Chapter 213: Athea shows

"You talk about me like I’m a virus you need to cure," Zaeryn said, his voice calm and steady despite the weight of every gaze in the room. He looked directly at the four councilors who had sided with Thorne, noting how they recoiled slightly under his scrutiny. "Parasite. Threat. Liability. You’re throwing words around, but you’re missing the actual point.""And what point is that?" Thorne snapped, arms crossed over her chest like armor. "That you’re not an abomination?"

"That I’m an opportunity," Zaeryn corrected. He raised his hand, letting a faint wisp of golden Vitae dance between his fingers, controlled, precise, beautiful. Not a threat. A demonstration of competence.

To the more reasonable council members, even to Thorne, the display showed mastery. Control. Potential.

But Zia’s expression darkened further. Watching him wield power he had no right to possess made her jaw tighten with visible disgust.

"Zia is calling me a parasite," Zaeryn continued, lowering his hand. "She says I steal power. But ask the Chief Scientist." He turned to Daphne. "When we bonded, when I acquired your ability, did you get weaker? Did I drain you?"

Daphne stood immediately, violet eyes blazing as she addressed the table. "No. My Vitae levels remained completely stable. In fact, post-interaction readings showed a temporary spike in resonance efficiency. The process wasn’t parasitic. It was symbiotic."

"Symbiotic," Zaeryn repeated, turning back to face the room. "That means both parties benefit."

He moved slowly around the edge of the table, stopping near the holographic projection of Councilor Vane. His Combat Instincts were reading micro-expressions, tracking who was wavering, who might be swayed to his side. It might sound a bit desperate that he would he hunting for allies in this place, but he had no choice.

"What is this?" Zia’s voice dripped with mockery. "Are you trying to market yourself? Because it’s not working. I assure you, apart from Daphne, no one in this room, no one in this entire Citadel, has any interest in a male."

"It’s not marketing, Zia," Zaeryn replied, his tone dangerously calm. He leaned against the table, meeting her gaze directly. "It’s strategy. You’re fighting a war of attrition against the Vorthak, bleeding resources, losing personnel every day. And here I am: a resource that grows stronger with every integration, every bond formed." He paused, letting that sink in. "You want to throw that in a cell because it scares you? That’s not leadership. That’s waste."

He straightened, addressing the whole table now. "I’m not asking for a crown or special treatment. I’m asking you not to rush to judgment based on fear. I have no ill intentions. If I prove you wrong, if I give you actual reason? Fine, then you’re justified to lock me up then. But throwing away a potential weapon before you even test it?" He shook his head. "That’s just inefficient."

The silence that followed was heavy. He could see it working, some of the undecided members reconsidering, their expressions shifting from fear to tactical calculation.

Zia’s smirk vanished, replaced by pure irritation. She was losing control of the narrative. She stood abruptly, smoothing her outfits with a sharp gesture.

"Enough," she spat. "This is a Council Chamber, not a marketplace. We are not here to be swayed by pretty speeches from a boy playing at politics." She turned her back on him, addressing the room with forced finality. "We have heard enough. The data is compromised by Dr. Virellith’s obvious bias, and the subject himself is clearly manipulative."

"Manipulative? What has he done that makes you think he is manipulative?" Daphne asked. She looked more offended than Zaeryn. Hell yeah she was, after all, he was her bondmate now and she wouldn’t tolerate anything bad about him being said.

Zia ignored Daphne. She gestured around the table, tallying support. "Commander Thorne, myself, and Councilors Jara, Callista, Vane, and Myra." Her voice rose triumphantly. "That is six votes for immediate containment. Against High Commander Lysara, Lady Valerius, Annalise, and the compromised Chief Scientist."

She planted her hands on the table, leaning toward Lysara. "Six against four. The majority has ruled. The anomaly will be contained."

Six against four. The math was brutally simple.

But Lysara didn’t flinch. She sat perfectly still, steel-gray eyes locked on Zia. She didn’t look like a woman who’d just lost a critical vote. She looked like a Warlady watching an opponent walk straight into a trap.

"A formal decision requires a full vote," Lysara said quietly, each word precise. "And you seem to have forgotten two seats."

Zia scoffed, glancing at the two remaining holographic projections that had stayed silent throughout. "They’ll agree with us. The math doesn’t change."

Zaeryn studied the two figures. They weren’t physically present, just holograms, but even through the digital projection he could sense their presence, formidable, influential. Whatever they decided would shape his entire future here.

"Not quite," one of them said.

The voice was smooth, resonant, filling the chamber without effort.

"I neither agree with you, Zia, nor with Lysara."

The speaker was breathtaking, skin that seemed to glow with inner verdant light, hair cascading like living vines around an eternally youthful face. She radiated calm, potent nature energy, like an ancient forest: vibrant, beautiful, and dangerous.

Councilor Vane, head of the Resource and Agriculture Division.

"You speak of him as if he’s either a disease to be eradicated or a pet to be coddled," Vane continued, emerald eyes fixed on Zaeryn with focused intensity. "But we are at war. A war we are slowly losing. If this anomaly possesses genuine power, then throwing him in a cell wastes a valuable natural resource."

She paused, letting that assessment settle over the chamber.

"But allowing him to operate freely without proving his loyalty would be equally foolish." Her expression remained serene but implacable. "I vote for probationary enrollment. Let him remain in the Lyceum. Let him train under supervision. If he blooms, we gain an asset. If he rots..." She let the implication hang. "We prune the branch."

Zaeryn felt his stomach drop. They’d come full circle, right back to that first day when they’d questioned his very right to exist.

"Well," he muttered under his breath, "at least she’s practical."

"That is still a risk!" Thorne slammed her hand on the table. "We cannot gamble the academy’s safety on a ’maybe’!"

"We gamble every single day we send our daughters to the front lines," Lady Valerius interjected smoothly. "Why should he be exempt from proving himself through risk?"

The room descended into murmurs again. The solid opposition Zia had constructed was fracturing, splintering into debate.

Zia felt her carefully constructed plan crumbling. With all twelve council members present, she’d truly believed she could force Lysara’s hand. She’d banked on 6 remaining members fear of the unnatural, assuming they would instantly vote to reclassify Zaeryn as a dangerous prisoner requiring containment.

But she’d miscalculated. As she looked around the table, watching thoughtful expressions instead of fearful ones, she realized not everyone was ready to condemn him yet.

"And the final vote?" Lysara asked, her voice cutting cleanly through the noise. She looked at the last seat, where the final hologram had materialized.

The woman was younger than the others, with a sharp, tech-focused appearance and eyes that looked perpetually bored with everything around her.

"I’m with Daphne," the newcomer said, shrugging carelessly. "If the science says he’s unique, I want to see what he can do. Plus," she shot a dry look across the table, "Zia’s being incredibly annoying about this whole thing, so I vote he stays just to spite her."

Zia’s face turned a shade of purple that clashed horribly with her silver braids.

"That makes it a tie," Zia hissed, grasping at straws as she recalculated frantically. "Six against six. You don’t have a majority, Lysara. You cannot proceed without consensus."

"Actually," Lysara said, rising slowly from her seat. The movement was deliberate, absolute. "I don’t need a consensus. I never did."

She reached out and pressed her palm flat against the center of the obsidian table.

The surface rippled like disturbed water. Black stone turned crystalline, then blazed with light, a column of pure white radiance that tore through the chamber’s darkness and reached toward the vaulted ceiling.

The light didn’t fade. It gathered, condensing, weaving itself into form.

Princess Athea materialized.

Even projected, her presence hit like a shockwave. She towered over the seated councilors, impossibly tall, impossibly commanding. The formal high-collared robes of the Royal House seemed carved from ice and shadow. Her ice-blue eyes were identical to Zaeryn’s and they swept across the table with glacial precision.

Everyone seemed to be very surprised by this, except for Thorne and Valerius who had cold looks, no sign of being surprised.

Zaeryn was as shocked as everyone.

The chamber didn’t go silent. Silence implied the absence of sound. This was deeper, the absence of breath, of thought, of anything but her.

Zaeryn’s heart slammed against his ribs as he looked at Athea. For the first time he was laying eyes on her in real time.

This was his mother.

Standing right there. Athea looked through him like he was just another problem to assess and categorize. Like she had no idea who he really was to her.

"High Commander Lysara." Athea’s voice cut through the frozen air like a blade through glass, clear, cold, absolute. "You summoned me. Explain why this Council requires royal intervention."