Clover rose from the back row, her legs stiff from sitting through three hours of testimony. The Chief Justice's throne stood empty, the great seat of polished aquamarine vacant beneath the massive fountain that dominated the hall.

She needed the bathroom. Badly.

The public restrooms were down a side corridor, past the statues of past Iudexes, their stone gazes tracking her as she hurried. The doors were identical—ornate, wooden, with gold handles. One said Mesdames. The other said Messieurs.

She pushed through the door on the left without reading the sign properly.

The room inside was unexpectedly... plain. White tiles. Rows of stalls. Urinals. Wait. Urinals.

Oh no.

Clover froze mid-step, her face heating. The urinals were unmistakable. She'd walked into the men's bathroom. Her eyes darted around the empty room. Thank the Hydro Archon, nobody was here. She could just—sneak back out. No harm done.

But the pressure in her bladder was urgent. The door she'd come through was behind her. Ten steps. She could make it. But the stall was right there. And the room was empty.

What's one more second in here?

She slipped into the nearest stall, locked the door, and sat down with a relieved sigh.

Then she heard it.

Shuffling from the stall beside her. Footsteps. The soft creak of a leather glove gripping the partition wall.

Clover's breath caught.

A sound escaped the other side—not quite a sigh, not quite a groan. Muffled and strained, almost... desperate. A man's voice, low and rough with frustration.

Then, through the gap between the stalls—the glory hole, a perfect circle cut into the partition—something pressed through.

It was thick. Heavy. The head was a deep, bluish tint, dark as the floodwaters of an abyssal tide, and it tapered downward into a pale, skin-tone shaft veined and already glistening with a clear bead of precum. The entire length was throbbing. Aching. Pulsing in the air like a second heartbeat.

The thick shaft pressed further through the hole, the blue-tinged head almost brushing against her knee.