My Taboo Harem!

Unbeknownst to Phei, while he slept with his head resting on Maya’s soft thighs and the weight of divine rewards slowly dimming behind his closed eyes, the party continued without him.

It did not continue with the same pulse.

That much was impossible.

Phei Ryujin Tiamat had a terrible habit of turning rooms into orbits, and once he vanished, the celebration lost the invisible force holding every hungry glance, every whispered speculation, every nervous smile, and every polished princess in place. People still spoke. Glasses still chimed. Servants still moved with quiet discipline through the penthouse.

The music still lingered gently beneath the conversations.

Yet some bright, dangerous pressure had left the air, and everyone who mattered felt it.

Melissa handled what remained.

She moved through the penthouse with warm authority, thanking guests, accepting blessings, soothing disappointment, and guiding the evening toward its ending so gracefully that several people left before realizing they had been dismissed.

That was Melissa’s power; used warmth like a velvet blade. Her smile softened people into obedience. Her voice made refusal feel impolite. Her hands touched shoulders, kissed cheeks, accepted compliments, and sent powerful guests away feeling honored rather than removed. Plenty of queens would have paid for such a talent.

Most of them would still have ruined it by adding arrogance, because humanity did enjoy poisoning its own advantages.

A few princesses lingered longer than the others.

They were the ones who had watched Phei all evening and never quite reached him; they had come hoping for at least a conversation, a moment, one direct look from those amethyst eyes, perhaps a word warm enough to keep and foolish enough to overthink later.

Instead, Phei had disappeared.

Several of them concealed their disappointment well.

Several failed beautifully.

Maddie noticed them.

Of course she did.

Before the princesses could leave completely, she invited them to meet tomorrow in a more private place, away from the crowd, away from the pressure, away from the eyes that made every small breath feel like political evidence.

A few faces brightened; the night, which had almost ended for them as a polished little disappointment, suddenly offered another door.

Paige and Brielle were the happiest.

With Marcus taken from Infinity Chaos Hotel and sent back to the mansion like a spoiled plague finally removed from a banquet table, the twins could breathe. For reasons no one had bothered explaining to them, they had been allowed to remain behind, and that single decision felt like a small miracle dressed in administrative confusion.

They stayed near the other princesses with a hunger that had nothing to do with romance.

Freedom had its own appetite.

For once, Marcus was not there to watch how long they spoke, they could stand among girls their own age and not feel his shadow crawling over the back of their necks, turning every harmless conversation into something that might later be punished.

So they talked.

They laughed carefully at first, then more freely.

They leaned into the circle of princesses as though warmth itself had become unfamiliar.

No one said it aloud, because saying fragile things aloud often invited the world to break them, but Paige and Brielle were happier than they had been all night.

Zara was the only one Maddie did not bring into that circle.

That, too, was not cruelty.

It was understanding.

Maddie had admitted the matter with unusual seriousness, her wicked brightness dimming as she glanced toward the place Zara had gone quiet. The girl still held a grudge against Phei for what he had done to her brother.

Zack had earned what happened to him. Maddie and everyone with a functioning conscience and access to basic memory and common sense knew it.

Even Zara probably knew it somewhere beneath all the anger and shame.

But blood was stubborn.

Blood could be stupid; stand in front of truth, beaten and embarrassed, and still insist the truth had bad manners.

Zara had been attracted to Phei before he crippled Zack’s manhood. That only made the wound uglier. Attraction did not simply vanish because resentment arrived with luggage:

It soured, twisted and turned every glance toward Phei into an argument between what she had wanted and what she believed she should hate.

She wanted no place near princesses who were already half-lost to him.

No place near girls whose eyes softened when Phei’s name entered the air.

No place among women who would speak of him like a storm, a prince, a danger, a dream, while Zara’s own heart still carried the image of her ruined brother.

So Maddie left her alone.

’For now.’

There would be time later, perhaps, for Zara to decide whether her anger belonged to loyalty, guilt, pride, or grief.

Tonight, forcing her into Phei’s orbit would have been crueler than leaving her outside it.

Eventually, the penthouse emptied.

The visible guests departed first. Then the stubborn ones. Then the curious ones pretending not to be curious. One by one, the glittering pieces of the celebration withdrew from the penthouse until only traces remained: perfume in the air, half-melted candles, quiet footprints, abandoned ribbons of conversation, and that strange silence that came after expensive joy had finished performing.

Even the hidden women left.

One wore Shantels with black-gold bottoms.

The other was a recently rescued Fallen Angel, if rescued was the correct word for being taken out of one cage and walked into the shadow of Lucienne.

Anahita had stayed near the Monster, pale and silent, her presence dimmed by exhaustion and the kind of terror that did not know whether to kneel or run. She was no longer chained, no celestial collar bit into her throat. Her wings were still absent, but that absence now felt less like final defeat and more like a wound someone had interrupted before it could become permanent.

Eira had nearly dropped from the air when she saw them.

Floating creatures were not supposed to look knocked off their feet, but Eira somehow managed it out of pure emotional talent. Her wings stilled for a breath, her eyes sharpened, and the lollipop she had been enjoying became forgotten between her fingers.

Lucienne had done it.

The Monster had truly ripped Anahita out of Heavenchild hands.

Hayashi and his children watched as well.

They had been trained too well to react foolishly, but even their restraint had edges. Hayashi’s eyes followed Lucienne with a calm that belonged to old blood and older caution. His children stood beside him in disciplined silence, each of them understanding, in their own way, that the woman crossing the penthouse with a Fallen Angel at her side had not appeared merely to be seen.

Lucienne looked back at them.

Then she smiled; a wide, challenging, beautiful grin that turned the air sharper.

There was no spoken threat in it, there did not need to be.

The smile dared them to object, to ask, to move, to measure her, to show even one inch of the arrogance their family name had taught them to carry.

It said, with bright and merciless sweetness, try.

No one tried.

Sensible. Rare, but it happened.

Even Hayashi’s composure tightened by a fraction, and that fraction mattered. His children felt it. Eira felt it. The room itself seemed to accept that some people did not need to raise their voice to remind old families why even an Empress could be wary.

Lucienne left soon after.

But her presence did not leave with her.

It remained in Hayashi’s mind. In his children’s. In Eira’s. It stayed there like a jewel with poison under the shine.

What had she come for?

To watch?

She did not need to place one dark heel inside the penthouse simply to observe.

No.

’She had wanted us to see Anahita.’

She had wanted them to understand that the Fallen Angel was no longer where the Heavenchilds had left her.

She had wanted Eira to know she’d done like she’d promised; that made the entire thing itch beneath Eira’s skin.

Lucienne was not planning.

Planning was what lesser monsters did before acting and she had already moved, and now she was permitting others the privilege of noticing the board had changed.

Before leaving, the Monster had glanced directly at Eira:

"Keep your mouth shut, little fairy," Lucienne had said softly sweetly like an instruction wrapped in perfume.

The audacity was spectacular. Almost artistic.

Eira hated it immediately.

And because Eira possessed many flaws but cowardice had never sat comfortably among them, she had asked for something in return.

It did not matter that she already knew Lucienne had sealed the road between her tongue and Phei’s ears. Even if Eira wanted to tell him, she would not be able to given her restrictions. The Monster knew that too.

Which made the warning theatrical.

Which made Eira’s request spiteful and made Lucienne’s agreement worse than refusal.

Because Lucienne agreed with amusement as though Eira’s request fit somewhere inside the vast, ugly shape of what she had already arranged.

Whatever the Elemental Fairy asked of the Monster remained between them.

Eira did not speak of it to Hayashi or his children.

Some bargains became more dangerous when named.

So the night folded itself away.

The princesses carried Maddie’s invitation into tomorrow.

Paige and Brielle clung to the fragile relief of Marcus’s absence.

Zara kept her distance.

Hayashi remembered Lucienne’s smile.

Anahita vanished beside the Monster.

Eira kept a secret she disliked owning.

And in Phei’s bedroom, beneath moonlight and Maya’s fading warmth, the Young Dragon slept.