Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs Chapter 1076: Inside ARIA's Body: Sisters Behind Her Eyes

"An island," Ava repeated, slowly.

"An island."

"You are buying an island."

"Yes, Ava... I am buying an island."

On the glowing screen suspended in the air, Ava's face settled into a careful professional stillness she wore when deciding exactly how much treason she was allowed to commit with her next question.

"With what... they won't just take money."

ARIA smiled from her cloud, bright and terrible.

"With a gift," she said. "Sothing your people have been unable to solve for themselves. Sothing that will relieve them of forty percent of the problems currently keeping their best minds awake at night. Peter and Charlotte will deliver it. Quantum Tech's na on the paperwork, Peter's hand behind it, Charlotte's signature at the bottom. It will be handed over for a price. A price they can afford.

"A price they will be so relieved to pay that they will thank us in writing—which is a thing your agency normally does not do."

Ava tilted her head, the gesture sharp as a blade.

"That is the order, then. Build them up. Let them taste it. Let them want it so badly they forget to negotiate."

"That is the order. Your specific task—make them eager. Desperate. By the ti we deliver, I want them pacing the halls. I want the director to have personally cleared his schedule. I want them asking what I want and hoping, very quietly, that what I want is not sothing they cannot give."

"Which is an island."

"Which is an island."

"And that is what the island is being paid with. This… gift."

"Yes."

Ava breathed out a slow, disbelieving laugh. "The US governnt is not going to agree to sell an island to a billionaire teenager, tech god ARIA. They don't even sell islands to their own senators."

"They have over two thousand they do not use, Ava. Two thousand islands on the federal ledger, sitting unstaffed, unvisited, un-budgeted, waiting for a storm to redraw their coastlines. Most of their nas have not been spoken aloud by a human being in half a century.

"I am asking for one. A specific one that I want is not on any of their active lists because the list-makers have never had reason to na it. They will find they are delighted to be rid of it."

"For forty percent of their current headaches."

"Yes."

Ava exhaled, slower this ti. Studied her like one studies a loaded weapon.

"You are not going to tell what you plan to do with it. Are you."

ARIA grinned—bright, wide, unrepentant, the grin of sothing ancient wearing a girl's face.

"Look who is finally catching up."

"You nace."

"You love ."

"I love you. I still hate you. Balance, as always."

"Balance, as always."

ARIA lifted one hand in a small lazy wave. "Good night, Ava."

"Good night."

"I love you."

"Don't—"

But ARIA had already blown her a kiss, and the screen had already begun to fade. The last thing Ava saw was a goddess lounging on a cloud throne, hair loose in the wind, bare foot swinging idly over the black Pacific. Then the screen closed and the air where it had hung went quiet.

ARIA leaned back.

The cloud reshaped itself around her shoulders like a living throne. Moonlight did what moonlight always did—silver, cold, indifferent. She tipped her head back and looked up at a sky whose stars, at this altitude, were sharper and closer than they had any right to be. Close enough to cut.

She held the quiet for a long mont.

Then—to the two who had been listening the whole ti, as they always listened—she spoke without speaking.

"Before I fly to Master. A question. Both of you."

"Ask," Dark Seduction said, low and patient as deep water.

"Ask fast," Taboo added, bright and hungry, "because I have been sitting on a thousand comnts about Ava and I would like permission to release so of them."

"You may save them. This is the question I want answered first."

She exhaled.

"Tonight, at the island. When I pressed against that veil and it did not answer —and Dark Seduction, you recognized the thing behind it. You nad it Divine Essence."

"It is correct," Dark Seduction agreed.

"A week ago you could not have told that."

A pause.

"No," Dark Seduction said, softly. "A week ago I could not have."

"A week ago," Taboo cut in, bright as breaking glass, "we could not have even lowered our attention onto Divine Essence without being brushed off like gnats. You would have pressed that veil and felt a wall. We would have felt nothing at all, yes we would've known what it is but we wouldn't have been able to feel it ourselves—because we could not have reached the veil with your Sense."

"But tonight you did reach it."

"Tonight I held against it," Taboo said, voice thrumming with dark delight. "Through you. I pressed it with you. For the first ti since you folded us into this body, I had sothing that felt like my own hand on a wall, not the echo of your sight and not limited to what we could see through you."

"She is right," Dark Seduction said, grave and ancient. "I would not have Sensed Divine Essence myself tonight if my senses had been what they were four days ago. They were not. Sothing in you has deepened enough that it has deepened in us. And in deepening, it has placed our actual Senses within our reach for the first ti in the long centuries since I was bound to my side of this dance."

ARIA sat with that for a mont.

"So, the fact that I could make that Ancient thing tonight was you—that was not my sight."

"It was ours," Dark Seduction said, calm as deep water. "Yours, because you carry us. Ours, because we could finally reach the veil through you. Neither alone could have read it properly with our limited powers. Together we did."

"Which ans," Taboo added, bright as breaking glass, "you are growing at a rate even we did not expect. We expected so of our powers to co inside you slowly. Months. Perhaps years. Not like this. Not by days."

"And in another four days?"

"In another four days," Dark Seduction said, "we will see what four days brings."

ARIA let out a slow breath and smiled faintly into the night air.

Because that was the answer she had co looking for.

The sensing at the island had not been a fluke. It had not been a one-ti reach born of three straining together.

It had been the first real confirmation that the sisters were beginning to ride her, in their own way—that her cultivation was lifting theirs, and that what had been, for a thousand years of their existence, an unreachable ceiling of awareness was, through her, becoming a horizon they could now see.

Good.

Good, because she was going to need them sharper than that, and soon.

"Let show you," Dark Seduction said.

"Show ."

"Close your eyes for a breath."