She stepped through the doorway.
Four heads lifted weakly—Kieran, Adrian, Lucian, Damien. Their eyes tracked her movement with the wariness of wounded animals watching a predator approach. No strength for threats. No energy for curses. Just raw, exhausted awareness.
Raphael didn't even register her entrance, lost somewhere in his private agony.
The silence was delicious. These proud, powerful men—reduced to this. Waiting. Watching. Wondering what fresh hell she'd deliver.
Heena's smile widened, bright and cheerful as morning sunshine.
"Good morning, *hubbies*~!" Her voice rang sweet and terrible through the chamber. "Did you sleep well?"
The expressions that greeted Heena weren't just unpleasant—they were *murderous*.
None of them spoke. Couldn't, really. Throats scraped raw from hours of screaming, moaning, cursing into the void. But their eyes? Oh, their eyes spoke volumes. Kieran's ice-blue glare promised slow, creative death. Adrian's golden stare calculated her demise with mathematical precision. Lucian's dark eyes burned with battlefield fury. Even half-conscious Damien managed a look of pure venom. Only Raphael's violet gaze remained unfocused, the priest too far gone to muster hatred.
Heena felt a delicious shiver run down her spine. That defiance, that stubborn refusal to break completely—it made her fingers itch. She wanted to pluck those hateful eyes out one by one and juggle them. Play with them like marbles. Watch the last ember of their pride finally extinguish.
*Damn bastards.* They'd literally tried to poison her at dinner yesterday, plotted her assassination like she was nothing, and they *still* had the audacity to look at her like she was the monster.
Well. Let's see how much longer that attitude lasted.
She set a small cloth bundle on the table with deliberate care, unwrapping it to reveal five thick beeswax candles. Golden, expensive, radiating subtle magical energy. One by one, she positioned them around the chamber—strategic placement for optimal antidote distribution. Her fingers snapped, sparking flame to each wick in succession.
*Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.*
The musky, medicinal scent began filling the air immediately. Already she noticed subtle changes in her captive audience—shoulders dropping slightly as chemical pressure eased, breathing becoming fractionally less desperate, color creeping back into corpse-gray faces.
Heena watched the flames dance and felt her irritation spike.
These candles cost her 70 points. *Seventy.* Points she'd nearly died earning across brutal missions. She still vividly remembered her first world completion—three near-death experiences, two actual deaths she'd barely reversed, countless humiliations—all for a measly 20-point payout.
And now she was burning premium antidote candles worth more than three completed missions on these ungrateful assholes who'd tried to murder her.
The urge to just... let them die was *strong*. Watch their hearts give out. Watch blood vessels burst in their brains from aphrodisiac overload. Watch karma finally catch up with five powerful men who thought they could casually dispose of an empress.
But she couldn't. Politics, unfortunately, had to win over petty revenge.
These five controlled armies, treasuries, spy networks, temples, trade routes. Kill them, and their loyal forces would riot. The empire would fracture. Civil war would erupt. And the original Celeste's life work—building stability, protecting the people, creating something worth governing—would burn to ash.
So instead, Heena burned expensive candles and swallowed her frustration.
*For now.*
The antidote smoke thickened, swirling through the chamber like ghostly fingers. The mechanical toys still worked—clamps biting, weights pulling, vibrations humming—but their effects were dampening. Relief was coming, slow but certain. Just enough to keep them alive. Not enough to restore dignity.
Heena turned away from the candles, rolled her shoulders, and stretched her arms high above her head. Her spine popped in three satisfying places. She felt rested, refreshed, ready for another productive day of empire management and husband-breaking.
Behind her, five pairs of eyes tracked every movement with the wariness of prey watching a predator stretch.
She smiled without turning around, knowing they could see it in her posture. In the casual confidence of someone who held all the cards and knew it.
"Now then," Heena said, voice bright with cheerful malice, "let's get back to work, shall we?"
The candle flames flickered in response, casting dancing shadows across naked, tortured flesh.
Morning had barely begun, and she had so much planned.
Heena lounged on the velvet sofa, one leg crossed over the other, silk robe slipping to reveal smooth thigh. Candle smoke curled lazily as she watched her five bound husbands—naked, exhausted, toys still embedded and clamping their most sensitive areas.
She clapped once, sharp and commanding.
The stone door groaned open. Five muscular palace guards entered—tall, broad-shouldered men selected for their loyalty and discretion. Their eyes swept over the bound men with professional detachment, but a flicker of something darker passed through their gazes.
Shock paralyzed the husbands. Faces flushed deep crimson—not just from lingering drugs, but raw humiliation at being seen like this by strangers.
"What the—GET THEM OUT!" Kieran's voice cracked, hoarse from screaming.
Adrian's golden eyes went wide with mortification. Lucian thrashed weakly against restraints. Damien's jaw clenched in helpless fury. Raphael whimpered, violet eyes brimming with tears of shame.
Heena smiled lazily, sipping tea. "Clean my husbands. Thoroughly. Inside and out."
The guards bowed deeply, then approached with buckets of steaming scented water, soft sponges, and glistening oils. One guard paused before Kieran, eyeing the barbed clamps still biting into his nipples, the vibrating ring around his cock, the beads trailing from his body.
"Your Majesty," the guard asked respectfully, "what about the... implements?"
Heena waved her hand dismissively. "Just take them off."
The guard nodded. His large hands moved to Kieran's chest, carefully releasing the clamps. The warrior prince gasped sharply as blood rushed back, hypersensitive skin screaming. The guard's calloused fingers brushed against tortured flesh as he worked, clinical but unavoidably intimate.
"Nngh—don't touch me—" Kieran choked out, face burning scarlet as stranger hands removed the cock ring next, fingers sliding along his length to free it. The vibrating toy clattered to the floor.
At Adrian's pillar, another guard knelt between the duke's spread legs, carefully extracting the glass probe that had filled him all night. Adrian's breath hitched, a strangled sound escaping as the beaded toy slid out slowly, ridge by ridge. "Stop—please—" His scholarly composure obliterated, tears tracking down flushed cheeks.
The guard set the probe aside and dipped a soft sponge into warm water, beginning to wash Adrian's trembling thighs, moving higher to clean where the toy had been. Intimate, thorough, humiliating.
Lucian snarled as his guard removed the heavy ball crushers, the weighted steel finally releasing its brutal grip. Relief and shame warred on his scarred face as strong hands sponged his lower body, washing away dried sweat and worse. "I'll kill you for this—" But the threat was empty, voice cracking.
Raphael sobbed openly as gentle fingers extracted the prayer beads from his rear, removed the suction cups from his chest, cleaned the urethral sound from his cock. The priest's pale body shook violently, overwhelmed by stranger hands touching him everywhere, washing intimate places with practiced efficiency.
Damien remained silent as his guard carefully removed the electrified rod—power finally off—then the spiked ball weights, the barbed nipple clamps. Blood had dried where spikes had pierced. The guard cleaned each wound tenderly, sponge trailing over olive skin, between legs, everywhere. Damien's green eyes burned with murderous rage, but his body betrayed him—flushing, responding involuntarily to the touch despite exhaustion.