Finn stared at the woman on the throne.

The woman on the throne did not stare back.

She was examining the chamber. Her gaze swept the broken pillars, the cracked flagstones, the scattered remains of the Knight of Vow’s armour, and found all of it, very obviously, wanting.

Her horns caught the portal-light and threw thin shadows down the line of her jaw. The gown pooled around her ankles in a spill of black and crimson that looked as though it had been poured rather than sewn. She had not moved since sitting down.

She had also not looked at him once.

[Time remaining: 28 minutes 47 seconds.]

Finn opened his mouth.

"So—"

"I did not grant you permission to speak."

Her tone was cold. This was simply the temperature she existed at. A woman who had never needed to raise her voice because no one had ever made the mistake of not listening.

Finn closed his mouth.

Behind him, Nyx made a sound. It was very small, could’ve been a cough, could’ve been a laugh bitten in half. He did not turn around.

[Time remaining: 28 minutes 31 seconds.]

He tried again.

"Your Gra—"

"Closer." Vesperine raised one hand without looking at him. A single finger extended, then curled inward, the universal gesture of approach. "You are standing at the foot of the dais like a petitioner. If we must converse, I will not crane my neck."

He climbed the steps.

Each one felt longer than it should have. The marble was cold through his shoes. It radiated outward from the throne in gentle waves that prickled against his skin and made the hair on his forearms rise.

He stopped two steps below her.

Vesperine’s eyes, those deep ember-red slits, finally moved to him. They travelled from his boots to his face with the assessment of someone cataloguing the contents of a room they did not intend to stay in long.

"Hm," she said.

That was it. Just hm. A single syllable that contained an entire performance review, and the results were not favourable.

"You are younger than I expected."

"I’m twenty."

"Yes. As I said."

Behind him, Nyx’s amusement radiated through the bond like heat from a stove. She was enjoying this. She was enjoying this immensely.

’Don’t,’ he sent through the bond.

’I haven’t said a word, Bearer.’

’You’re thinking very loudly.’

’Territorial awareness, Bearer. I am simply... observing.’

[Time remaining: 27 minutes 14 seconds.]

Finn took a breath. "Your Grace, I understand this isn’t how either of us expected this to go. But there’s a timer. If we don’t seal the covenant bond in the next twenty-seven minutes—"

"We both die." Vesperine crossed one ankle over the other. "Yes, I am literate. I read the notification."

"Then you know we need to—"

"I know what the System requires." Her chin lifted, the horns catching light. "What I do not know is why I should comply."

The silence that followed was the kind that had edges.

Finn stared at her. "Because you’ll die."

"Correct."

"And I’ll die."

"Also correct, though I confess I find that particular consequence less motivating than you might hope."

Behind him, at the base of the pillar, Nyx’s amusement curdled into something sharper.

’Bearer.’

’I heard her.’

’She is bluffing. She must be.’

’I’m not sure she is.’

[Time remaining: 26 minutes 52 seconds.]

Finn studied the woman on the throne. The low light painted her in contrasts. The white of her hair against the dark stone, the ember glow of her eyes, the precise architecture of her hands folded in her lap.

She looked like a painting of a queen who had been asked to sit for the portrait and had decided, halfway through, that the artist was beneath her.

But there was something else. Something under the composure.

He’d spent his whole life reading people. Not because he was good at it, or liked it, but because a kid who didn’t read the room fast enough ended up reading the wall he’d been shoved into.

And what he read in Vesperine, beneath the regal mask and the aristocratic disdain, was a question.

She was waiting to see what he would do.

"You’re testing me," he said.

The faintest flicker crossed her expression. Not surprise, Vesperine did not seem like someone who experienced surprise, but something adjacent to it. Acknowledgement, perhaps, that the furniture had said something marginally less stupid than expected.

"An interesting conclusion."

"You woke up in a strange place, summoned by someone you’ve never met, bound to a system, with a thirty-minute deadline that ends in death. Anyone would want to know who they’re stuck with before they commit."

Vesperine said nothing.

"So go ahead. Ask me what you want to ask."

The ember eyes held his. For a long, terrible moment, the only sound in the chamber was the distant hum of the portal and the faint drip of water somewhere beyond the broken walls.

Then Vesperine uncrossed her ankles.

She leaned forward, very slightly, and the temperature around the throne dropped another degree.

"What," she said, "did you summon me for?"

The question was simple. The weight behind it was not.

Finn could feel it, a pressure in the bond, not Nyx’s side but Vesperine’s. It was like standing at the base of a dam and feeling the water on the other side through the stone.

He thought about the answer.

He could say power. It was true, partly. He needed strength. The First Trial was coming. The dungeon had nearly killed them twice over. A second bonded entity would change the game in ways he desperately needed.

He could say survival. Also true. The world had ended, and it was only going to get worse, and he would take every edge the System offered if it meant staying alive long enough to see what came next.

Both answers were honest. Neither one was the answer she was looking for.

He knew this because he had asked himself the same question in a charity shop a few days ago, bleeding on a floor covered in secondhand coats, while a monster with no face stood over him.

Why did you reach? 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Because the bond resonated. The System searched for a compatible entity and it found you. Not someone else. You. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the compatibility means, or what conditions it’s measuring, or why the pull brought me here to this specific room to do it." He thought about it for a moment. "But I trust it. The same way I trusted it when it brought me Nyx."

At the foot of the dais, Nyx went very still.

Vesperine’s expression did not change.

"You trust a system you do not understand."

"I trust the result. The System gave me someone who saved my life on the first day. Whatever metric it’s using, it’s smarter than I am."

"That," Vesperine said, "is an extraordinarily low bar."

Behind him, Nyx made a sound that she would later deny, under oath, had been a laugh.

[Time remaining: 23 minutes 08 seconds.]

Vesperine rose from the throne.

She did it the way she did everything else, without hurry, as though time were a resource she had never run short of and did not intend to start rationing now. The gown settled around her in a fall of dark fabric that barely whispered against the marble.

Standing, she was taller than he’d expected. Not by much, an inch, perhaps two, elevated by the heels and the horns, but enough that when she stepped down to his level and stopped in front of him, he had to look up.

Her eyes were very close.

"The seal," she said. "Tell me how it was done with your first."

Finn’s mouth went dry.

Behind him, the bond flooded with a sudden, violent wave of do not answer that question.

"A kiss," he said.

The silence that followed was so complete he could hear Nyx’s fingernails sink into the stone of her pillar.

Vesperine blinked.

"A kiss."

"It was... the System required a physical seal. A point of contact to finalise the bond. With Nyx, it was—"

"A kiss." Vesperine repeated the word. "How quaint."

’Bearer,’ Nyx’s voice arrived like a blade wrapped in silk, ’if she kisses you, I am going to—’

’She’s not going to kiss me. Look at her face. She’d rather chew glass.’

’Good. Then we are agreed on one thing.’

Vesperine turned her hand over between them, palm down. The nails caught the light in thin arcs of black.

"Kneel," she said.