She shuffles closer, the stench preceding her like an unwashed herald. When she's close enough to my table to reach for the chair across from me, I finally speak.
"Clean people eat at tables."
The words are calm, conversational. I still don't look at her.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Her voice carries the first hint of uncertainty I've heard in days.
"It means exactly what it sounds like." I take another bite, chewing thoughtfully. "Clean people eat at tables. Dirty people eat on the floor."
The silence that follows is deafening. I can feel her shock radiating through the bond, followed quickly by outrage. This isn't what she expected. She thought her filth would move me to pity or disgust, not to treating her like the animal she's chosen to resemble.
"You can't be serious."
"I'm always serious about my standards." I gesture toward the floor beside my chair without looking at her. "Your meal is waiting."
I had the servants—if you can call the palace's magical manifestations servants—prepare a plate and set it on the floor. Simple fare: bread, cheese, water. Food appropriate for someone who's chosen to abandon civilization.
"I won't eat on the floor like a dog."
"Then you won't eat." I continue my meal, making soft sounds of satisfaction. The meat is perfectly seasoned, the vegetables crisp, the bread warm from the oven. Everything she could be enjoying if she'd made different choices.
She stands there for long minutes, pride warring with hunger. I can hear her stomach growling from here—she's been too nauseated by her own smell to eat much lately. The aroma of my dinner is probably torture.
Finally, necessity wins. She sinks to her knees beside my chair, anger radiating from every line of her body. But she reaches for the plate.
"Good girl," I say softly. "Eat."
The praise makes her flinch, but she doesn't refuse the food. She tears into the bread with desperate hands, trying to maintain some dignity while eating from the floor like the animal she's choosing to be.
I continue my own meal while she eats beside me, acutely aware of her presence at my feet. There's something primal about the scene—the alpha dining properly while his omega feeds from scraps on the floor. It shouldn't arouse me, but it does. The power dynamic is intoxicating.
When she's finished, she remains kneeling beside my chair, uncertain what's expected now.
"Where's the bath?" The question comes out broken, barely above a whisper.
There it is. The surrender I've been waiting for.
"Now you want to know?" I set down my fork and finally look at her. She's a mess—hair greasy and tangled, face smudgedwith ash and grease, clothes reeking of accumulated filth. But her eyes hold the desperate need I've been cultivating. "Why the sudden interest in cleanliness?"
"Please." The word tastes like defeat on her tongue. "I can't... I need to be clean."
"You've known where the bathing chamber is since you arrived. Nothing stopped you from using it."
"I know. I was being..." She struggles for words. "I was being stupid."
"You were being manipulative. Thinking your filth would disgust me into coddling you." I stand, looking down at her kneeling form. "Did it work?"
She shakes her head miserably.
"No. It didn't. Because I don't reward poor choices, princess. I let you live with the consequences until you decide to make better ones." I move toward the door. "Follow me."
She scrambles to her feet, unsteady from kneeling so long. I lead her through corridors that grow warmer as we walk—the palace already responding to her decision to abandon her filthy rebellion.
The bathing chamber is one of the palace's more impressive features. The walls are crystalline, cut from living ice that's been shaped and polished until it's perfectly transparent. They reflect light and images like the finest mirrors, multiplying reflections infinitely in all directions.
In the center sits a basin carved from a single piece of ice—but ice that's been magically treated to radiate warmth instead of cold. Steam rises from water that's maintained at the perfect temperature through magic older than human civilization.
She stops in the doorway, staring at the impossible luxury she's been denying herself for days.
