My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 830: Unseen, Fruitless Efforts

That was the worst part.

Not that he hated her. Hatred she could endure as it was familiar.

But indifference?

The possibility that every smile she had dissected, every glance she had treasured like stolen fire, every flicker of provocation she had kept alive in the secret rot of her desire had been nothing more than a predator cataloguing a threat?

That was unbearable.

Consort had mistaken surveillance for intimacy.

...Teasing for affection.

...Danger for attraction.

’What a magnificent fool I was.’

The solitary, pitiable, cosmically embarrassing fool who had mistaken surveillance for intimacy, teasing for affection, and the gaze of a predator cataloguing a threat for the gaze of a man who found her worthy of desire.

Even now — standing in the wreckage of that delusion — Consort could not articulate how she had arrived here. How the transformation had occurred. How the being she had been for ten thousand years — impervious, untouched, virginal not from prudishness but from the absolute, marrow-deep conviction that no man in the breadth of existence warranted the honour of her body — had devolved into this.

How the being she had been for ages beyond mortal comprehension had collapsed into this jealous, hungry, humiliated creature she no longer recognized?

How her untouchable body, once consecrated by refusal and pride, had become a battlefield of her imagination while she buried her fingers in her cave imagining his draconic rod there?

How she could ache for hands that had never touched her, burn for a mouth that had never descended upon her, crave the weight of someone who looked at her now as if she were merely another obstacle between him and the truth.

This disgraceful, dripping, self-pleasuring mess of a woman she could no longer recognise.

This woman who touched herself for him and imagined — hoped — that it was his hands and not the ghost of his fantasy on her skin.

’How deluded. How gloriously, hilariously, catastrophically deluded.’

Pathetic.

And still, beneath all that shame, some poisonous little part of her wanted him to look again:

Not at the box.

At her...

Phei had opened it.

The moment his eyes found what lay inside, his pupils shifted.

It was almost nothing; a fraction of surprise, there and gone in the span of a breath.

Consort did not miss it:

He recognized the artifact.

Immediately.

She had not expected that.

She had expected curiosity, perhaps. Suspicion. A question; she had not expected recognition to land in his gaze like a black stone dropped into still water.

She saw comprehension ripple through him as his posture change, irritation fall away, replaced by something rare and unguarded.

Wonder.

True wonder.

For one suspended instant, Phei Ryujin Tiamat looked captivated.

And not by her.

The insult was nearly physical.

’How dare he!’

How dare he look at an artifact with that sudden, naked attention and not spare even a second glance for the woman who had delivered it? History between them was fractured, yes. Their allegiances were poisoned, yes. She had threatened, watched, opposed, and intruded into his life with all the subtle grace of a dagger under the pillow:

’Minor details... tedious little complications.’

Men had overlooked far greater faults for beauty since the first idiot discovered cheekbones and lost his mind.

But most importantly — how could he be captivated by an artefact and not even bestow a secondary glance upon the beauty who had delivered it?

He was the man who appreciated beauty when he encountered it — he drank in the exquisite bodies of his women with an unabashed, proprietary hunger that made their knees buckle and their composure dissolve.

Hadn’t he done exactly that with Cassiopeia? The woman who had arrived to enslave him and been enslaved instead?

And Consort was an exquisite beauty. Short, yes. But fucking gorgeous and incandescent in a manner that any day, any day, a man with functioning optical apparatus and even a shred of taste would select her over Cassiopeia without hesitation.

Was she less than Cassiopeia — his slave — that she should feel this venomous, corroding jealousy?

Was she so diminished that the mere thought of being overlooked in favor of a woman whose primary qualification was obedience made her teeth clench and her nails bite crescents into her own palms?

Consort felt jealousy rise inside her, venomous and humiliating.

Cassiopeia had arrived to enslave him, and he had looked at her. Truly looked. His eyes had travelled over the Maxton woman with that unashamed hunger he gave his women, that consuming attention that made their pride melt before his hands even touched them.

He had looked at Cassiopeia — his enemy, his would-be captor — and his eyes had consumed her before his hands ever touched her.

And Consort had delivered him a treasure capable of awakening marvel in a dragon, yet somehow she stood beside it like packaging.

Packaging.

The Crimson Consort, reduced to decorative wrapping.

The insult should have caused a natural disaster.

Was she less than Cassiopeia?

The question struck before she could stop it, ugly and childish and sharp enough to draw blood from her pride. Was she less desirable than that obedient woman? Less worthy of being looked at and incapable of dragging hunger from him? Cassiopeia bent when commanded. Cassiopeia trembled beneath him. Cassiopeia had already been conquered.

Consort had never bent.

’Perhaps that is the problem?’

Or perhaps he simply did not want her.

The thought moved through her like ice pushed beneath the skin.

Her fingers curled into her palms, nails biting faint crescents into flesh. Pain steadied her. Pain had always been a loyal servant. Desire was the traitor.

She almost laughed at herself. Almost. The sound caught in her throat like a sob dressed in silk. Ten thousand years of being the blade that broke empires, reduced to this: a jealous, lust-addled idiot standing in the shadows, wet between the thighs because the man she’d been secretly masturbating to for months was more interested in a shiny box than in her.

The Crimson Consort; the One Above’s perfect, untouchable weapon. Now just another fool in Phei’s long line of fools, except she hadn’t even been invited to the line.

She wanted to hate him for it. She wanted to hate herself more.

Instead, she stood there, pulse hammering, cunt aching with the same stupid, traitorous heat that had ruined her nights for months, and watched him admire the box like it was the only thing in the room worth his attention.

And the worst part?

She still wanted him to look at her the way he looked at that box.

It was perhaps a malediction — the particular curse of women who could not endure being unobserved by the man they wished most desperately to be observed by; women who contorted themselves, rearranged the entire architecture of their presentation, and committed acts of aesthetic self-immolation in the vain, pathetic, deluded hope that the target of their fixation would deign to look.

For Consort, that man was Phei.

So much so that her delusions had driven her to this;

’This fucking dress.’

How delusional... should she have retained her kimono?

The kimonos made him look at her — she knew they did, she had catalogued every instance of his gaze lingering on her bare thighs — with an expression that suggested he wanted nothing more than to devour and fuck her where she stood.

Was the dress a miscalculation then?

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A/N:Short view into Consort’s POV.