The Slave Who Dared to Flirt
"Huh," Leon grumbled, addressing the woman beneath the moonlight more than saying it aloud. "It’s you?"
She tilted her chin slightly, just enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye. A gentle smile played on her red lips—small, covert. The type of smile that spoke of secrets better left unspoken.
"Expecting someone else, my lord?
Her voice floated through the darkness like velvet, smooth and measured, every word heavy with unspoken implication. She held a glass of wine in her fine fingers, the liquid unmoving. Then, with slow courtesy, she raised it to her lips and drank, never shifting her gaze.
Leon didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
He already knew whom she was.
She stood under the light of the lantern, shrouded in darkness and seduction. Her bobbed hair, black as coal and gleaming, quivered weakly in the air. A few wayward strands cascaded down her cheek, tracing the high cheekbones and the composed, chiseled jaw. Her lips, painted a deep crimson by wine, glimmered under the illumination—beautiful, lethal.
But it was her eyes that captivated him. Keen, clever, shining with inner laughter. Watching him. Observing him.
She had on a night-black dress cut with precision, each fold crafted to highlight without exaggeration. It clung to her like a second skin—tactile, elegant, but irresistibly sensual. A beauty, indeed. But not the kind to be ogled at a distance. The kind that pulled men in close, only to slice them up with a breath.
Leon’s golden eyes closed.
Others may have taken her for a noblewoman of unobtrusive elegance, a court decoration among many. But he knew better.
She was a realm-monarch cultivator.
A dagger in plain sight, patiently waiting by the side of the king for seven long years. And somehow, the king never noticed the blade. Never felt it.
That alone should have made her perilous. Capricious. But there was something Leon still couldn’t get past.
A monarch realm cultivator—even one as meticulously hidden as Natasha—ought to have been detected by another of her own standing. The king, with all his experience and instincts honed by war and palace politics, ought to have found her years ago. And yet he hadn’t. That realization bothered Leon more than he cared to acknowledge.
It wasn’t her cultivation that bothered him. It was the perfection with which she had hidden it.
No bracelet. No runes. No outside cultivation method like those his wives practiced, brought from outside of Galvia. She had concealed her realm completely with no indication, no wave in the air. As if her power didn’t exist—or worse, as if it did exist in a plane others couldn’t access.
And a secret Leon wasn’t prepared to face. Not yet.
He knew this wasn’t the moment to question.
But the questions nagged in his mind nonetheless.
And now, here she was. Waiting for him. Alone.
The silence with which she summoned him—without a word, merely that unyielding, piercing stare—left him disturbed. He had known her was watching him long before he exited onto the balcony.
The wind at night ruffled her hair, strands crawling over the sharp angles of her cheekbones as moonlight clung to her like a membrane. Natasha leaned in her head ever so slightly, the sparkle in her eyes uninterpretable. Her silence was one of intent, of confidence, and one that tugged at something within him he didn’t dare put a name to.
Then she smiled. Slow. Killing.
She raised her glass, her voice as smooth as velvet and as deadly.
"If you continue gazing at me this way, my lord," she said, her mouth curling with sly danger, "I may begin to think I stand a chance with you this evening. in your bed."
Her words tantalized—and wrapped around his chest, holding firm.
Leon blinked, taken aback, then laughed and shook his head in shocked amusement.
"Blunt words," he uttered, his gaze narrowing, a wry smile pulling at his lips. "Especially from a slave. Are you, Natasha?"
Her smile on her lips didn’t quite hold—but only for a moment.
It was fleeting, almost imperceptible. But he saw it. The flick of her mouth. The fleeting glimmer of hurt pride in her eyes. The word had struck home more than she anticipated.
But yet, she recovered with practiced elegance. Her face relaxed. But her voice—now lower, with a subdued sharpness—betrayed the gravity behind her words.
"So what?" she asked, her eyes unflinching. "I knew the instant you brought me into bondage, my life was yours. Why should I tense up in front of the man who already has my leash?"
Her tone was crisp but unbroken, tinged with a daring that sliced across the moon’s silence. Then, resting her head at a marginally greater angle, she added with a studied edge, "But if you recall—before you ever branded me—I already desired you for myself."
Leon let out a breath, fingers smoothing through his black hair. She wasn’t mistaken. The memory flooded back unsummoned: the evening she had given herself freely, before he had lifted a hand—or called on his system—to best her. That evening had existed.
Yet his smile unfolded slowly, calculatedly. A smile that contained no warmth.
"If you hadn’t attempted to kill Nova," he spoke, voice falling to a cold, deadly whisper, "you’d have had a shot. But now you don’t."
The air between them became thinner. A change—tense, nearly explosive—ran like an electric current.
Natasha scowled for a moment. Then she looked up once more, catching the glint in his golden eyes, the tension in his jaw as he bit back power. And like that, the frown softened into a low, rich, amused laugh.
Leon’s eyes narrowed, obviously not finding her amusing. "What’s funny?" he growled, voice low and laced with suspicion.
Spinning entirely around to him, Natasha fixed him with her eyes, mischief dancing at the corner of her lips. "Sorry," she said, head cocked slightly, her black eyes glinting. "It’s just... when you used ’you don’t’ in that chilly noble tone of yours—it gave me the shivers. I’ve spent years dreaming about that expression. That look. That sound. You’re frighteningly charming, Leon."
He sighed, the corners of his mouth twitching despite himself. "I wanted to scare you, not amuse you."
Her shoulders lifted in a graceful shrug as she swirled her wine lazily. "Then you’ve clearly underestimated your charm, my lord."
He looked at her, still, his eyes piercing. He had anticipated manipulation, perhaps seduction—but what he saw in her now was not an act. It was raw truth, almost unnerving in its purity.
"Enough," he said at last, his tone like the stillness before a storm. "Tell me—why are you looking at me like that? You built this moment. This balcony. This silence. Don’t play that you’re simply appreciating the moonlight."
Natasha didn’t blink. Her tone dropped with conviction. "You are just so damn charming, I couldn’t help myself."
His voice softened, but the steel behind it still lingered. "Do I look like a fool who would fall for such words?"
She let out a little scoff, as if she were offended. "No, my lord. I’m telling the truth. But I know you won’t believe me."
Leon watched her intently. That composed, unreadable stance of hers didn’t square with her previous teasing. He sensed the change in her energy, the restraint underlying her gaze. Something wasn’t quite right.
He released a soft breath. "Just tell me. Why did you truly bring me out here, Natasha? That look in your eyes isn’t flirtation."
Her flirtatious smile disappeared. A chill seriousness came down over her face.
"Yes, you’re right," she replied, voice low but insistent. "I didn’t invite you here for flirting. I came with something needing immediate action."
Leon stiffened, the tension in his body evident.
Natasha’s next statement was like a blow to the stomach.
"King Vellore is planning to make an attack on the Moonstone Kingdom."
The name struck Leon like a bucket of ice water. His face instantly set. His golden eyes narrowed to slits as he fixed her with a gaze—dark, unblinking, and altogether too serene.
"Explain," he replied.