Lucien
I'd forgotten how filthy this place was.
Not the polished marble streaked with wine, nor the gilded railings where half-naked dancers twirled on silks high above the room. No, the filth was in the air, heavy and heady with opium, sweat, and the desperate musk of bodies sliding against one another in every shadowed corner.
A woman bent over the bar, skirt pooled at her waist while her lover rutting into her like the world might end before he finished. Another dances on the table between us, skin slick with oil, eyes glassy from opium, the scent of sex clinging to her like perfume. Everywhere, there's movement--hips grinding, mouths parting, skin on skin.
I had ordered these pleasure houses torn down more times than I could count. They always returned, like weeds, crawling back into the underbelly of Ebonheart. And yet here I sat, crownless and cloaked, in one of the darkest of them all.
I hadn't intended to follow her here
