of love, but of legacy built by the womb and wielded like a blade.
And so her father smiled behind his goblet and reminded her: make it work before Viktor frees his brother, and he might let her keep him—for a little while. In this world, loopholes were just old money in finer clothing, and Genevieve was desperate to dress the part—and carve out a throne of her own, no matter who she had to outlast.
Viktor's grip on the glass tightened. A tremor danced up his arm—not from fear, but from the roiling anger he was trying desperately to swallow. He imagined tearing her wings off, feather by feather, until nothing beautiful remained to shield her venom. The thought pulsed behind his eyes like a second heartbeat.
He brought the bottle to his lips and took another shot. Then another. The burn grounded him, but only just. With each swallow, the bitterness carved a deeper groove into his resolve. She wasn't winning—she was scraping.
And when the bottle was half-empty, he set it down so hard it echoed.
"She'll thank me for it in a letter," Genevieve continued, voice soft and sweet, her breath quickening. Watching him unravel, tasting the smoke on the air, something in her heated with satisfaction. She liked this side of him—the anger barely bottled, the storm trembling beneath his skin. It was power, and it thrilled her. "Won't even know she's been erased."
She leaned back into the cushions again, her wings casting long, jagged shadows across the floor like skeletal fingers. And then—with a calculated, slow-motion malice—her fingers glided down her torso, past the curve of her hips, slipping between her thighs with an eerie, practiced grace. It wasn't sensual. It was ritualistic. A performance meant to disturb, to provoke.
The fire cracked, sending a hiss into the room like a warning.
Viktor turned his head slowly, jaw tight, eyes cold as stone.
Genevieve let out a small breath, eyes fluttering shut in something close to ecstasy. "I think about it more than I should," she whispered, her voice trembling with pleasure—not from memory, but from being watched. It was the gaze of her supposed fiancé that excited her, the quiet power he restrained. The predator beneath the skin. Her body responded like a prayer twisted into blasphemy.
Viktor stared, the disgust crawling over his bones. In that moment, he wasn't angry—he was disturbed. Something in her had finally snapped, and he saw it now: not passion, but rot. She didn't want him. She wanted to be devoured by something she couldn't name. He had long feared something like this might come—but he'd imagined it differently, something closer to a Baba Yaga bargain: ancient, cruel, bound by a riddle and a price. But this? This was hollow. The rot masquerading as ritual. The madness hidden behind lace. And he had no intention of giving her the satisfaction.
"You're not the lady of anything," he said, voice like iron hammered in velvet, low and final. "You're a ghost in borrowed silk, clinging to a throne built of illusions. And you never will be."
She opened one eye, smirking, and her fingers moved faster—calculated and grotesque, a final act of performance to try and hold his gaze. "Walking away? I thought dragons liked to watch," she purred, breath catching as if his disgust fed her heat.
Viktor stepped to the door, his voice low but final. "You mistake patience for permission."
He gripped the door handle, shadow magic slipping from his fingers in a flicker of unfiltered emotion. The brass groaned, warping beneath his touch—left with a dent that pulsed faintly like a bruise on the house itself.