She blinked.

"Oh, what am I— what am I even saying."

An awkward smile. She turned her face aside, the specific motion of a woman who has said something she’s evicting from the record.

Marta arrived.

The old woman entered with the timing of someone who has been managing this family long enough to know when intervention via refreshments is required — a tray, tea, a plate of butter cookies that were the good ones, the ones kept for actual guests.

She set it on the low table.

Looked at the room.

At her mistress’s expression. At Viktor’s expression. At Rihana near the door.

Said nothing. The wisdom of forty years of domestic service was legible in that specific, diplomatic silence.

"Please," she said. "Have something."

Eliantra took a cookie without looking at it.

Her eyes had drifted, against her will, back to Viktor — who was pouring a second cup of tea with the unhurried ease of a man entirely comfortable in a sitting room that wasn’t his, in a house full of problems that weren’t his, in a situation he had decided to find pleasant rather than awkward.

He was — she was looking, she couldn’t help looking — he was ’gorgeous.’

The word arrived in her head without her permission.

She looked at Rihana instead.

At the other woman’s age — similar to her own, she thought, give or take — and the full, warm figure under the commoner’s clothes and the specific, settled quality of a woman who knew exactly what her relationship to the man in the room was.

’Why her,’ Eliantra thought, with a logic she couldn’t fully justify. ’He could have anyone younger. Anyone—’

She stopped that thought before it arrived at its destination.

Because it was not a thought she was entitled to have.

Because her daughter had made choices and Viktor was entitled to make choices and she had no ground to stand on.

She looked at her cookie.

Ate it.

Viktor stood.

The motion was easy — he stretched, the suit pulling slightly across his shoulders with the movement, and looked out the window at the city below.

The chimneys. The market district visible from here, the thin thread of smoke above the guard station that was probably a bribe-fire. The general, visible entropy of a city that had been operating on corruption for a decade and was now operating on inertia.

"The condition of this place," he said, conversationally. "It’s not good."

"No," Eliantra agreed, from the sofa.

"Should I help?"

She looked up.

"What?"

He turned from the window.

"Easy enough. Just say the word."

"You’re my guest," she said, and heard herself sound more formal than she’d intended, the hostess reflex rising above the genuine warmth underneath. "You don’t need to— I can manage—"

"Fine." He smiled. Short, warm. "Then walk with me in the city. Let me be your bodyguard for the afternoon."

She laughed.

Actually laughed — the surprised, unguarded sound of genuine amusement — before she caught it.

"You. My guard. Truly?"

He raised an eyebrow.

Rolled one shoulder.

"Do you doubt my manhood?"

The air changed.

It was the word. ’Manhood.’ In the context of this room, with Rihana standing near the door and the phrase ’bed-warming maid’ still warm in the air and Eliantra’s own brain doing things she was actively supervising and failing to stop.

She looked at Rihana.

Rihana looked back at her.

With the calm, warm, entirely composed expression of a woman who knows exactly what Viktor’s manhood involves and has opinions about it that she is generously not sharing.

Eliantra stood.

Faster than necessary.

"I’ll— prepare. I need to change. I should—" She smoothed her robe. "Marta, prepare the bath."

"Of course, my lady." Marta set down the tea things. "I’ll have it ready in—"

"Have it ready together." Viktor, from the window, not turning around.

Marta stopped.

"...Sir Viktor?"

"Why should Marta do it alone?" He turned. Looked at the room. "Rihana can help. Save the wood. Efficient."

"That is absolutely—" Marta started.

"What are you talking about?" Eliantra said, at the same time.

"It’s practical," Viktor said. "Three women, one bath preparation. Faster. Less work for Marta specifically."

"I don’t need—" Marta said.

"This is very unusual—" Eliantra said.

"Yes," Rihana said.

Both women turned to her.

Rihana was already moving.

Her voice, when she spoke, carried that quality — the warm harmonic undertone of Siren blood, the specific melodic weight that didn’t command so much as ’suggest’, the way a comfortable room suggests staying — and she was already at Eliantra’s side, one hand at the woman’s back, steering with a gentle, cheerful pressure that felt less like being pushed and more like being accompanied.

"Yes, that is a very good idea. We can save the fuel and I can help you and it will be much faster and also I have been wanting to speak with you and—"

"No, I really don’t think—"

"—and I know how to prepare a good bath, I am very experienced, and the wood savings really are significant, and also—"

"This is my home, I—"

"—it will be nice, come, come on."

The door.

They were at the door.

Eliantra was looking at it with the expression of a woman who has just been navigated to a destination she didn’t choose by a current she didn’t feel.

Marta, on Rihana’s other side, had the expression of a woman who has met unstoppable forces before and has developed a procedure for them: compliance, careful observation, report later.

The door opened.

All three of them through it.

"No! Wait— this is— Rihana, I don’t know you, you cannot simply—"

"It’s fine, my lady, I am very clean, I assure you—"

"That is not what I—"

The door closed.

Viktor stood alone in the sitting room.

Hands in his pockets.

The tea cooling on the table. The butter cookies half-eaten. The window showing him the chimneys and the corruption and the general exhaustion of a city that needed more help than one afternoon walk could provide.

He breathed.

Looked at the city.

Thought about it — the scope of it, the underground networks, the bought officials, the specific, comprehensive rot that a dead man had cultivated over a decade — and felt the weight of it land in the practical part of his brain.

’Too much hassle,’ he thought.

’I need sleep first.’

He turned toward the door.

From somewhere deeper in the mansion — down the corridor, past the second turn, where the bathing room was — came a sound.

"NO! Do not remove my— this is VULGAR, you cannot simply—"

Eliantra’s voice. Pitched at the specific register of a woman confronting something she is both offended by and insufficiently armed to stop.

Viktor paused at the door.

The sounds of protest continued. Then a splash.

Then, faintly, what might have been Marta making a sound of resigned professional acceptance.

He stood there for a moment.

"Pfft."

The sound left him without permission.

He pressed his mouth flat.

It didn’t help.

"Rihana looks energetic about it," he said, to the empty room.

The empty room had no comment.

He walked out.

Behind him, distantly, Eliantra’s voice reached a new register:

"THAT IS MY— THOSE ARE PRIVATE— MARTA, SAY SOMETHING—"

And Marta, with the resignation of forty years:

"She’s very strong, my lady. I don’t think arguing is helping."