Ricken stood rigidly, fingers twisting anxiously around the rough strap of his bag. Two dozen figures hovered nearby, shadows whispering quiet secrets as more drifted into the chamber, their murmurs crawling like slow insects across his skin. Ricken stood apart. Silent. Watchful. Waiting.
The air was sharp, heavy with the resinous tang of polymer panels freshly cracked open and insulation foam still breathing its chemical warmth into the space. Metallic clangs resonated distantly, echoes pulsing through the station's hollow veins. Further down the corridor, an electric-blue welding arc hissed and spat sparks—tiny shards of captured lightning. The station was a half-born leviathan, nerves exposed, pulsating in raw, yearning anticipation.
Vault-C. A skeletal titan drifting silently in orbit above Heremedicus, a sullen red dwarf star. Bought and stripped bare by FuturesTech, its ancient corridors now rebuilt for Project Golden, a whispered project of resurrection. Details remained shrouded in secrecy, locked beyond Ricken's knowledge, classified whispers he had yet to unravel.
The operation was intimate. Small. The investors had grudgingly handed over resources, thinning the funding to bones during endless boardroom battles. So here stood Ricken—assigned rather than chosen, drifting aimlessly between larger ventures, plucked from obscurity for convenience. Gratitude burned beneath his breastbone, smoldering with insecurity, eating at the edges of his fragile resolve.
His gaze drifted discreetly over those gathered, uncertain silhouettes cloaked in civilian dress, faces concealed behind secrets. Most were women, languid yet poised, leaning casually against unfinished walls or absorbed in quiet communion with their databands. Two other men stood apart—older, stiff, uneasy as himself. They marked unclaimed territory, spaces where he dared not let his thoughts linger.
His breath hitched. Silence dropped swiftly, heavy as velvet, as all eyes turned toward the entryway, drawn irresistibly to gravity's pull.
The Archivist entered first.
She was compact and commanding, with graying hair glittering faintly under stark station lights, face weathered like ancient leather, nose proudly crooked. Her coat billowed behind her, a tattered white banner trailing its battle scars. Her gaze was keen, cutting beyond mere flesh to dissect hidden truths. A ruthless genius, celebrated and feared across Galactic Community space.
Yet Ricken scarcely registered her.
Because behind her—
He walked in.
Tall, lean, defined by sharp edges and taut curves beneath warm ivory skin. Gravity held no claim upon him; his movements were fluid, graceful, precise, each step deliberate and magnetic. Hair, rich obsidian, slicked impeccably back as though shaped by artisan hands. The coveralls worshipped his form, tracing intimately every angle and contour. His sleeves folded carelessly upward, revealing lean muscles and veins threaded like wires beneath skin. His lab coat pristine, untouched, a perfect juxtaposition against the Archivist's worn mantle.
Perched upon his shoulder, a spider-like drone—matte black, its segmented limbs curled possessively, elegantly around his collarbone. A single crimson optic pulsed, slowly scanning the room with predatory patience.
Ricken's breath stilled entirely, trapped painfully behind his ribs.
The Archivist spoke, her voice sharp with authority—outlining missions, hierarchies, obligations. But her words dissolved unheard into the silent roar of Ricken's pulse.
The man said nothing, his gaze fixed forward—eyes dark, limitless, drowning in shadow, fringed by lashes thick as ink strokes, brows strong and intent.
Ricken's stare wandered recklessly—across the sharp jaw, the sensuous mouth, the elegant throat, the inviting curve of collarbone partially unveiled. His imagination ignited, images cascading unchecked: the slow unraveling of fabric, his palms tracing that sculpted torso, his mouth tasting the heat of forbidden skin.
He flushed, heat radiating fiercely from his core, and he fought to reclaim control, voice quivering silently in recitation:
Purity through discipline. Clean thoughts, clean heart.
He mouthed the words desperately.
Touch of men is the road to damnation.
Pulse hammering, fists clenched white-hot until knuckles protested in agony. Even now, with eyes closed, the vision lingered—sharp, visceral, undeniable. The stranger beside the Archivist—beautifully terrifying, a sin incarnate.
"I am not here to babysit," the Archivist's voice cut through the fog of his trembling thoughts, abrupt, cold, merciless. "Do your work, and we'll get along fine."
Ricken's eyes snapped upward, heart racing as reality returned. The meeting already shattered; the others dispersing purposefully into the shadows. He remained paralyzed, dread surging hot and urgent, panic clawing sharply at his gut.
Just as the weight in his knees threatened to drop him, a hand closed over his shoulder—firm, surgical in its precision. Ricken jolted as if struck, his breath catching in his throat.
"Ricken Tlyford. Geneticist. Vat technician certification. Correct?"
The voice was calm, absolute. The woman it belonged to stood just above him, her posture honed, lean like wire under tension. Her cheekbones cut high and clean, the angles of her face sculpted to severity. Her skin was rich, deep umber, darker than his own—flawless. Her hair was pulled into a pristine ponytail, tight as protocol. She moved with the air of someone born in the upper tiers of society and sharpened there—refined like steel through pressure.
"...Y-yes. Right. That would be me," Ricken stammered, jerking himself upright like a marionette yanked by guilt. His mouth hung open for half a second too long before he snapped it shut, mortified.
Her gaze ran down and up him again, unhurried. Measuring. Weighing. He felt the pass of her eyes like a diagnostic scan. Beneath it, he catalogued himself: face clean, hair bound, skin scrubbed until it nearly burned. Presentable. Barely.
"Miriam," she said, a flicker of civility ghosting across her lips. "Miriam K. Ensig. Neuroengineer. I've heard a number of things about you from Dr. Von Sul."
She extended her hand, fingers long and perfectly aligned. Ricken grasped it, far too quickly, and his grip collapsed somewhere between damp and unsure.
"She did?" he blurted, voice too high, too hopeful.
Miriam released his hand with grace so subtle it felt like dismissal. "Yes. Said you had the most patient mind of any geneticist she's worked with."
Before he could respond—stammer, deflect, disbelieve—she turned, already walking. He followed without thinking, drawn in her wake as she guided him toward two more figures idling in the near distance. Her motion was smooth, intentional. Seamless.
Ricken struggled to match her pace. It felt like being led toward something inevitable.
"Oh, hello~, what have we here?"
The voice lilted out, saccharine and sharp, like sugar dusted over a razor's edge. One of the women in the pair had already turned toward them. Her hair fell to her shoulders in lazy waves, a deliberately unkempt softness. Icy blue eyes half-lidded with the weariness of someone who lived too long in the fluorescent glow of laboratories and long nights. Her smile curled as though plucked from a stage performance—rehearsed, dangerous.
"Another man," she crooned, almost to herself, "my, my, aren't we the lucky ones. And what might your name be, cutie~?"
Her tone danced mockingly high, the kind of femininity wielded like a weapon—soft on the surface, venom just beneath.
"He's Ricken Tlyford," Miriam cut in, voice dry, stripped of patience. "Our geneticist."
Her eyes slid toward the woman with warning—not sharp, but surgical. Precision restraint.
But the other only laughed, unbothered, airy as oxygen in a leaking tank. "Let him speak his own name, Miri. He has a mouth, doesn't he?"
She turned her gaze back to Ricken, and he felt the weight of it crawl under his skin.
"I'm Fiorence Navarro," she said, drawing her name out like smoke. "Neuroscientist. Like Miriam. Connectomics, specifically." Her smile twisted. "Pleasure to meet you, Ricky. You don't mind if I call you Ricky, right?"
Ricken tried not to recoil. He offered his hand, struggling to tether a calm expression. "Hi. Yes. I'm Ricken. I… would prefer if you call me Ricken—"
Before his fingers could reach hers, the second woman pounced.
Much shorter. Round cheeks, round eyes, full of kinetic joy, she lunged into the space between and wrapped both hands around his in an eager shake. Her palms were warm.
"Lian Roku!" she announced brightly, voice chiming like wind through glass. "Bioinformatician. Epigeneticist. Looks like we'll be working very closely, Ricky!"
She grinned up at him, eyes wide with genuine delight—or something close enough to pass. Her enthusiasm hit like a current: jarring, relentless, too sincere to be entirely safe.
Ricken swallowed. His hand was still captured in hers.
He smiled—thin, brittle. "Yes, pleasure to meet you as well. I—I'm looking forward to working with you."
He tried to reclaim his hand, but Lian clung just a second too long. Her grip was deceptively strong for someone so small, her smile never wavering as she finally released him. The withdrawal felt like surfacing from beneath warm water laced with something thicker.
He cleared his throat. "Wasn't there supposed to be three more?" The words came out rushed, a half-stumble toward escape. He rubbed his palm against the side of his coat, subtly. She'd left a residual heat behind.
From the edge of his vision, Fiorence lingered—still watching. He could feel it. Like the press of cold glass against bare skin.
"Yes," Miriam said, scanning the dispersing assembly. "Siscly Mar, chemist. And Iblis V. Issac, cyberneticist. They may have moved on already. I'm sure there will be more formal introductions later."
But her words barely landed before Fiorence's voice sliced clean through.
"What I want to know is…" She leaned back, hands laced behind her head, body slack with exaggerated ease. "Who was the tall glass of sin next to the Archivist?" Her tone lilted upward like smoke from a lit match. "Personal assistant?" she repeated, the word dipped in implication.
A slow, feline smile pulled at her lips. "Gotta say, she's got great taste. Bet he gives some real good—" a pause, deliberate, too long—"massages."
Her eyes flicked to Ricken mid-sentence. The pivot wasn't smooth. It was calculated.
Ricken swallowed. She had meant to say something else. He knew it. They both knew it. The word hung in the space between them, unsaid but sticky.
"He's not an assistant," Miriam interjected, tone bone-dry, clipped. "He's the final member of the initial research cohort. Same as us."
That doused the conversation with enough finality to silence Fiorence—temporarily.
"Regardless," Miriam continued, her eyes scanning their lingering presence, "there's no use standing here. We should rest while we can. It will get busy starting tomorrow."
Fiorence made a noise of lazy protest. Lian pouted, nodded, then turned to follow, her gait almost a skip. Their voices trailed down the corridor—laughter, idle chatter, nothing of consequence, but still strangely off-tune.
Ricken hesitated. "Uhm…"
Miriam stopped.
"I—sorry. I missed some of the… most of the briefing earlier," he said, heat rising fast in his cheeks. "Could—could you help me catch up?"
Miriam turned.
Her expression was blank. Not harsh, not cold—simply unreadable.
A perfect stillness.
Ricken wanted the floor to open, to be swallowed whole, consumed by insulation foam or conduit piping. Anything. Anything but this quiet scrutiny.
Then Miriam moved again, silent and efficient, gesturing him forward as she began recapping the critical details. Her voice, neutral and calm, cut sharply through the stillness, yet carried no judgment, no hint of ridicule. Somehow, her measured composure twisted the knife of embarrassment deeper than outright scorn ever could.
Ricken followed, boots clanging against metal with an irregular cadence, overly aware of every echo. His cheeks burned hotter—shame freshly inked beneath the skin.
Lady Livia, give me strength.
She left him at the fork, the required information delivered, retreating away toward her own assigned resting quarters.
Ricken thanked her profusely to her back and continued down the corridor on his own. He waved his finger over the databand on his wrist. Interface lights flared to life, a procession of classified documents unfurling like digital scripture. His eyes scanned rapidly, drinking them in, committing where he could.
The project scope flickered by. Standard clone-line protocols. Gene modulation. Mostly known methodologies.
But then—
Miasmic node, probability collapse.
The words arrested him. His eyes dragged over the heading again, then to the attached file: dense, obscure theory about shaping trait emergence through induced collapse in quantum-bound potentials. It had the flavor of the esoteric, teetering on the edge of known science. He bookmarked it with a twitch of his finger.
Next, the station briefing. Disrepair written in bureaucratic understatement. Less than a quarter of the station restored—just a skeletal stretch of outer hull for the labs, with a single hab-floor above. The limited space wasn't the issue. Structural integrity was. Even Ricken, with no background in architecture, could see they were one wayward debris strike from depressurizing half the wing.
He glanced up—
And nearly walked headfirst into the wall.
Muttering under his breath, he reversed a few steps, finally finding the right junction. His quarters.
The door read plainly: Personnel: C-7::12 / RICKEN TLYFORD – DOUGLAS CHEN
Ricken frowned, the name unfamiliar. Likely station support staff—maybe structural, maybe drone ops. Someone not research. Not sensitive clearance. Which meant: data management would have to be handled carefully. Shared quarters with disparate access levels were always a liability. He knew how these things went. Seven researchers. One would be left unpaired. Of course it was him.
He sighed, scanned his databand. The door hissed open, heavy hydraulics groaning with age.
The room was every shade of institutional gray: bolted bunks, floating shelves, matted carpet, dim industrial light that hummed faintly, like a dying insect.
But Ricken didn't see any of that.
He stopped—hard.
A single step into the room. Foot raised, frozen mid-air.
Because in the center of the space stood a body.
Naked.
Pale. Sculpted. Alive with quiet tension. Familiar in a way that made Ricken's pulse thunder behind his eyes.
Him.
The man from orientation. The one who hadn't spoken. The one who had stood beside the Archivist like a living omen.
No coat. No coveralls. Just flesh. Sinuous and clean and wrong in how right it looked standing in this ruin of a room.
His back was turned—one arm raised, slowly dragging a cling of black underweave fabric from his wrist. The synthetic light from the viewport sliced across his body in a perfect line, illuminating each muscle like marble touched by fire. Shoulders broad and flexed. Spine a perfect column of divine engineering. And along it, the androxidic tracts—those raised nodules, tight and gleaming like pearls embedded beneath the skin, each one a pressure points of nervous system's deepest vaults of sensation. The mark of male body. The mark of sinful nature of male body.
Ricken's mouth went dry. His gaze followed, helpless, down the line of spine to the swell of hip, the sculpt of ass, the backs of thighs that spoke of strength controlled, not flaunted. Erotic in the way architecture could be—angles and proportions designed for something more than beauty.
He tried—tried—to look away. He managed to lift his gaze. Up.
To the base of the skull.
And there it was.
A plate. Square, metallic, fused flush with bone. Matte gray, bolted with clinical symmetry into the man's cranium. No scarring. Seamless integration. Flesh and metal made one.
Ricken's breath snagged in his throat. His entire body locked.
Still, he didn't move. Only his eyes moved. Down again. Slowly. Reluctantly. Worshipfully.
Every inch of skin etched into memory. Every line, a sentence in a sacred text. A body not just designed—but declared. An organism built to seduce. No, to command.
Lady Livia, Ricken thought, despairingly.
Guide me... or smite me outright.
The man—Douglas Chen, as the nameplate outside had coldly foretold—turned his head, slow and casual, like he'd known Ricken was there the whole time.
"There you are," he said, voice stripped of affect—dry, baritone, indifferent. As if Ricken were no more startling than a delay. He tossed the underweave shirt he'd just peeled off onto the cot without ceremony. "Took this one. You take the other."
He turned halfway, just enough for eye contact. Just enough to ruin Ricken.
And ruin him it did.
Ricken meant to drop his gaze to the floor—modesty, manners, anything—but his eyes betrayed him. They stopped at the hip.
No fabric. No ambiguity. Nothing hidden.
The line of his abdomen dipped into a precise V. Muscles cut with surgical clarity. And lower—
He couldn't breathe. His face ignited, a star flare behind his eyes.
Scripture, some desperate corner of his mind cried. He needed scripture. Holy words. Protection.
But nothing came.
Only heat.
Only want.
"Decide on sleep chrons," Douglas continued, as if nothing had happened—his voice low, unhurried. "Rest efficiency sync."
He turned.
And Ricken flinched as he saw the slow shift of muscle, the bend of one long leg, the curve of a hip rotating into motion. He wrenched his eyes away, too late. The image had already etched itself into him. Like light burned into optic nerves.
Then came the sound—fabric sliding over skin. Not fast. Not apologetic. Unbothered.
Like modesty was someone else's problem.
Ricken still couldn't speak.
His mouth was sand. His brain, a fire-scorched wasteland. Even divine law had fled him.
There was no scripture strong enough to survive that much bare skin.
Douglas turned again. Fully clothed, mostly. A shirt now covered his chest, thin and snug. But his pants were still undone, hanging low on his hips like a challenge, like gravity didn't dare interfere.
He walked toward Ricken.
Each step slow. Unthreatening. Lethal.
And then he was there, braced casually against the shelf just above Ricken's cot. His shirt hiked slightly, revealing the tight frame of muscle over his pelvis—no softness, no indulgence, just sharp, honed flesh.
"One or two?" he asked.
The words took a heartbeat to register.
Rest chrons.
Sleep sync.
Choices that required a functioning brain.
Ricken swallowed. Loudly.
"...uh—...…"
He didn't know what he was answering.
He didn't care.
Because temptation incarnate was standing inches away, still faintly gleaming with sweat, sin, and uncaring perfection.
Douglas' brows creased ever so slightly, the faintest flicker of irritation or curiosity—impossible to tell.
Then, as if cued by some silent command, a sharp chittering fractured the tension.
Ricken jolted like struck, the sound slicing through his stupor. "One!" he blurted. "One is fine. I'll—be here. By one. Sorry. Yes."
His eyes darted to the source of the noise.
It crouched on Douglas' bedpost like a sentinel. The drone twisted its central lens toward him with unsettling precision. Its legs tapped against the metal surface with insectile impatience, and its mandible-like appendages clacked against the red eye in erratic rhythm. The way it moved was too organic, like it hadn't been engineered so much as grown.
"Alright," Douglas said with a short nod, as if the exchange had been normal, mundane. He peeled away from Ricken, paced back to his side of the room, and sat casually on the edge of his cot, absently reaching out to pet the twitching drone.
As if he hadn't just devastated Ricken's entire endocrine system.
With hands that still trembled at the edges, Ricken made his way to his own cot and gently, reverently, set down his bag.
'Blessed are the sons that resist temptation of the abyss.'
Finally, finally, the scripture returned. The words felt like a tether. A balm. A breath of air in a room that had been pulled too tight.
He unpacked slowly, methodically—each item a small anchor in reality. Spare clothes, sleepwear, neatly folded undergarments, a personal datapad, hygienics in travel-safe plastic. Then the most important item: a small holograph chit.
He affixed it to the wall beside his cot and activated it with a press. The air shimmered. The light broke. It lit up in comforting, ghostly hues—rotating through frozen images of his family, formal portraits bathed in soft temple light, symbols of the Livian faith in proud display. Scripture crawled across the projection in elegant serif, looping through key tenets in slow sacred rhythm.
'Hold fast onto hope and you shall be delivered to the embrace.'
He whispered it aloud, voice barely above a breath. He could feel the tension ebbing, the lingering static of temptation easing back into the shadows. The holograph's glow wrapped his half of the room in something warm. Something safe.
A sanctuary.
He exhaled and turned, intent on storing the rest of his things on the shelf above his cot—and froze again.
Douglas was staring at him.
Seated on his bed, elbows on his knees, fingers laced, chin resting atop them. Still shirted. Still languid. Eyes sharp, hooded. Watching.
Not blinking.
Ricken felt his throat close. "…uh… did you… need something?" he asked, too soft, too uncertain.
Douglas didn't speak.
Not for several seconds too long.
Then, without a word, he broke eye contact, looked down at his databand, and began to tap something in. The drone beside him made another dry click with its mandibles. The red lens angled toward Ricken. Watching. Judging. As if he'd offended it.
"...alright..." Ricken murmured, rubbing at his face, heat crawling under his skin again. His ears burned.
He forced himself to look away. Don't feed the sin. He had unpacking to finish. Structure to maintain. Thoughts to purify.
This was going to be a long assignment.
A very long assignment.
***
The next few day-cycles blurred together, indistinct and grinding. A slow bleed of repetition, debate, and thinly veiled frustration. Not much had changed, not really. Mornings into midday were swallowed by theoretical discussion, endless loops of proposition and contradiction. No hands-on experimentation—no samples, no live modeling, not even wet lab simulations. Just minds colliding.
The supply shipment was delayed. Of course it was. And instead of idling, the team had resolved to press on with planning. Unfortunately, that meant chrons locked in circular discourse over whose equations best supported the proposed framework, whose models aligned more closely with the Miasmic Node theory. Whose terminology would define the future paper.
Miriam anchored the talks—precise, firm, tolerant in the way only the deeply exhausted could be. Fiorence rarely passed up a chance to poke holes in anything just to see what might leak. Lian fluttered between tangents with her usual kinetic energy, and Ricken… tried to hold his own. He presented notes, revised simulations, folded in data wherever he could. But it was difficult not to feel like the scaffolding beneath everyone else's brilliance.
Their discussions revolved obsessively around the Mire and the node's speculative application. The Archivist's theory—a strange blend of cosmic unpredictability and neural engineering—had everyone talking, even if no one fully understood it. Especially because no one fully understood it.
By GST noon, they'd shamble from the makeshift lab space to the mess hall—if it could be called that. It was still under construction, still echoing with exposed conduit and uneven flooring. But it had a table. Seats. Light.
Sometimes that was enough.
Siscly usually joined them there, her face always smelling faintly of acetate and cleaning agents, sleeves rolled up from her perpetual prep work. She brought with her notes about compound behavior in zero-G and volatile suspension solvents—subjects no one else claimed to understand, but nodded along to anyway.
Iblis never joined.
She'd be off in some dim corner of the station, hunched over her databand and a pair of auxiliary pads, muttering variables to herself, eyes twitching in time with phantom code. Even when someone greeted her, she rarely looked up. It was like she existed slightly to the left of their dimension—tethered, but only just.
And Douglas?
He was a ghost.
Rarely present. Never idle. Word circled back eventually that he'd been volunteering with the structural team—repairing welding seams, rerouting power, stabilizing the orbital sync fields—whatever grunt-tech labor needed doing to keep the station from shaking itself apart. Between his background in high-precision environments and a body that seemed engineered to climb scaffolding and shoulder metal plates, he had quickly become a favorite among the construction crew.
Fiorence was not pleased. Her commentary turned increasingly acidic with each missed lunch, her dramatic sighs during team meetings calibrated for maximum volume.
Ricken, meanwhile, was quietly relieved.
The less he saw of Douglas Chen—shirtless or otherwise—the easier it was to breathe.
"He's here to fabricate project requirements," Miriam snapped, jabbing her fork into the processed leafy sludge with enough force to scrape metal, "not fabricate your fantasies."
"Why not both?" Fiorence shot back, smooth as synth-velvet. Lian exploded into a high, musical laugh, half-snort, half-giggle.
"Honestly, Miri, lighten up. I'm joking," Fiorence added, but her grin said otherwise. "Not that I'd say no if he did offer a little ride on his dick."
Ricken choked.
Water went down wrong—wrong angle, wrong time—and his lungs revolted. He doubled over coughing, face flushed and eyes watering, the image her words conjured slamming into him with all the subtlety of a shuttle crash.
Lian leaned in, concerned, but careful. Her hands hovered—always careful not to touch the tract-line. "Oh, you poor dear," she cooed, voice dripping with sympathy. "Are you okay?"
"Y-yes—sorry—I—swallowed too fast," he gasped, throat burning. It felt like his entire face was boiling.
But it wasn't the water.
It was the image: vivid, unwanted, obscene—Douglas, above him, inside him, holding him down with those perfect hands and that perfect face. Ricken bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted metal.
Ricken blinked hard. It didn't help. The image was burned in now, seared by implication.
Miriam sighed, long-suffering. "He's not like the interns you used to harass."
"He's just as cute as one," Fiorence said, undeterred, twirling a protein stick between her fingers. "All naïve. All innocent. So desperate to prove himself." She flicked a piece of dried food off the table with a snap of her nail. "I bet I could show him how."
"Don't be fooled by his appearance," Miriam said, voice sharpening.
"Oh? That's right." Fiorence leaned in, voice dipping low and sly. "I forgot you've got the goods on all of us. Little Von Sul's perfect administrative pet."
She drifted closer to Miriam, grin widening like a blade unsheathing.
"So?" she purred. "You got any scoop on Dougie? Any… weakness?"
Miriam didn't flinch. "My access to team files is for maintaining cohesion and mitigating conflicts. Not for... coercion."
"Who said anything about coercion, Miri~?" Fiorence drawled, retreating with exaggerated grace, mock offense written all over her face. "I'm just saying—if your little file gave me an edge, a little insight, a little something to help me convince him to kiss along my ankle..." Her words trailed off, replaced by a smirk sharp enough to gut.
Ricken didn't hear the rest.
Because the image had returned—worse now. Douglas. Naked. Kneeling. But this time his hands were on Ricken's calves, his lips brushing the inside of his ankle, slow, reverent, like worship. The warmth of his breath. The slow crawl upward. Inch by inch. Heat and pressure and those void-dark eyes locked on his, full of silent promise.
"Fio!" Lian barked, voice suddenly sharp enough to cut. "You're startling poor Ricky!"
She turned to him with wide eyes, brow furrowed in soft panic. "Are you okay?"
Ricken forced a breath past the knot in his throat. "Y-yes," he croaked, throat raw. "Just…" His eyes flicked toward Fiorence, then fell. "I'm not used to such blatant… talks," he added, voice barely audible.
Fiorence's smile widened, all teeth and teasing cruelty. "Let me guess—good lil' Livian household boy?" she cooed, watching his face like a predator savoring the twitch of prey. Her elbow perched on the table as she leaned in, the grin never faltering. "So uptight."
Her hand reached—slow, deliberate—fingers gliding through the air until they hovered just above his arm. Just a threat of contact.
Ricken froze.
The heat in his cheeks drained, replaced by a sudden drop in body temperature that left him clammy. Dread churned in his stomach like spoiled milk. He stared at the table, food untouched, fingers clenched so tightly his knuckles blanched. His body wound tight, breath shallow.
A verse seared through his mind like a warning flare:
'To submit to a woman's will is to submit to Livia herself.'
Fiorence's fingers hovered—just enough to unmake him.
Then smack.
Lian's hand slapped hers away, firm and fast. "Stop it. He's precious," she snapped, her usual sweetness stripped away, replaced by something far more protective.
Fiorence hissed in mock offense, rolling her eyes. "Right. I forgot you're one of the relics too," she said, flopping her hand back onto the table with performative boredom. "No worries, I'm still all about sisterhood and harmony, peace and pelvic solidarity. Won't be touching your little grab."
The drawl in her voice oozed dismissiveness, but there was a faint crack in it. She didn't like being swatted down. Not by Lian. Especially not over a man.
Siscly, who had been silent through the exchange, cleared her throat and gently slid something across the table toward Ricken—a small, white pill.
He looked up at her in confusion.
She simply tapped her cheek. A gesture. You're pale.
"Oh—no," Ricken said, waving both hands slightly, flustered. "No thank you. I'm… I'm alright, really." His hand brushed against his own face. It came back damp with sweat.
He wasn't alright. But he had no idea what that pill even was.
Miriam stood abruptly, pushing back her chair with a muted scrape. "I'm heading back," she announced flatly, already gathering her things. "I suggest the rest of you do the same. Shipment's scheduled for tomorrow. Let's be professional enough to have our stations ready when it arrives."