Sera's POV
Her lungs burned as she ran deeper into the palace.
The corridor was narrower than the ones before, with walls that seemed to lean inward. Torches threw shadows across stone. She didn't know where she was anymore—only that she had left Castor and her father somewhere behind her, that her heart was still jackhammering against her ribs, that she had maybe minutes before they realized where she had gone.
She slowed, listening. No footsteps. No shouting. Just silence and her own ragged breathing.
She leaned against the wall to steady herself, pulling air into her lungs in painful gasps. Her elaborate hairpiece was slipping. One of her shoes had nearly come off. She didn't care. None of that mattered. What mattered was that she had bought herself time. What mattered was figuring out where the next exit was before Castor's men found her.
That was when she noticed how wrong the corridor felt.
The other passages in the palace had been narrower, more utilitarian, clearly built for servants to move invisibly through the gala's spaces. This corridor was different. The walls were finished stone, not plain brick. The torches were spaced perfectly. The air smelled like old books and something else she couldn't name. Important air. The kind of air that belonged to people who didn't need to justify their space.
She was somewhere she shouldn't be.
At the far end of the corridor, a man stood reading a document by candlelight.
He was tall. Broad. His clothes were plain and dark, the kind that didn't announce themselves but suggested someone who didn't need clothes to announce him. He held the document like it contained answers to questions the rest of the world hadn't asked yet. Everything about him suggested he was used to being exactly where he was, doing exactly what he was doing, without anyone questioning either.
Her breath caught.
It was him. The man from before. The one who had let her run.
Sera's first instinct was to turn back, to find another corridor, to escape before he could stop her again. But something about the way he stood, so perfectly still, so completely unbothered by her presence, made her pause.
He had to be a minor court official. High enough rank to have private corridors. Low enough rank that she might be able to bargain with him. Charm him. Distract him. The way she had learned to manipulate men her whole life by being small and polite and slightly useless.
Except she'd already tried that approach with him. And it hadn't worked.
Sera straightened her dress. She fixed her smile. She became the girl her father had tried to sell—composed, unthreatening, harmless. But this time, she walked toward him with purpose instead of panic.
"Excuse me," she said softly, her voice steady even though her hands were shaking. "I'm terribly lost. The gala is overwhelming, and I wandered away from my father. I can't find my way back."
The man looked up from his document. His eyes were gray. Not cold, exactly, but measuring. Like he was reading her the way he'd been reading the page. Like he could see through every layer of composure to the terrified girl underneath.
He set the document down on a nearby table. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he was giving her his full attention, and that attention was somehow more dangerous than anger would have been.
"Why are you running?" he asked.
His voice was quiet. Calm. But there was something underneath the calm that made her throat tighten. Something amused. Something dangerous. Something that suggested he knew she had been running, and that her story about being lost was exactly the kind of lie he heard often.
Sera considered lying more convincingly. She could tell him about an overbearing suitor. She could describe a family argument. She could offer any number of small, safe stories that wouldn't involve admitting that she was fleeing her own father.
But something about the way he was looking at her—like he was waiting to see what she actually was, underneath the costume, like her truth mattered to him—made her choose honesty instead.
"I'm being sold," she said, and the words came out steadier than she expected. "My father sold me to a man named Castor Drein to settle a gambling debt. The contract was supposed to be signed tonight. The man wants to use me for leverage. For information. For whatever purpose suits him. I decided I wouldn't accept that, so I left. I don't know where I am now, but I know I can't go back the way I came."
The man's expression didn't change. No shock. No sympathy. No judgment. He just looked at her while she stood there breathing hard, with her hair falling down and her carefully constructed composure shattered around her like broken glass.
He took a step toward her, and her breath caught.
"You told a stranger this," he said. Not a question.
"You seem like the kind of person who would appreciate the truth," Sera said, surprising herself. "And I'm running out of options. Either you help me, or you report me, or you do something else entirely. But lying to you didn't seem like it would work."
Something flickered in his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or recognition. Or something deeper that made her pulse quicken.
He was close to her now, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him, close enough that she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact. She was acutely aware of how much larger he was than her, how easily he could stop her if he wanted to. The knowledge should have terrified her.
Instead, it made her feel very alive.
"What's your name?" he asked, his voice lower now.
"Sera Aldwyn. Daughter of Viscount Aldwyn. Former daughter, possibly, depending on whether he wants to claim me after I've humiliated him."
The man studied her face like he was memorizing something. His gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth to the frantic pulse at the base of her throat. She felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with her father or Castor or the danger she was in.
"Do you know where you are?" he asked.
"The palace," Sera said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Beyond that, no."
"This is the Emperor's private wing," he said, and his voice was very quiet now. "The corridors you've been running through belong to him exclusively. The servants who work here are specifically chosen. The guards who patrol here know every shadow."
Sera felt her stomach drop again. She had run from one trap straight into something worse.
But she didn't move away from him.
"I should leave," she said, turning to go.
The man's hand came up, not grabbing her, just signaling her to stop. His fingers came close to her arm but didn't touch. The non-contact was somehow more intimate than a grip would have been. She stopped.
"You told me the truth," he said. "When you could have lied. When lying would have been smarter. That's unusual."
Sera waited, not understanding. Not trusting herself to speak while he was this close.
"My name is Kael Voss," he said, and there was something final about the way he said it. Like he was naming a law instead of introducing himself. "I'm the man your father tried to sell you to. I'm the reason Castor Drein is angry right now. And I'm the only one in this palace who can actually help you."
The world tilted.
She tried to speak but no sound came. She tried to move but her legs had stopped obeying her. She had spent her entire life reading people, understanding power structures, calculating her way through rooms filled with dangerous men.
She had just told everything to the most dangerous man in the empire, and she had done it thinking he was someone powerless.
His gray eyes held hers. They were closer now, his face closer, and she realized he was studying her the way she studied him. Like she mattered. Like her reaction to him mattered.
"The question now," he said softly, "is what I do with you."
His hand reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her face. The touch was gentle. Careful. Completely unexpected. She realized she was holding her breath.
Behind them, a door opened. Guards poured into the corridor, weapons drawn. Not searching anymore. Coming directly for them. The moment shattered.
Sera realized in that moment that she hadn't escaped at all.
She had simply changed whose prisoner she was.
And that might be exactly what she wanted.