"Strip."
The word cracked like a whip, slicing the quiet.
The veiled maids lowered their heads even further, foreheads nearly kissing the stone floor.
Seraine didn't move.
The room pulsed — that strange, otherworldly sensation still humming through her veins from the elixir. Her heartbeat was thunder in her chest, but her spine held straight. Tall. Unyielding.
She hadn't come this far to bow.
The King stood across the chamber, cloaked in shadow, his face unreadable. A crown that looked more like barbed wire than gold coiled across his head. His presence devoured light. He didn't ask twice. He didn't need to.
But she wasn't his.
And she wasn't Elira Valein.
Seraine blinked slowly. "Why?" she asked softly, as if testing how far she could stretch the tension before it snapped.
One of the priests gasped.
The King tilted his head slightly. "So I may see what I've been offered."
A flash of something cruel curled at the edge of his lips — not quite a smile.
Seraine's throat tightened. Her fingers trembled under her sleeves, but she curled them into fists. They think I'm a bride. An offering. A lamb to lay across his altar.
She wasn't a lamb.
She was the fire that would burn the altar down.
Still, she moved.
Deliberate. Slow. As if her skin weighed more than stone. She undid the pearl clasp at her neck first, her pulse thundering in her ears. Then the ribbon at her waist. The fabric fell in silken waves, pooling at her feet like surrender.
But she did not look away.
She lifted her chin.
Let him see her. Let him wonder.
Let him try to understand why this girl — this bride — was no longer afraid.
The King's gaze swept over her, impassive. Cold. Not like a man looking at a woman. Like a monarch inspecting merchandise.
Then — a flicker.
It passed through his eyes too fast to catch. A fracture. A glitch.
He turned.
"Prepare her," he said, voice curt, already walking away.
The elders rose and began murmuring new prayers.
Seraine stood frozen, breath shallow.
But then—
A hand touched her shoulder. Not gently.
She turned.
The maid from earlier. The one with sharp eyes and an even sharper silence. Her veil didn't hide the suspicion simmering in her stare.
"She wasn't like this before," the woman murmured, almost to herself.
Seraine blinked. Caught?
But then the maid moved past her, efficient, brutal, binding her robe again in haste.
"You will be bathed in the Obsidian Pool," she said flatly. "Then taken to the Tower of Brides for the night."
Seraine said nothing. She couldn't trust her voice.
The ritual had begun.
And the game… was on.