The heavy doors of the Sovereign's private sanctum swung shut with a finality that seemed to echo through the very foundations of Voidmore. Hebner Grand turned the iron deadbolt, the metallic thrum vibrating up his arm. In the absolute silence of this room, the Demon Lord was was a man retreating into a self-imposed exile of the flesh.
The room was a vacuum of light, draped in heavy, light-absorbing velvets that smelled of expensive sprays of Voidmore. For sixty years, this had been his ritual of survival. Since the catastrophic betrayal of Jennifer Thorn—a memory of blood and broken trust that had calcified his heart into a diamond—he had maintained a facade of asexual divinity. To the Succubus queens who flaunted their pheromones in his court, to the Sirens who sang of carnal bliss, and to the human concubines offered as peace treaties, he was a statue. He was the Lord of the Void, a being who had transcended the messy, pathetic impulses of the loins.
