My Taboo Harem!

The black-white wound opened inside Phei’s bedroom without ceremony and Phei stepped out of the portal.

The cold of Void-Ice clung to him for one breath before pale frost slid across his body in silent obedience, weaving itself into loose black trousers and an open dark robe that hung from his shoulders without hiding much of his chest. The fabric was soft, shadowed, edged faintly with white.

The portal folded shut behind him.

For a moment, Phei stood still.

The room was dim, luxurious, too quiet for the kind of night he had just experienced. His bed waited untouched except for the soft spill of moonlight across the sheets. Beyond the glass, Paradise Island glittered below like the city had no idea one of its young dragons had just surrendered his first awakened goddess to sleep, secrets, Dravenna Ashford, and whatever black-violet abyss waited inside Sienna’s soul.

His jaw tightened.

He hated it.

But he hated the quiet most of all.

Sienna had been taken from his arms again by Dravenna who was with her. He had looked at the Jade Dragoness’s face, her calm, her readiness, her infuriating certainty that everything had its place and Phei’s place, at that moment, was elsewhere.

That did not make it feel better.

Being dismissed from a battlefield was one thing. Being dismissed from the bedside of the girl who had just given him her whole everything, called him hers, and then sank toward some ancient sleep with fear hiding behind exhaustion?

No.

He did not like that at all, his fingers curled once at his side.

His senses were suddenly assaulted by Maya’s presence.

She stood near the side of the bed, quiet at first, which meant the words were gathering somewhere behind her eyes in a soft, silver-haired stampede.

Both her hands held the sides of her dress as if she had been standing there for long enough to become uncertain what to do with them. The dress fell around her in pale folds, almost white beneath the room’s moonlit glow, and her silver hair spilled over her shoulders in a gentle cascade that made the darkness look less confident.

Her face lifted toward him with an expression so soft look, she looked at him as if he were loud inside, and she had come to lower the volume.

"Phei, honey." she said.

It were just two but they struck a place inside him that had been clenched since Sienna’s room.

"Maya, love."

His voice came out of patience.

Her eyes moved over like she was approaching a fragile garden. Carefully. Gently. Already thinking of shelter.

"You are angry," she said softly.

"I am fine."

Maya blinked.

Then her lips pressed together, not in disbelief exactly:

"You are standing like a prince who intends to execute the curtains because they witnessed his bad mood. That is not fine but imperial furniture intimidation, and while I am not an expert in palace law, I believe the curtains deserve a trial."

Despite himself, Phei’s mouth twitched in a small laugh.

"You always make me almost laugh when I am annoyed, love."

"I did not make you. I merely presented the curtains as innocent victims. Your sense of justice responded on its own."

"The curtains are not innocent. Everything in this room is guilty by association."

"That is a dangerous doctrine."

"For a dangerous room."

Maya looked around with great seriousness, as if the bed, walls, windows, lamps and floor had all been quietly accused of treason. then she nodded once.

"I see. The room does have the atmosphere of something that has heard too many secrets and reported none of them. Very suspicious. Still, I do not think punishing the furniture will help with Sienna."

The faint amusement left him.

Maya’s voice had softened on the name.

Sienna:

The wound beneath the irritation.

Phei looked away.

Maya walked in soft steps toward him with the sides of her dress still gathered lightly in her hands, her bare feet soundless against the floor, her silver hair shifting with each step.

The moment she entered his vicinity, something changed:

Her presence reached him before her hands did, spreading around him like pale water over heated stone. A serene softness wrapped his body, then slipped beneath the skin, touching deeper than flesh, deeper than fatigue, deeper than irritation. His bitterness did not disappear all at once. That would have been too simple, and the world had clearly filed a personal objection against simplicity.

But the edge in him dulled and his anger stopped biting its own tongue making the pressure inside his chest loosened by a single, precious inch.

Phei stilled; he had always known this feeling with Maya, that strange moonlit comfort and quiet aura that did not command, seduce, dominate, or heal in any ordinary way. It simply arrived, sat beside his soul, and made pain feel less alone.

Before tonight, he had accepted it as one of those things Maya naturally was, soft and strange and impossible to explain without sounding like a poet who had been struck in the head.

But now, after feeling Soul Energy tear out of him in vast currents and sensing Sienna’s Nether soul drink from him like a dying god finding a river, Phei could perceive Maya’s comfort with sharper clarity.

It was vivid now, almost visible to senses that had no name, softer than mana or any spiritual energy, more delicate than healing.

It felt as if moonlight itself had learned tenderness and chosen his overworked soul as its first unfortunate patient; Phei anger thinned further, his worry, his bitterness, the ugly sense of being pushed out and managed by his family, all of it began to sink beneath that quiet silver pressure.

But she didn’t erased his emotions, Maya’s peace did not insult his emotions by pretending they had no reason to exist but simply held them until they stopped shaking.

Maya finally reached him and took both his hands.

Her fingers were warm, small and firm enough to be real.

"I knew you would come back with your chest full of knives," she said. "Not literal knives, because that would be easier to deal with, actually. Literal knives can be removed, cleaned, perhaps displayed somewhere if one is dramatic enough. Emotional knives are terribly inconvenient. They stay in places people cannot reach, then everyone stands around saying useful things like ’calm down’ and ’it will be fine,’ which never helps because if it were fine, the knives would not be there.

"So I thought I should wait. Not because I know everything, because I do not. I know some things, and then I know that I do not know other things, which is sometimes worse because unknown things have terrible manners."

Phei stared at her and felt at home with his rambling disaster.

Soft voice. Serious face. Words tumbling out like a moonlit river that had forgotten where the banks were.

He felt something inside him loosen that no system reward could have touched.

"Maya," he said slowly, "did you just compare my mood to a collection of invisible knives?"

She looked faintly embarrassed, but continued anyway because retreat had apparently not been included in her construction.

"Yes. It felt accurate. Also, your face looked like you wanted to stab an explanation out of the universe, so the metaphor had support."

"The universe deserves it."

"I am not saying it does not. The universe has made several questionable decisions recently. I am only saying you should not stab it tonight, because you are tired, and tired stabbing is rarely elegant."

Phei looked at her and laughed.

Maya’s shoulders relaxed as if that single sound had been the result she had been quietly negotiating with fate to obtain.

"There," she said. "Less sharp."

"I am still angry."

"I know. You are allowed to be. Being soothed does not mean surrendering the anger. It only means you stop letting it chew on your organs while you are trying to think."

"You have been preparing this speech."

"I have been preparing several speeches," Maya admitted, and looked down at their joined hands as if confessing to a minor crime. "One was shorter. One was very mature. One sounded too much like Maddie, so I abandoned it because I am not brave enough to be that composed like that beautiful menace. One had a section about trust, but it became too long and then I began arguing with myself about whether trust should be explained to someone who already understands it but has been placed in a situation where understanding does not make it easier, and then...

"...I realized you might return before I finished organizing the emotional architecture, so I decided to stand here and hope my mouth would survive the moment."