I walked the garden paths alone, trying to escape the echo of Rios's words, but they clung to me like morning mist.
Each step took me further from the palace, yet I couldn't outrun the growing certainty that my carefully constructed world was unraveling thread by thread.
I didn't want to admit anything, not to myself, not to him, not to anyone.
But the longer I remained in Aurelion, the more my lifelong certainties crumbled like sand castles at high tide.
"Princess Penelope."
I turned to find Prince Luka approaching from the direction of the terrace, his stride elegant and purposeful. He looked perfectly composed in his tailored morning coat, but something in his amber eyes suggested careful calculation.
"Your Highness." I offered a curtsy that felt stiff and mechanical.
"I was hoping to find you." His tone was light, conversational, but I caught the undercurrent of something sharper. "I waited for you last night. In the Gardens."
"I…” Heat flooded my cheeks. “Forgive me, Your Highness, I wasn't feeling well. The excitement of the ball, perhaps."
Luka's smile was understanding, but his eyes searched mine with uncomfortable intensity.
"The court noticed your absence. Some were... curious about your sudden indisposition."
The words carried weight I didn't want to examine. "I hope I didn't cause offense."
"Not offense, no." He moved closer, his voice dropping to something more intimate. "But I find myself increasingly curious about what lies beneath that composed exterior of yours, Princess. What truly moves you? What do you desire when no one is watching?"
The questions felt like arrows aimed at vulnerabilities I was still discovering. "I... perhaps we could discuss this another time?"
His disappointment was subtle but unmistakable, a slight tightening around his eyes, the barely perceptible stiffening of his shoulders. "Of course. Another time."
He bowed and walked away, leaving me standing there with the uncomfortable knowledge that I was failing at something I didn't fully understand.
Later, in Rios's chamber, the atmosphere had shifted like the air before a storm. He was different today, colder, more clinical than I'd ever seen him.
Gone was the careful control I'd grown accustomed to, replaced by something sharper and more dangerous.
"Sit," he commanded without looking up from his journal. I took my usual chair, but the familiar routine felt suddenly precarious. "Is it easier to hide behind a prince's affection than face yourself?"
The words hit their mark with devastating accuracy. I shot to my feet, anger blazing through me like wildfire.
"You think you're so clever, don't you? Manipulating me, pushing me toward some predetermined breaking point for your own amusement?"
He didn't deny it. Instead, he stood slowly, his expression unreadable.
"Yes," he said simply. "I am manipulating you. Every lesson, every question, every moment of discomfort is carefully orchestrated to strip away the lies you tell yourself."
His honesty was more shocking than any denial would have been.
"Why?" The question came out as barely a whisper.
Something shifted in his expression then, the clinical mask slipping to reveal something raw underneath. When he spoke again, his voice carried a weight I'd never heard before.
"Because you think pleasure is submission. You've been taught that wanting something makes you weak, that desire is degradation." He moved to the window, his wing catching the afternoon light. "For the Fae, it was survival."
"What do you mean?"
"Our magic was rooted in sensation, in freedom, in the power that comes from understanding ourselves completely." His voice grew quieter, more distant. "They took our wings, bound our magic, tried to make us ashamed of what we were. But they couldn't take what we truly were, beings who understood that pleasure and power were the same thing."
The words landed differently than anything he'd said before. Not seductive, not manipulative. Just honest in a way that made my chest ache.
He turned back to me, and in that moment, something flickered across his face—something not meant for me to see.
Not just authority. Not just control. Pain.
Ancient, carefully buried, but unmistakable. And then, like a lock snapping back into place, his expression shifted. Guarded. Cool.
“Follow me,” Rios said, voice flat.
He led me through corridors I'd never seen, down hidden passages that seemed to exist in the palace's secret heart.
We emerged into a private room behind the Pleasure Gardens, its walls draped in silk and lit by candles that cast dancing shadows.
What I saw there stole the breath from my lungs.
A noblewoman lay reclined on silk cushions, blindfolded but serene, her body completely bare. Two Fae Adepts moved around her—male and female—their touches deliberate, practiced. Reverent.
Their hands glided along her arms, her thighs, her throat. Every movement was slow, sensual, as though they were painting pleasure into her skin with their fingers alone.
No shame. No violence. Just surrender—not to them, but to sensation itself.
“This is what you were never meant to see,” came Rios’s voice, low and close behind me.
I turned sharply. He stood just inches away, eyes locked on mine, unreadable as ever.
“But you needed to witness it,” he murmured.
I couldn't answer. My heart was pounding, but not from shock or fear. I said nothing. My mouth had gone dry. But something inside me—that quiet, coiled place—began to unwind.
“You’re not afraid of the act,” he said, circling behind me, his voice a silk thread against the base of my spine. “You’re afraid of what it might reveal. That you are capable of wanting. That you can hunger for something that’s yours alone.”
I stood there in the candlelit room, watching shadows dance across silk, and felt something fundamental shift inside me. Then, he added softly: “Turn around.”
When I did, Rios pressed closer—not touching—until his breath danced along the curve of my neck.
“I want you to feel what they feel,” he said, each word molten. “Not just observe it. Feel it.”
His hands rose—hovering, waiting. Yet I gave no protest.
He touched my hips first. Barely there, just a whisper of contact through the sheer fabric of my gown, and somehow, it felt like being set aflame.
He trailed upward slowly, sliding the fabric from my shoulders, letting it fall. My breath hitched as cool air touched bare skin.
His hands grazed the sides of my waist, then traced up over my ribs.
“Stay still,” he murmured, voice now behind me, in my ear, inside me. “Let me teach you the language of touch.”
He slid his palms over my breasts—not groping, not possessive. Exploring.
His thumbs circled the peaks, slow and teasing, coaxing them to stiffen beneath his fingers. I gasped, my body arching against him.
He was hard, I could feel it through the thin layers between us, but he made no move to take, only to show.
Down, his hands trailed. Over my stomach. To the heat between my thighs.
He touched me the way I’d seen the Adepts touch their master—fingers gentle, gliding, commanding. I shivered as one hand slid lower, cupping me through the thin silk, then pressing. Knowing.
His fingers moved with maddening precision—circling, grazing, never rushing.
He kept me clothed, but just barely. The sheer silk clung to my damp skin, now translucent where arousal bloomed. His palm cupped me again through it, and I cried out softly, biting my lip to smother the sound.
Rios pressed his hand firmer against my core, and my legs nearly buckled but he caught me with an arm around my waist, holding me steady.
“You’re already wet, Princess,” he whispered, his lips grazing the pulse point in my neck. “All from watching. From wanting. And now you're going to feel exactly what you’ve been craving.”
“I shouldn’t…” I gasped, even as my hips rolled forward, instinctive, helpless.
“But you do,” he said. “And that’s what terrifies you.”