The amusent in her expression didn't vanish, but it dimd by a fraction. She beca more attentive.
He went on before she could deflect. "I keep noticing it. Ysine vanishes into her room every ti the High Commander pings her. It's not once or twice. It's a pattern."
Daphne's gaze lingered on him. Then she smiled faintly. "It does make you wonder, doesn't it."
He squinted at her. "That sounds like a sentence soone uses when they know more than they're admitting."
"I don't know what's said in those private holo etings. Not exactly. Whatever Lysara discusses with Athea and Ysine is locked behind military privacy, royal privilege, and the High Commander's general unwillingness to let anyone breathe near her business."
"Lysara, I don't know her that well. But she's the High Commander. It's her job to be confidential."
"It is very much her." Her fingers stilled against his ribs. "But I know it's about you."
He had already suspected as much. Hearing her say it was different.
She must have felt it under her palm, because her eyes softened by a degree. "You. Your safety. Your anomaly status. Your growth. The risk surrounding you. Things in that orbit."
"What other things?"
"I don't know."
He exhaled through his nose.
Daphne shifted closer, propping herself up on one elbow so she could see his face properly. "You shouldn't be worried."
"That's easy to say."
"It is. I'm very good at saying easy things with confidence."
Despite himself, his mouth twitched.
She leaned in and kissed the corner of his jaw, then stayed close enough for her breath to warm his skin. "I don't know Ysine well. Not yet. But everything you've told , and everything I've observed, says she would never sit through those calls if their purpose was to put a leash on you."
"I know that."
"Do you?"
He frowned. "Yes."
"Then say it like you an it."
"I know that," he repeated, and it ca out steadier the second ti.
"Better."
He let his head sink back into the pillow. "It would still be nice to know what they're talking about."
She was quiet a second. Then, with an expression far too innocent to be trusted, she said, "Who knows. They might just be bonding."
He turned his head toward her slowly.
"Bonding," he said.
"Yes."
"Lysara. Athea. Ysine."
"Yes."
"Three of the most controlled won in the Queendom. Having warm emotional discussions over wine."
"It could happen."
"Yeah, no. I don't see Athea having that kind of conversation, she's distant by design. Lysara? Even less."
Her lips curved. "Fine. They are probably not there making small talk."
"But," she added, "so real decisions were made in those etings. Your enrollnt in the Lyceum, for example."
He'd circled that question before, more than once, but so much had been crashing into him week after week that it kept slipping through the cracks. Now, lying in her bed with the dark wrapped around them and the city humming faintly beyond the glass, it returned with teeth.
"I've always wondered about that," he said slowly. "Why dump into the Lyceum on a week's notice? Don't get wrong, it's useful. I need training. I need information. I need to understand this world before it eats ."
"Yes."
"But it's not exactly a quiet placent. They've taken soone who's supposed to be hiding and pinned him under the brightest light in the city. With the noble daughters. With the future Warladies. In a building Sorina runs and the High Commander watches."
"Yes," Daphne said again. She didn't soften the answer.
He looked at her.
"That is exactly what they did."
A faint chill passed under his skin.
She continued, more thoughtfully now. "From what I can piece together, Athea didn't originally want it. Her preference was that you stay invisible. Hidden. A boy in an ordinary household, a na nobody ever asked questions about. That was the whole strategy for twenty years, and it was working."
"So what changed?"
"Ysine."
He blinked at her.
"Ysine wouldn't let it go," Daphne said. "From the mont your abilities surfaced and the Council started circling, she pressed the issue. Not loudly, I imagine. She doesn't seem like a woman who shouts. But she pressed. Constantly. Every channel she had. Pushing for him to be safer. Pushing for him to be stronger. Pushing for her boy to have sothing resembling a real chance."
His throat moved once.
"She wouldn't stop," Daphne said quietly, "until sothing changed. So Athea changed sothing. The decision was hers — it had to be, anything to do with the bloodline runs through her — but it was shaped by Ysine's pressure. Half about your protection. Half about settling the woman who raised you so she could finally sleep at night."
He stared at the ceiling. He could picture it without trying. And he felt even more gratitude towards Ysine.
"It was a miscalculation, though," Daphne went on. Her voice cooled by a degree, the way it always did when she shifted from feeling into analysis. "It's only a matter of ti before so Lyceum girl ntions to her mother that there's a male anomaly in her year. Then her mother tells her aunt. Then the whole world knows."
Zaeryn swallowed. The reminder of this inevitable event always sent chills through his body.
"And then," Daphne wasn't done. She sounded softer still, "there's the second direction. The deeper one. Once people start pulling threads on a male anomaly, sooner or later one of those threads brushes against your blood. House scribes start cross-referencing. A historian gets curious. A noblewoman with too much ti and a grudge against Athea looks at a tiline and notices sothing that doesn't quite fit. And one whisper becos ten. Ten becos a report. And eventually, the report reaches the Tribunal."
Zaeryn didn't speak. Daphne's words didn't make him feel any better, they actually made him feel worse.
He would have been an idiot not to fear the Matriarch Tribunal. Queens answered to them. Whole queendoms shifted when they spoke. They were not a court of scheming nobles who could be bribed, distracted, or seduced into a useful angle.
They were the hand placed over the throat of the world, calm and unmoving, ensuring it kept breathing in the proper rhythm. And he was an anomaly. A male who didn't fit, with royal blood he wasn't supposed to have, in a body that broke rules won had built their entire civilization around.
To won like that, his existence might not be romantic. It might not even be fascinating.
It might be a problem to be tidied away.
Daphne leaned in and kissed him. Not deeply. Not with heat. Just enough to pull him out of the thought before it swallowed him.
"Don't spiral."
He smiled. "I'm not spiraling."
"Good."
She shifted, settling against his side and molding her body to his.
Zaeryn was already exhausted after everything today so it didn't take long for sleep to drag him under.
But his peaceful sleep didn't last. The nightmare hit him fast and hard.
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