Ravena moaned again, louder this time, her hips rocking on his lap.

That was it. Aeris couldn't take it.

The scraping sound of the gaming chair's legs on the polished floor was loud in the suddenly quiet room.

Zaeryn and Ravena stopped realizing that they had forgotten about the third person in the room. Ravena's head snapped up, her green eyes wide and hazy with lust, her cheeks flushed.

Aeris stood there, her arms crossed, but her posture wasn't just angry; it was... needy. The look in her eyes was a burning mix of frustration and raw arousal.

"Hello?" Aeris said, her voice strained, a little sharper than she intended. "Am I just invisible? Or am I supposed to be the audience for... whatever this is?"

Ravena, still straddling Zaeryn's lap, didn't even flinch. A slow, supremely confident smile spread across her face. She looked down at Zaeryn, then back at Aeris, a silent, territorial claim.

"I don't know, Aeris," Ravena purred, deliberately rolling her hips in a slow, sensual circle that made Zaeryn hiss through his teeth. "Are you just going to watch?" Her green eyes sparkled with a taunt. "Well, no one is stopping you. You can join us."

Aeris's breath hitched. She'd expected a fight, or for them to stop, embarrassed. Before she could form a reply, before her own pride could make her say no, Zaeryn acted.

With Ravena still on his lap, Zaeryn turned. His hands snaked out, one sliding around Aeris's waist, the other cupping her ass through her lounge shorts. He gave a powerful tug. "Come here."

Aeris gasped, her balance gone, and toppled sideways onto the bed, landing right against his side. The scent of her, clean, familiar, and now sharp with her own arousal filled his senses.

"You heard her," Zaeryn rumbled, his voice thick with arousal, his hand not leaving her ass. "Join us." he pulled her into a kiss.

Simultaneously, somewhere else,

The corridor outside the Queen's Royal Sanctum breathed with the weight of centuries.

The air hung heavy and motionless, cold enough to bite at exposed skin. The very walls seemed to absorb sound, creating a suffocating silence broken only by the whisper of Viora's breathing.

She stood before the towering doors seamless constructs of adamantium reinforced with veins of weirwood, their surface so perfectly polished they functioned as a warped mirror. In that distorted reflection, Viora saw herself: a pale, furious ghost rendered in shades of silver and shadow, her ice-blue eyes burning with barely contained rage.

She didn't see a princess in that reflection. She saw the face of a traitor's daughter.

The title sat on her tongue like poison. Her mother's treason, bearing a male child, and giving birth to him, threatened the purity of the Lumina bloodline. Her aunt's complicity in hiding the secret, protecting the guilty, making herself an accomplice to betrayal. And now, her own forced silence.

It was a corruption seeping into the foundations of everything she'd been taught to believe. Everything she'd sworn to protect.

But the final, festering wound the one that burned just as hot in her chest as the one her own mother caused, was thel, Queen.

Her grandmother. The ruler of this queendom. The one person in the entire Dominion who was supposed to be the law incarnate, the living symbol of the Matriarchal Order, the uncompromising guardian of their way of life. The woman who should have torn this cancer out by the roots the moment it was discovered.

Instead, she had chosen burial. Secrecy. Complicity through silence.

That betrayal cut deeper than all the others combined.

Viora needed to hear it from her directly. She needed to look the Matriarch in the eye and see the truth or the lie for herself. She needed to understand, why did the Queen let this secret carry on.

Two Sentinels of the Royal Guard flanked the entrance like statues given breath. They were dressed in flawless silver armor that seemed to absorb ambient light rather than reflect it, creating an almost supernatural effect as if they existed slightly outside normal reality. Their faces were hidden behind mirrored helms that rendered them completely impersonal, inhuman, impossible to read.

They stood with the absolute stillness that only came from decades of discipline, as motionless as the marble statues of ancient Matriarchs that lined the hall behind them.

"Announce me," Viora said, her voice cutting through the silence like a blade. Each word was perfectly controlled, flat and cold. "I need to see the Queen. Now."

The guard on the right didn't move. When she spoke, her voice came out filtered through the helm metallic, emotionless, absolute. "The Matriarch is in a private meeting, Your Highness. She's not receiving visitors for the rest of the afternoon."

"This is not a social visit," Viora said, stepping forward.

Both guards moved instantly. Force-pikes humming with dangerous blue charge snapped into a perfect X across her path.

The message was clear: Not one step further.

Viora's eyes narrowed, her jaw clenching. Cold smoke began rising from her fingers as ice formed.

"Tell Her Majesty," Viora said, her voice dropping to that dangerous register every Warlady learned the tone that promised violence, "that Princess Viora Lumina is here on a matter of immediate concern to the security of the royal bloodline. It's urgent. It can't wait."

"Our orders are absolute, Your Highness," the first guard repeated, something almost apologetic in the mechanical tone but no hesitation, no room for negotiation.

"The Queen gave explicit instructions not to be disturbed under any circumstances. No exceptions."

"I'm a Princess of the Blood," Viora hissed, her control finally cracking, fury boiling over. "I'm her granddaughter. I'm not some petitioner to be dismissed at the door!"

The guards didn't move, force-pikes steady.

"I'm not," Viora continued, voice rising despite herself, "going to be dismissed like a child throwing a tantrum. This concerns the integrity of the Lumina line. Succession. Treason."

The word hung between them like a detonated grenade.

Still, the guards didn't waver.

"Announce me," Viora demanded one last time, voice shaking now not with fear, but barely restrained rage. "Or I swear by Marea herself, by every oath I've taken and every drop of royal blood in my veins, I'll announce myself."

Her hands tightened. For one crystalline moment, she genuinely considered it. Fighting them. Forcing her way through.

The guards shifted, reading her intent, preparing to respond with force.

The standoff stretched, tension coiling tighter.

Then, from behind the doors, a voice powerful, unmistakably commanding cut through.

"Let her in."

The force-pikes retracted immediately. The guards stepped aside. The doors began to open with a deep hum Viora felt in her bones.

Viora took a breath, forcing her hand away from her blade, smoothing her expression back into something resembling composure.

She stepped forward into the Queen's sanctum.

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