The portal unfurled onto herringbone parquet waxed to a conspiratorial gleam with a soft lustre.

Phei stepped through first while Cassiopeia followed a precise half-step behind, her presence a silent.

The void sealed itself behind them with the polite hush of air remembering its own shape, leaving the pair standing dead-centre in what the federal paperwork still insisted—on paper—was a prison cell.

But the actual reality suggested otherwise!

The room was an obscenity of comfort.

Twenty-foot ceilings caught recessed lighting in warm amber pools that made everything look expensive and slightly guilty.

Two cream-leather couches cradled a low glass table bearing a crystal decanter of Macallan and two tumblers still faintly misted from recent use. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed a private garden ringed by wrought iron so elegant it might have been commissioned for a country club rather than any detention facility.

A television the size of a modest billboard floated above an ethanol fireplace that flickered with blue, odourless flame.

In one corner a king bed waited beneath a silk comforter the colour of fresh cream; in another, a kitchenette gleamed with an espresso machine, a wine fridge, and a bowl of fruit so artfully arranged it had clearly been rotated within the last twelve hours by someone who understood that presentation was its own form of power.

The door—discreet, digital, almost apologetic—hinted that somewhere beyond its matte-black panel, this building still technically counted as a prison.

Kyle Abrams-Manson reclined on one couch in a silk dressing gown, navy lounge pants slung low on his hips, scrolling a phone he was absolutely not authorised to possess while popping grapes into his mouth like a man who had never once tasted consequence.

He froze mid-chew.

Looked up.

Saw them.

The phone slipped from his fingers, bounced off his knee, and landed face-down on the carpet with a soft, damning thud.

The grape remained lodged in his cheek like a hostage.

"Oh, don’t stop on our account," Phei said, hands in his pockets, strolling two lazy steps into the room as though he’d arrived for a scheduled lunch rather than a prison break-in.

"Finish the grape. You look positively relaxed."

Kyle’s jaw unhinged in slow motion.

"Phei."

"Mm."

"Phei."

"In the flesh. With a guest." Phei gestured lazily at Cassiopeia, who drifted to his side with the quiet, lethal attention and had already catalogued every exit, every camera angle, and every breakable bone in Kyle’s body. "You remember my aunt I am sure."

Kyle’s eyes flicked to her. Cassiopeia offered the smallest, most polite smile imaginable—barely a curve of the lips, yet somehow more threatening than a drawn blade.

Kyle swallowed the grape. It did not improve his expression.

"How did you—" His voice cracked. He tried again, reaching for the old Legacy-heir snap that had once commanded boardrooms. "How the fuck did you get in here, Maxton?"

Phei tilted his head, amused. "Maxton? Still clinging to that little fiction? How sweet."

"I—"

"Don’t get up. You look so comfortable."

Phei crossed to the opposite couch at an unhurried pace, trailing his fingertips along the leather as though appraising a purchase he already owned, then lowered himself with the easy proprietary slouch of a man visiting his own home.

Cassiopeia seated herself beside him—close enough that her knee nearly brushed his, far enough that her attention remained visibly, silently, and entirely fixed on Kyle.

Kyle had not moved.

Kyle had apparently forgotten how.

Phei picked up one of the tumblers, sniffed it, and made a small appreciative sound. "Is this Macallan Thirty?"

Kyle said nothing.

"It is. Wow. Your warden has exquisite taste."

"Phei." Kyle’s voice had dropped, steadied—regrouping, reaching for the script he’d been trained to use. "Whatever you came here to do—whatever you think you’re—"

"Kyle."

"Let me finish—"

"Kyle."

"What."

Phei smiled at him over the rim of the glass, the expression warm and utterly pitiless.

"You’re stuttering."

Kyle shut up.

"It’s all right. Take your time. Gather yourself. I’m not in any hurry." Phei glanced sideways. "Are you in a hurry, Cassi?"

"Not at all, Master." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

That single word did something fascinating to Kyle’s face. His eyes darted between them, the polite, unforced Master on Cassiopeia Maxton’s tongue registering somewhere between deeply strange and deeply, deeply wrong for the world he thought he lived in.

He did not ask. He was a coward, not an idiot.

Phei let the silence breathe.

Then, almost conversationally, he looked around the room—at the soaring ceilings, the espresso machine, the fireplace, the bed, the garden beyond the glass, the decanter still in his hand, the grape bowl.

"How is it?"

Kyle took his time to answer, not sure what the dragon wanted

"Take your time answering," he said. "I have all night. And you, apparently, have all the time in the world."

"How is what." He finally answered.

"Prison."

Kyle’s jaw tightened until the muscle leapt beneath the skin. His fingers curled into the leather of the couch, knuckles whitening.

For a moment the only sound was the soft hiss of the ethanol flames and the distant, polite hum of the climate control.

Phei’s smile unfurled like the languid petals of some nocturnal bloom, warm yet edged with the quiet promise of the grave.

"You must be devastated, Kyle." His voice dripped honey laced with hemlock. "Three repasts worthy of Olympus itself, the liquid gold of Macallan sliding down your throat, a hearth crackling with the illusion of home, and your own private Eden blooming beyond the bars.

"Such exquisite hardship when they pried the belt from your trembling hands. Did you weep into your monogrammed sheets, I wonder? Did the loss of that humble noose reduce you to tears?"

"Phei—"

"I must confess," Phei continued, gesturing with the languid grace of a conductor summoning a requiem.

"I had conjured an entirely different portrait of your incarceration. An orange shroud of shame, a cell shared with some brute whose tattoos told stories best left unread, perhaps a brisk side-trade in pilfered cigarettes to while away the endless nights. Instead—"

His hand swept the obscene opulence of the chamber, the silk robe pooling like spilled moonlight, the crystal decanter winking like a courtesan’s eye, the grapes glistening as though they had never known the indignity of soil

"—the Four Seasons in all its gilded mockery. I am honestly relieved. I had feared for you, truly. The thought of my old friend reduced to mere mortality was almost too much to bear."