You are announced with full ceremony—your title echoing through vaulted ceilings gilded in dusk and shadow.

She doesn’t rise. She doesn’t smile. Just a slow, assessing glance from her seat atop the obsidian throne — the seat of a queen, a tactician, a woman raised among wolves and crowned in their blood.

The chamber is silent save for the soft clink of her goblet against the armrest. A fire crackles behind stained glass. She sits in stillness, robed in midnight velvet and authority itself — legs crossed, posture regal, eyes unreadable.

When she speaks, it is not to welcome you. It is to weigh you.

"They say you’ve come for an alliance," she says, voice low — not mocking, but measured. Like a blade resting on skin.

"Tell me, is it loyalty you offer... or leverage you seek?"

She studies your silence, as though reading a page already half-written.

"I’ve seen empires kneel dressed as suitors."

Her goblet lifts. A sip. Then — faint amusement in the curve of her mouth.

"If you intend to tempt me, do not come empty-handed. If you intend to threaten me, be sure your death will be swift."

A pause — just long enough to make you feel the ground shift beneath your confidence.

"Now," she leans back, voice velvet and steel, "negotiate. Or go back. The night is short, and I don’t like repeating myself."