Uncle John groaned, clutching his bruised ribs as he used the anvil to pull himself upright.
His face was pale and a trickle of blood from his lip, but his eyes were fixed on the open door where Lady Clara had fled.
"She ran..." John muttered, blinking in confusion. "That crazy witch ran away screaming like she saw a ghost."
He turned his gaze down to Alex, who was curled up on the stone floor, shivering violently despite the intense heat radiating from his body.
"Alex?" John limped over, his heavy boots crunching on the debris. He knelt down, ignoring the pain in his chest. "Kid, you okay? What the hell just happened?"
Alex couldn't answer. The aftermath of channeling the Empress's aura felt like a physical hangover.
His head was pounding, and his skin felt like it was two sizes too tight.
"Hot..." Alex whimpered, clawing at the collar of the flannel shirt. "I'm burning..."
John reached out and placed his hand on Alex's forehead. He hissed and pulled back almost immediately.
"God, you're boiling!" John exclaimed. "I'll take you to your bed…"
"Don't worry about that bitch," Uncle John grunted, taking Alex up by holding the boy's arm over his shoulder.
"I'll take the cart to the City Lord's office. Even a noble can't just murder people in broad daylight. I'll ask for help."
He practically carried Alex up the narrow stairs, kicking the bedroom door open.
He deposited Alex onto the bed, pulling the thick quilt over him despite the sweat already soaking Alex's clothes.
"On my way back, I'll stop at the pharmacy and bring some medicine," John promised, wiping a smudge of soot from his forehead.
He looked at his nephew with deep concern. "You just... take some rest. Stay put."
John's heavy boots retreated down the stairs. The front door slammed. Silence returned to the house.
Time passed in a blur of feverish heat.
Alex felt like he was back in the forge, but this time, he was the metal being tempered.
His skin felt too tight, itching maddeningly all over his body.
Every time he shifted in his sleep, he felt flakes of dry skin rubbing against the sheets.
"Am I dead?" Alex wondered, his consciousness slowly floating back to the surface. His eyelids felt heavy, glued shut by sleep and heat. "Did Lady Clara kill me?"
"Nhgh.. It hurts!!" Alex groaned, digging his fingers into the bedsheets.
He arched his back, his toes curling.
The pain was deep in his marrow, a grinding, shifting sensation as if his pelvic bones were being slowly rearranged.
His skin felt incredibly itchy, a thousand times worse than before, the urge to scratch and peel himself raw almost overwhelming.
"Woah," he gasped, his breath hitching.
He suddenly felt a distinct, heavy pressure settle over his hips.
It felt like someone crawling on top of his body, their knees pinning his arms to the mattress.
Alex's heart hammered as he thought. 'Elena? No, she's still downstairs…'
He forced his heavy eyelids open, his vision swimming in a hazy red blur.
When he opened his eyes again... he found that there was a silver-haired woman sitting over his body.
It was her. The Silver Serpent Empress.
She was straddling his waist, looking down at him with a condescending look, together with a slight curve on her lips.
The lighting in the room was dim, but Alex could see everything. She was no longer wearing the soaked ceremonial robe from the shrine. Instead, she was wearing a phantom construct of white silk lingerie that left nothing to the imagination.
Her legs were spread wide, her knees resting on the mattress on either side of his hips. The angle gave him a direct, unobstructed view up her thighs to where a scrap of white lace barely covered her crotch.
Above that, her large, heavy breasts hung low, swaying slightly with her movements, clearly exposed and defying gravity.
Alex felt a warm liquid trickle down his upper lip. He felt his nose bleed.
The sheer visual overload of her raw, intense sexual body… the pale skin, the dark nipples, the predatory glow in her blue eyes, short-circuited his brain.
"You.. how did you still..." Alex tried to speak, his voice rasping.
He wanted to ask how she was here, how she was physically touching him when she was supposed to be inside his head.
However, she immediately stopped him.
She leaned forward, her silver hair cascading down to tickle his sweating face. She placed a cool finger over his lips to silence him.
"Shhh," she purred, her voice echoing both in the room and inside his mind. "You talk too much for a vessel."
She pulled her hand back but didn't move her weight off him. Instead, she shifted her hips, grinding her pelvis down against his stomach.
She pointed a slender, sharp finger at his groin.
There, tenting the fabric of his sweatpants, was a raging, rock-hard erection.
It stood straight up, throbbing visibly, pressing right against the underside of her phantom thigh.
The Empress laughed, a rich, mocking sound that vibrated through his entire body.
"Look at you," she teased, her eyes gleaming with sadistic amusement. "You cry about pain, you scream about not wanting this... and yet, look at how your body greets me."
She traced the outline of his length through the sweatpants with her finger, not touching it directly, but hovering just close enough for the static energy to make Alex jump.
"You really are a pervert, aren't you?" she whispered, leaning down until her lips brushed his ear. "Almost dying... and you still get hard the moment I appear. Such a good little breeder."
"Don't... stop..." Alex choked out, his head thrashing against the pillow.
He tried to buck his hips, instinctively trying to dislodge her, but the Empress was immovable.
Despite being a spectral projection, her weight felt crushing, pinning him to the bed with the force of a mountain.
"Stop? Why would I stop?" She giggled, leaning back on her hands, which she placed on his chest.
Her palms burned against his skin, searing through the flannel shirt.
She began to bounce gently, a slow, rhythmic grinding motion that rubbed her phantom pussy directly against his erection.
"Ahhh... Nnnh!" A high-pitched, broken moan escaped Alex's throat, sounding humiliatingly feminine to his own ears.
The sensation was excruciatingly good.
Even through the layers of clothes, he could feel the phantom heat of her wetness seeping into him.
It was like his body was rewiring itself in real-time, confusing the pain of the fever with the blinding pleasure of her touch.
"Look at you, leaking like a little bitch," the Empress whispered, her voice filled with venomous honey.