Sabine thought the woman was mad at first. The idea sat wrong in her gut, reckless and dangerous. Then the irritation set in, sharp and petty, and she realized exactly how much she liked it. After all the times Viktor had made her serve Genevieve with a polite smile and clenched teeth, this felt like a small, well-earned mess.

She unfolded her other arms and went to work, fingers moving with ritual precision as she wove a new look for Ayoka, thread and intention stitched together until the outfit whispered trouble. Then she called for Benoît and sent him a message to the staff. Ayoka would be taking the tray that night. Anyone who complained could enjoy a week of field work instead.

That night, Ayoka took the tray herself. Before she left the room, she paused and turned back to Sabine.

“Thank you,” Ayoka said quietly. “For this. For trusting me. For not treating me like I was above you.”

Sabine snorted softly. “We are grateful for you too, cher. Truth is, when Viktor first made you his doll, we thought you’d turn out like the rest. Lookin’ down on us because you were closer to him.”

She hesitated, then added more gently, “Even I got jealous. Not of the room or the silk. Just… the way an older sister gets jealous of the baby one. It passes.”

Ayoka nodded, eyes lowered. “I was jealous of you too. For obvious reasons. But let’s not dwell on it.”

Sabine smiled, real this time. “When Genevieve came around, though, that reminded all of us who we were standing next to. And who we weren’t.”

Ayoka took a steady breath, then stepped into the hall with the tray. She walked down the hallway with her hips steady, her breath shallow but controlled, her heart drumming low and hot beneath her ribs. The glassware was carved from pale jade, cool and heavy in her hands, and the bottle was different from last time. Even before she reached the study, she caught the sweetness in the air. Viktor, she had learned, carried a sweet tooth even into his drinks. 

She wore a uniform that whispered seduction without shouting it. Deep navy trimmed in white lace, like a maid’s attire pressed and polished for high society. It hugged her waist with precision, flared just enough at the hips, and the bodice dipped low without revealing too much. Just enough to catch the light. Just enough to suggest rather than show. It was proper, technically, but no eye could pass it by without wondering.

As she neared the study, she paused. Something curled around her ankles, mist perhaps. No, smoke. Pale gray tendrils rose just above the floor. She blinked, looked down, and it vanished. The door creaked open before she could knock.

Inside, Viktor wore a sleek, dark suit that clung to his broad frame like shadow to bone. The fabric stretched across his shoulders, every tailored line accentuating the power beneath. His sleeves were rolled just enough to reveal forearms roped with muscle, veins pronounced as he moved. Each stroke of the whetstone across the axe blade was slow and deliberate, as though he were taming something feral with every pass.

The motion was rhythmic, almost hypnotic. His jaw flexed with focus, beard trimmed sharp along his chin like the edge of a warlord’s promise. Ayoka’s breath caught slightly. There was something in the way his copper eyes shimmered beneath the low light, half predator, half priest. When he finally looked up, he did not speak. He raised an eyebrow, curious but silent, his entire body language a challenge wrapped in calm hunger.

Ayoka said nothing either. She approached the desk with quiet grace and began to pour his whiskey. As she leaned forward, her breasts brushed the edge of the table, prominent and purposeful. The cut of her uniform made the movement feel like a deliberate offering.

The closeness, the way Viktor watched her, reminded Ayoka of a Roman sea captain she had once been forced to entertain at night, an immortal man who still called himself human. He had been strange and ancient, his skin marked with tattoos of water gods and sea mothers pulled from many shores.

Superstitious to the point of reverence, he kept her close but untouched when he saw the swell of her belly. He claimed that harming a pregnant woman at sea would curse a ship.

He spoke instead of Japanese sea spirits and gods, of Ryūjin who ruled the deep and watched the tides, and of Funayūrei, the ghosts of those who died at sea. He believed that the waters remembered cruelty, that harming a pregnant woman would draw the attention of angry kami, and that the loss of unborn children weighed heavily on the ocean itself.

In his world, dead babies polluted the waves with grief and rage, and no cargo was worth inviting that curse.

Viktor watched her again, eyes burning like coals that remembered fire. He did not stop her. He simply observed, as though her body spoke a language he was deciding whether to understand or conquer. He took the glass from her and sipped slowly, deliberately, never breaking eye contact. The sweetness pulled him fully back into the room.

In his mind, a thousand calculations turned. She was playing a game, and he was letting her, for now. He knew history well. Some enslaved people had risen to influence not through rebellion, but through proximity. Seduction. Strategy. Cunning masked as service. He remembered a story buried deep in dusty pages, the tale of Ebed-Melech, a Cushite eunuch who served under King Zedekiah. A foreigner. A servant. Yet it was he who dared speak truth to the king, who pulled the prophet Jeremiah from a cistern and secured a divine promise of safety. Power hidden in loyalty. A servant who became a symbol of righteousness in chaos.

He had seen echoes of that pattern in journals, in court whispers, in bitter laughter at dinner tables. The game itself never changed, but the outcome sometimes did. Even kings had fallen for those they claimed to own, whether by love, manipulation, or raw need. Viktor understood that well. This was one of the few ways someone in chains could still fight. Ayoka was not asking for power. She was testing whether she could earn it, or survive it.

And yet, he could not deny the pull. The shape of her. The challenge in her silence. The defiance tucked into the corners of her mouth. She offered tension, not surrender.

Viktor understood the game well enough to bite. He wanted to see how far she was willing to go, and how far he himself could take it without crossing a line that could not be uncrossed. It would have to start small. Simple. A test that could still be taken back.

Behind him, his shadow curled and smirked, already amused by the choice he was about to make.

He patted his lap. “Sit. Right here.”

Her stomach fluttered. The moment thickened, uncertain. She paused, not because she feared him, but because this too was a power move. Sitting meant playing into his hands. Refusing might ruin the hand she was building.

Another memory tugged at the edges of her thoughts, one from an old tale Sabine once whispered by candlelight. A myth of three lovers, each in love with the same person, each willing to share that love in secret. When the beloved left, the endings were not equal. One lover found peace and the life she wanted. The second was cast into sorrow, her love turned tragedy. The third escaped unnoticed, untouched, free as wind. No love lost. No pain claimed. Ayoka remembered the story not for the romance, but because she did not know which lover she might become.

The idea twisted in her belly. What if this was not about love or power, but survival written in the ink of desire. What if she could walk away untouched, unpunished, if she played her cards just right.

So she stood there, weighing history, myth, and instinct in the silence between them.

She hesitated. He saw it. His eyes narrowed with quiet disappointment. It reminded him of a night not long ago, when she had offered herself to him. Her body had been willing then, but her eyes had waited for something else, something unseen. In that stillness, even the shadows had whispered, Not yet.

He remembered thinking he would take her that night. Something stopped him. Perhaps instinct. Perhaps the gods Ayoka had stopped praying to. Or perhaps it was the way her body seemed willing while her mind hesitated, tethered by invisible chains.

He had heard stories from his incubus acquaintances, a bonded pair who once worked court contracts. They said sex was a job to them, a transaction of energy rather than emotion. Even they could feel the difference between consent offered in desperation and consent given in power. The body might move. The lips might part. But the mind told the truth. Too often, people offered their bodies with eyes that whispered that they would pay the cost if it kept them safe.

That night, Ayoka had offered him her body, but her spirit had been curled somewhere far away, still watching and measuring. He had felt it. The tension. The waiting. The shadows had whispered again, Not yet.

So he had walked away. Not because he did not want her, but because he wanted all of her. Now, as she stood before him, spine taut and eyes steady, he wondered if this was the moment. Real consent. Not survival. Not submission. Choice.

This time, she was not acting. She was deciding. The hesitation was still there, but it was thinner now. He needed to see which way she would lean. His voice cooled, sharpened just enough to press. “I do not like repeating myself. If you are not going to sit, leave.”

She stepped forward and sank into his lap. Before she did, Viktor calmly set the axe aside, sliding it into a nearby sheath with quiet precision. He placed it where she could reach it with ease, close enough to acknowledge, not threaten

His body was warm and solid, his chest steady against her back. He leaned forward and rested his head between her breasts, as though they were a pillow carved for him alone. She felt his breath on her skin, hot and slow, and her own breath faltered.

She reached up and gently stroked his hair once, like testing the edge of a blade or daring herself to touch fire. It was a small rebellion wrapped in tenderness. Viktor’s hands slid to her thighs, not gripping, not claiming, but pressing with the same absent curiosity someone might use to test the softness of a well-loved teddy bear. A quiet assessment. He lifted his head and looked up at her with a knowing smirk. Her heart beat faster. The game lived in every glance between them.

“What does my little snake want,” he asked softly, his voice low and deliberate. “Is this about the boy, or are you here for yourself tonight.”

Ayoka matched his energy with a sweet, calculated smile. “Nothing much,” she said, her voice dipping into something sultry and sharp. “I noticed your guest seems to be giving you trouble. I thought I would offer a bit of relief.”

He stared, gaze slow and assessing, and understood all at once. Ayoka had played this game before. He did not dislike that. Perhaps because history had taught him the same lesson again and again. In this land, people in chains were rarely free the moment a door opened. Families stayed rooted where they had suffered, not because they loved their captors, but because leaving meant abandoning kin, memory, and what little stability they had carved out. Freedom required tools, yes, but it also demanded the strength to walk away from everyone you knew.

Viktor had offered release before. Some took it. Many did not. Even when he offered the same tools, the same protections, it was rarely simple. More than once, he had been forced to speak with his patron, to guide those who accepted freedom toward a place where the shadows gathered thick and quiet, a crossing meant to shield them from what hunted the newly unbound.

It was never the chains alone that held people, but blood, habit, fear, and the quiet hope that survival was easier than exile. He understood that truth well. This, too, was a way people fought when they were not allowed to fight openly. Ayoka was not asking for power. She was testing how much ground she could claim without being pushed out of the only world she had left.

She moved between his knees with practiced ease. Her movements were fluid and deliberate. She poured him another measure and, in one smooth motion, rested the jade cup between her breasts, holding it there as she looked down at him.

“You need another drink, Master Viktor?” she asked, voice light, almost courteous.

Viktor took the glass from its place with unhurried precision. “I will tell the others you may bring drinks most nights,” he said evenly. “Not all. There are matters I attend to that do not require an audience.”

She nodded once in understanding. His hands returned to her thighs, this time lingering longer, the touch more intentional than before. Not a grip. An assessment that carried heat instead of curiosity.

So she arrived dressed modestly beneath moonless skies, quiet fabric and steady step. When the moon climbed high and sharp, she wore danger stitched in silk. Mystery and promise clung to her like heat. Not sex yet. Just the assurance of something that would not be tamed.