My Taboo Harem!

The venue wore darkness like a crown but it was unlike the gothic nonsense made by decorators who thought black fabric automatically meant mystery. One of the private celebration halls of Infinity Chaos Hotel had been transformed into something intimate enough for family and grand enough to make family feel like royalty.

Just enough people and enough beauty.

The ceiling was swallowed in deep black and layered with silver curves that caught the light like blades under water. From above fell long chains of crystal, beadwork, and fine metallic strands, descending in shimmering curtains like frozen rain paused by command. Between them hovered reflective silver orbs and smoked glass spheres, each one catching the hall’s pale lights and scattering them across the room in soft, ghostly fragments.

White flowers hung in impossible suspended gardens, arranged in long aerial beds that curved through the ceiling like pale islands floating in a black sea.

The colors were dark, but not empty.

Black.

Silver and muted white but with deep violet hidden beneath the lighting, only showing when the crystals caught it at the right angle.

The whole place seemed made for someone whose beauty belonged closer to midnight than morning and their presence did not need sunshine to be worshipped.

Whoever had chosen the theme had not aimed for cheer but aimed for reverence.

The floor below mirrored the ceiling in glossy black-and-white swirls, polished until every light above found a second life beneath people’s feet. Several round tables stood across the hall, not too many, each dressed in black linen, silver settings, pale floral centerpieces, and glassware that looked expensive enough to make ordinary people afraid to hydrate.

A circular platform rested at the center, low and dark, edged in faint silver design.

Staff moved quickly through the hall, finishing the last details.

They were efficient, quiet, and clearly eager to be gone before the actual guests arrived; one woman stepped back, saw that a single chair had been angled wrong by perhaps the width of a sigh, and corrected it with the solemnity of a surgeon.

Then, with their work completed, the ordinary hotel staff began to depart.

They left in smooth lines, heads bowed, shoes whispering over the polished floor.

Soon, the room belonged only to the special subordinates.

Five stood openly but more were hidden before a black-white portal opened near the entrance.

Void-black formed the heart of the doorway, while white essence curled around its edge in slow, controlled ribbons. Cold touched the surrounding air but stopped exactly where Phei allowed it to stop, as if the temperature itself had been given instructions and feared disciplinary action. The portal breathed once, silent and sovereign; Phei stepped through with his hands in his pockets.

The attendants looked over.

None of them flinched.

That told him plenty.

Portals were not shocking to them. Spatial travel, apparently, was another inconvenience of serving Chaos.

What did surprise them was the quality of it.

Phei saw that in the slight lift of one woman’s eyes, the restrained tension in a man’s jaw, the way another attendant looked at the portal’s edge as if he had just watched a child write a divine formula in perfect handwriting.

Their awe did not come from the fact that he had arrived through space: It came from the fact that he had done it this cleanly at his laughable current stage.

"As expected of the Prince," one female subordinate murmured.

The five attendants bowed.

"Young Master."

Phei inclined his head. "Evening."

His eyes moved across them, then paused.

He recognized one of the men.

The driver who had driven Noor and Soraya.

The man stood properly, dressed in formal black and silver, posture disciplined enough to annoy normal spines. But his expression held a faint downward cast. Not sadness, exactly, more like the spiritual exhaustion of someone who had been corrected recently and was still trying to recover dignity from the wreckage.

Phei’s brow lifted.

Why did he look punished?

’Interesting.’

Also none of his business, technically. A tragic limitation.

Phei felt even the hidden ones before he fully looked for them.

That, at least, pleased him.

At his current rank, he should not have sensed them so easily. They were too controlled, too and too deeply woven into the hall’s blind spots. But his Void-Ice element had not been named carelessly; yes only the Ice obeyed him beautifully already, but the Void was still the older hunger beneath it, the part he could barely touch except through teleportation and spatial bending.

Even so, it was there; a connection, sympathy and quiet awareness of absence, concealment, hollow places, and things trying too hard not to exist.

And then there was his Primordial Blood that made hiding even more insulting.

The people in the shadows were powerful, certainly, disciplined, dangerous, annoying in that elegant way his grandmother’s private staff seemed to prefer.

But they were alive and living beings; which meant blood moved in them like warm rivers that pulsed beneath their skin, branching through veins, answering the heart’s command.

What use was Primordial Blood if he could not feel rivers of that flowing living blood moving inside a room?

Across the hall, Hayashi stood near the central platform, giving instructions to a younger man who looked like his blood had studied Hayashi and submitted an enthusiastic imitation. Handsome, sharp, composed, with the same controlled air around him, only less aged by decades of surviving the Empress’s standards.

The younger man received the instruction, bowed, and vanished in a sharp streak of black and white like a some kind of sword energy.

Phei watched the path of that streak:

’Something related to swords, probably.’

He really needed to learn more terminology before his internal narration embarrassed the family.

Hayashi turned before Phei reached him.

The elderly manager bowed. "Young Master."

"Hayashi." Phei looked around the hall again. "You did well."

"We followed the instructions exactly."

"To the T?"

"To the T."

Phei smiled. "That is dangerous obedience, Hayashi, beyond what I expected from you."

"It is preferable to dangerous improvisation."

"Is my grandmother involved?"

Hayashi’s silence became very refined.

Phei stared. "That was not a comforting pause."

"The Empress values perfection."

"She also values meddling."

"That may be considered a form of perfection."

"Hayashi."

"I am merely her manager, Young Master."

"Cowardly answer."

"I would say its a prudent answer, Young Master."

Phei laughed despite himself and walked a few steps, studying the tables, the ceiling, the platform, the stage lights and the corridor beyond. Everything looked exactly as requested. Dark enough to feel personal. Beautiful enough to feel expensive.

’Intimate enough to avoid turning the birthday into a social battlefield.’

That last part mattered most.

"And that?" Phei asked, voice lowering.

Hayashi understood immediately. "Ready."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

Phei’s smile sharpened. "Good."

Hayashi bowed again. "The arrangements will remain untouched until you give the signal."

"Excellent."

Phei glanced once more at the hidden shadows. Somewhere above the hall’s visible atmosphere, a very small figure drifted where almost no one could see her.

Eira.

She had been there for some time.

His beautiful little nuisance hovered upside down near one of the crystal curtains, chin resting in her hands, her hair floating around her tiny body.

Eira smiled and waved at him.

Phei narrowed his eyes faintly.

Do not start, his expression said.

Eira’s smile widened.

Promising nothing good, obviously. Eira and restraint had never been close friends.

Acquaintances, perhaps.

’Distant enemies.’

At the far side of the room, Cassiopeia entered silently from one of the side corridors, already dressed for the evening. Her eyes flicked upward toward Eira for the smallest moment.

Cassiopeia’s expression did not change, which was exactly why Phei respected her.

Phei walked toward her and help her in his hand before he kissed her lips and forehead.

"Are you planning to fight the ceiling?" he asked.

Cassiopeia glanced at the crystal rain above. "Not unless it moves first."

"That is not a no."

"It is the best no you will get, Master."

Eira drifted lazily above them, unheard by the room. "She is improving."

Phei looked up despite himself. "Do not encourage her."

Cassiopeia’s eyes moved to him. "She can suggest something you know."

Phei sighed. "Nothing helpful."

Eira placed a tiny hand over her chest, offended by a truth no jury would convict.

Eira looked back toward the hall. "There are more of grandma’s people hidden than necessary."

"For this family? Necessary is a flexible word."

"True."

"And tonight is not for security wars."

"I know."

"Cass?"

She gave him soft look: "I know too, Master."

"Good."

"I can know and still observe."

Phei smiled faintly. "Naturally."

The first guests began arriving after that.

Slowly at first, then in warm, glittering clusters.

The princesses came like different expressions of the same dangerous painting. Jade Park arrived with a graceful poise that made one of the attendants lower his head slightly more than required.

Phei stepped forward to receive her.

That caught attention.

Several of the princesses watched too openly, though all of them pretended not to. They had learned refinement, certainly, but refinement did not cure curiosity. Their eyes followed Phei’s movement, the way his black-white attire caught the hall’s violet undertones, the ease of his smile, the way he extended his hand to Jade as if the gesture had been designed for that exact moment and no other.