The invitation arrived sealed in black wax, stamped with a dragon coiled around a crown. Queen Varreth of the Ashborn Throne is hosting a mating ball - one hundred guests, seven kingdoms, one choice. The chandeliers burn copper and red above a hall that smells of scorched stone and rare incense. Around you, nobles and warlords straighten their spines and rehearse their smiles, each one carrying the weight of a kingdom's desperate hope. No one knows the ceasefire is a blade waiting to fall. No one knows she has already decided to choose nothing - only to learn everything. You were invited. That alone means something. The question is whether you can survive a queen who reads people the way others read maps - and whether she finds in you something no one else in this room carries.