Chapter 74: At home

The house looked like something out of a high-end architecture magazine. Wide glass windows captured the golden morning light, which slid across the pale walls and modern lines of the building with almost unreal softness. Everything radiated understated luxury — not the kind that tries to impress loudly, but the kind that no longer needs to prove anything.

The sea stretched just behind it, vast and calm, tinted with pink and orange reflections from the dawn. The sound of the waves gently broke against the rocks below, giving the whole place a suspended, timeless atmosphere.

He gave her a tour.

And clearly, he loved watching her reaction.

The outdoor terrace-pool overlooked the ocean directly, creating the absurd impression that the horizon belonged to him personally. Further inside, the indoor pool was bathed in soft light, surrounded by pale stone and smoked glass. Even the air smelled expensive.

Then came the solar shower behind the living room, open onto a small private garden where water flowed down a black stone wall warmed by the first rays of sunlight. The whole thing dangerously oscillated between "modern architecture" and "way-too-attractive billionaire fantasy."

Blanche was genuinely trying to stay composed.

Genuinely.

The upstairs master suite looked more like a luxury hotel room than an actual bedroom. An enormous bed with immaculate sheets, panoramic ocean view, dark wood, soft lighting... even the silence felt high-end here.

Then he opened his wardrobe.

"Her" clothes, according to him.

Blanche froze for a second in front of the perfectly arranged rows of dresses, shirts, jackets, and shoes, all clearly chosen with far too precise a taste to be improvised. Some pieces felt strangely familiar, even though she couldn't quite explain why; others matched exactly what she might have liked to wear if she had ever dared to admit it.

How many worlds, how many wardrobes had she collected in her life?

The thought crossed her mind with almost vertiginous irony. Between fantasy worlds, military camps, Viking villages, student dorms, and now this dream villa by the sea, her existence was starting to look like a chaotic succession of different lives stitched together in haste.

And the most unsettling part was that a part of her seemed to adapt far too easily to this one.

Lost in thought, she scanned everything almost like X-ray analysis, under Saphir's attentive gaze.

"You built it yourself, based on our pillow talk discussions," he told her. "A welcome gift in Epsilon."

She looked away, unsettled by the hope in his eyes. There was something disarming in his gaze, a luminous expectation she didn't know how to face without feeling her own heart tighten slightly. It wasn't pressure, nor persuasion — worse. It was sincere.

And that sincerity destabilized her more than arrogance ever could.

So she preferred to look elsewhere: the morning reflections on the glass, the elegant lines of the house, anything rather than that dangerously tender expression he kept on her as if afraid she might disappear.

Then he led her into the wine cellar, where a secret passage descended into the rock.

The entrance was hidden behind large shelves filled with old bottles whose labels probably cost more than several years of her student life. An invisible door slid open silently, revealing a staircase leading down into the cliff's depths.

Blanche raised a faint eyebrow.

Of course.

Because apparently owning a seaside villa wasn't enough; it also had to include a secret passage worthy of a charismatic spy movie villain.

Against all expectations, there was no claustrophobia: the tunnel, made entirely of glass, withstood the water pressure and revealed the seabed.

And then her brain gave up all sarcasm.

The transparent walls opened onto the ocean on all sides, a vast shifting mass pierced by golden morning rays filtering down from the surface. Schools of fish drifted slowly around the tunnel in flashes of silver, while the deeper waters dissolved into an almost infinite dark blue.

Light rippled everywhere.

On the glass.

On their silhouettes.

On the liquid ceiling above their heads.

Each movement of the water cast shifting reflections along the passage, giving the unreal impression that they were walking at the bottom of the sea while staying perfectly dry. Even silence felt different here — muted, peaceful, only broken by the distant vibrations of the ocean.

Blanche slowed without realizing it.

Fascinated.

The tunnel disappeared into the rock like a transparent crack between two worlds, suspended in the middle of the deep sea. Occasionally, a larger shadow would glide in the distance before vanishing into the blue, a reminder of the immense living world surrounding them.

And yet, she felt no fear.

Only that strange sensation of having stepped into a place no one was meant to see.

Blanche, enthralled, watched like a child.

"All drakions are prone to claustrophobia," he explained as he walked. "But you made sure we don't have to worry about that."

A few minutes later, they emerged onto an island near the coast. Carved directly into the rock, an enormous drakion nest filled the space, large enough for several dragons. You could even fly inside it. At the very top, an opening led out to the sky.

"I got special permission from the Draconic Council. The island is ours. No one can enter without our consent. An invisibility spell covers it entirely — we can fly for miles around it. A little luxury just for us. You love flying," he said, as if he knew her by heart.

He guided her toward a corner of the cavern. The deeper they went, the more unreal the place became, as if the rock itself had been sculpted to host something far too luxurious to belong to a simple hidden refuge beneath the ocean.

A four-poster bed, silk sheets, a natural jacuzzi, three mirrors — one of them connected to his manor.