"Really." The word was flat, devoid of belief. Tiberius's gaze swept over her—from the disheveled hair to the faint, telltale puffiness around her striking blue eyes, down to the subtle tremor in the hand she held at her side. She'd been crying. Not the elegant, single-tear grief of court, but the raw, gut-deep kind.
He said nothing. He simply turned, fetched a sturdy wooden chair from the shadows, and placed it with a definitive scrape a few feet from his own. From a crate beside his throne-like seat, he pulled a full, unlabeled bottle of dark wine, its glass slick with cellar damp. He thrust it into her hands.
Bringing his own chair closer—the legs groaning against the stone—he reclaimed his place. He lifted his bottle in a mockery of a toast, the glass meeting hers with a dull, hollow clink.
"Cheers."
He tilted his head back, taking a long, slow draught, his throat working as he swallowed the bitterness without a flinch.
Camilla hesitated. The bottle felt alien in her grip, cold and heavy with promise. She brought it to her nose, inhaling. The smell was not the delicate bouquet of the fine vintages served at court. It was earthy, fungal, sharp with the tang of overripe fruit and oak—it smelled, frankly, bad. Her stomach turned, but pride was a more potent force. She couldn't tell him. She couldn't admit this was her first time holding anything stronger than sweet ceremonial wine.
"Have you tried this before?" Tiberius's voice cut through her thoughts, laced with a palpable, almost amused disbelief. He'd seen her hesitation, her silent appraisal of the bottle's odor.
"Yes," she lied, her chin lifting. "Tenebrarum and I sometimes drink." The lie was a shield, a pathetic attempt to claim some fragment of intimacy with the man who scorned her. She ignored the smell, closed her eyes, and lifted the bottle to her lips.
She took a large, unskilled gulp.
The liquid hit her tongue like a physical assault. It wasn't just bitter; it was a chaotic storm of flavors—overwhelming tannins that dried her mouth, a sour acidity that made her jaw clench, and an alcoholic burn that roared down her throat. Her body rebelled instantly.
Spahw!
A violent, uncontrolled spray erupted from her mouth. The vile wine shot out, spattering across the space between them. Her face contorted, eyes squeezing shut, features tightening into a mask of pure, unadulterated revulsion. What a bitter drink.
In her convulsive reaction, she hadn't aimed. She hadn't thought.
She opened her watering eyes and the world froze.
The dark wine was dripping from Tiberius's chin. A few stray drops clung to the planes of his bare chest, tracing slow, glistening paths through the sparse hair and over the hard lines of his abdomen. His entire body had gone rigid. The bottle in his hand was clenched so tightly his knuckles were bone-white. His eyes, wide open, held a storm of emotion—first, a flash of pure, incredulous anger at the violation, followed swiftly by a deeper, more potent frustration. Frustration at her presence, at her lie, at her pathetic, messy intrusion into his one sanctuary.
Camilla's breath hitched. Slowly, as if moving through deep water, she raised her gaze to meet his. Mortification, cold and sharp, flooded her veins.
"S-sorry," she stammered, the word barely a whisper. Acting on a frantic, mindless impulse, she lunged forward. She tore off one of her fine silk gloves and pressed the bare fabric against his chest, swiping clumsily at the mess she'd made.
The moment her fingers, now only thinly separated from his skin by the damp silk, made contact, a jolt went through them both.
For Tiberius, it was the unexpected, maddening gentleness of the gesture amidst the violence of the moment, the soft, forbidden brush of a woman's touch on his bare skin in this den of shadows and conspiracy.
It ignited a fire in him. Not just anger, but something more dangerous—a raw, unwelcome spark of awareness, of connection in this place built for disconnection. His hand shot up, not to strike, but to seize her wrist, halting her frantic cleaning. His grip was firm, his skin hot against hers.
His grip on her wrist was a brand of heat and restraint. The word hung in the damp, wine-scented air between them, final and abrasive. Stop.
"I really didn't want to do that," she whispered, the forced composure of a crown princess fracturing into something more genuine—mortification. "I sincerely apologize." Her voice was small, a stark contrast to the defiance she'd entered with.
Slowly, carefully, she pulled her wrist from his grasp. The absence of his touch felt colder than the stone walls. Turning her back to him, she gathered the tattered remnants of her dignity like a fallen cloak and moved toward the heavy oak door of Get Lost. Each step was a retreat, an admission of defeat. She had come to outrun her humiliation and found only a deeper, more immediate variety.
Then his voice came again, not a growl this time, but laced with a cold, dismissive clarity that sliced deeper than any shout.
"This type of wine isn't meant for children."
Children.
The word did not just land; it detonated.
It tore through the fragile shield of her apology, through her cultivated poise, through the very core of her identity. Crown Princess Camilla. Betrothed. Future Queen. Not a child. Never a child. She had not endured Tenebrarum's coldness, the court's whispers, the violent knot of jealousy in her gut, to be dismissed as a child by his drunken, shirtless brother in a rat-infested hole.
Her feet, which had been carrying her toward escape, rooted themselves to the stone floor. The sound of her retreat ceased utterly.
A slow, almost imperceptible tremor began in her shoulders. It was not a tremor of fear or sadness, but of a fury so profound it threatened to liquefy her bones. The hand that had been reaching for the iron door handle curled into a white-knuckled fist, dropping to her side.
He thought her a child? A simpering, delicate thing who couldn't handle her drink or her emotions?
Very well.
She would show him precisely what a child could do.
Camilla turned. The movement was not swift, but deliberate, a queen pivoting to face a challenger. The tears and shock were gone from her face, burned away by a new, incandescent fire. Her striking blue eyes, now glazed with a hard, crystalline resolve, fixed on Tiberius. She did not look at the door. She looked past him, to the crate of bottles beside his damned chair.
Without a word, she strode back into the heart of the room. The air seemed to part for her, charged with a new, dangerous purpose. She was no longer a clumsy intruder. She was a force of reckoning, and her target was the bitter, "adult" wine in the bottle she had dropped.
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To be continued...