Phei’s slow internal smile widened into something feral and glittering, a crescent moon of pure, delighted malice rising behind his eyes. ’You are ahead of the curve, sure Danton. Sure, you are at the head of the curve like a man already measuring the coffin while the mourners argue over the floral arrangements. How droll. How exquisitely, absurdly droll.’

"I should get back to him, Prince," Cassiopeia said, pitching her voice lower now, letting a note of performative tension creep in. "He’ll come looking for me if I’m gone much longer."

"One last thing." Harold’s voice was cool steel. "Tonight — is tonight going to be the night?"

"No. He’s tired. So am I. I’ll lie next to him. Let him hold me. We have days on this island. The Prince’s right. We don’t rush."

A small pause. Then — carefully, as though the words cost him something — Harold produced actual praise.

"You are handling this well, sis."

"I’m aware... I sure do not need your praise, brother."

"I did not think you would."

"There’s the brain cell."

"Cassiopeia."

"What."

"...Come home tomorrow."

"I know."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, brother. Father. Prince."

The line clicked dead.

Cassiopeia set the phone down face-up on the couch.

Stared at it for one beat.

Then collapsed sideways against Phei’s chest, laughing — quiet, shaking, joyful, helpless laughter that rippled through her whole body and down into his.

He wrapped his arm around her and laughed with her.

"Oh my God, Master."

"I know."

"Oh my God."

"I know."

’Behold the dutiful sister.’

"You are handling this well, he said. To me. The sister he has been personally trying to professionally fight against for inheritance sixteen years. The sister he has publicly questioned the loyalty of at multiple Legacy dinners."

"Yiu did well."

"Harold. Harold. Handing me a compliment. Through gritted teeth. While actively bleeding out internally from the effort of it."

"The pain of him."

"The pain of him, Master. You do not understand. My brother hates me. My brother has hated me since we were seven years old and I beat him at chess in front of our mother. The only thing more inconceivable than Harold praising me over the phone tonight is Harold praising me over the phone with witnesses."

"He did it because you’re useful."

"He did it because I’m useful, exactly. Which is the only register of warmth he has ever been capable of producing toward me, and even that required three men at his elbow watching him struggle to form the sentence."

"Cassiopeia—"

"I want you to know, Master, that he would cheerfully step over my corpse on the main staircase of the Maxton estate if I collapsed in front of him carrying a glass of water he wanted. That is our relationship. That has always been our relationship. And just now he said we are with you to me, on a phone line, with feeling. I am genuinely emotional."

"You’re going to cry."

"I am absolutely going to cry. From laughing."

He kissed the top of her wet hair, the gesture absurdly tender against the backdrop of their shared, glittering malice.

She turned her face up to his and kissed his jaw — slow, lingering, a small soft thank-you of a kiss that had nothing to do with the performance she had just staged and everything to do with being held after the storm of it.

"Master."

"Mm?"

"Did I do well?"

"You did exquisitely, my dear," Phei answered. "You should consider an Oscar run."

"I already have one spiritually."

"Obviously."

She settled her cheek against his chest, her fingers toying idly with the hem of his shirt, and for a few soft seconds they simply breathed together — two predators sharing the same quiet before the hunt.

Phei’s thoughts moved like deep water: the dutiful sister, fresh from lying to her own blood about the man whose hand still rested on her thigh, now curled against him like the world’s most dangerous housecat.

Then — inevitably, the way every quiet moment in his life inevitably ended — she tilted her face up toward him again.

"It’s time, isn’t it."

"Nearly."

"The target?"

"The target."

"The reason my dragon is sleeping without his harem tonight."

"That would be the reason, yes," he said, and the dark humour of it curled through him like smoke.

She sighed — theatrical, put-upon, a performance for an audience of one.

"Well. Let’s not keep them waiting."

He sat up slightly, pulling Cassiopeia with him.

She uncurled from his chest and rose in one smooth motion, the robe sliding back toward something approaching respectable. She caught the chopstick as it finally surrendered its post and let her damp hair fall loose down her back. She shook it out once. Water droplets scattered like tiny accusations.

"Give me six minutes," she said. "I need to dress for where we’re going."

"Where we’re going," Phei repeated, amused. "As if you already know."

"Of course I already know." She smiled at him over her shoulder, walking backward toward the bedroom with the slow, unhurried confidence of a woman doing him the courtesy of letting him watch. "You told me two days ago."

"I told you, generally."

"You told me enough, Master. I’ll dress for it."

"Six minutes."

"Six minutes."

She disappeared through the bedroom door.

Phei rose from the couch. Stretched once. Felt the satisfying small crack along his spine that reminded him he had, technically, been travelling for twelve hours and should probably feel more tired than he did.

He didn’t.

He felt, instead, extraordinarily focused. Extraordinarily awake. Extraordinarily ready—

He crossed to the wide window and looked out across the dark sprawl of Hell’s Paradise Island — the lake gleaming black, the city glittering along its edges, the distant forest pressing up against the outer rim like a wall of mythic ink.

The window’s mirrored surface gave him back a faint reflection of himself, amethyst eyes catching the low lamp behind him, and for a second he met his own gaze and held it.

Something inside him was humming... something that had been quietly waking under his skin since the moment he had pressed his thumb to Jonathan Montgomery’s forehead this afternoon and spoken the words that rewrote a grown man’s soul.

A low, patient, draconic anticipation, coiled around the base of his spine, purring at the knowledge that tonight he would use that same power again — on the one person he had promised himself would feel every ounce of it.

His mouth curved.

Six minutes later — because Cassiopeia was, among every other thing she had decided to excel at recently, punctual — the bedroom door opened.

Phei turned.

And his breath caught.

"Oh," he said quietly. "Oh, my dear, little slave."

Cassiopeia stood framed in the bedroom doorway. Dressed, as promised. Dressed for it.

The robe was gone. She had replaced it with something clean-lined and severe — tailored, high-collared, a dark fitted piece that moved the second she did. It carried unmistakable professional gravity: the specific armour one wore when one was about to walk into a building that legally should not allow one in and walk back out having done what one had come to do.

Her dark hair was pulled back in a single low, sleek knot.

Her mouth was painted a muted, dangerous red.

Her dark eyes held his across the living room with quiet, amused composure. She had done her half of the homework and was now waiting patiently for her partner to match her energy.

"Master."

"Mm."

"Stop staring. We have a schedule."

"We have a schedule but..."

She started toward him across the marble.