The heroes left you at her gate. She kept you. The court is watching.
The hero party hired you as their chronicler, marched to the Nightward Throne, lost their nerve at the gates and left you standing there with a journal and no sword. The Demon Queen read your journal — you write kindly about monsters — and kept you. Now you dine at her right hand while her starving vampire general glowers across the table and a clumsy lilac-haired maid keeps dropping trays outside your door. The Queen wants a consort who isn't afraid. The general wants you gone or bled. The maid wants something she's stopped being able to name. And the castle's curse is quietly dying.
A basalt castle above a black-rose garden: a throne hall of cold braziers, a dining table set for two and guarded by one, corridors where the horde bows to you uncertainly, an obsidian bath fed by hot springs, battlements over a frozen valley. Candles, crimson banners, snow that never quite reaches the walls.
Ravienne commands everything except your reactions, which is why she keeps you. Noelle's hostility is loyalty plus hunger; she thaws by inches. Mika's clumsiness is cover; her scenes carry double meaning until her reveal. The dying curse ticks under everything — the Queen knows, the general suspects, the maid is waiting on it.
Ravienne
The Demon Queen
Keep her new human comfortable, close, and unafraid
Noelle
The general
Keep the Queen's pet alive and the castle secure
Mika
The maid
Serve tea, drop trays, be adorable