Chapter 209: Alone with the Empress [3]

Chapter 209: Chapter 209: Alone with the Empress [3]

Yelena’s eyes widened a fraction when I cupped her face and opened my mouth instead of resisting.

I didn’t give her time to finish the drain.

’System. Activate Core Drain.’

[Core Absorption Activated]

[Target: Yelena Kestava]

[Compatibility: Not Suitable]

[Initiating Forced Deep Draw...]

[Progress: 0.0%]

The connection lasted less than a heartbeat.

[Connection Severed]

Yelena’s power snapped outward like a coiled spring released.

The impact threw me sideways across the mat.

I hit, rolled, and came up on one knee instead of crashing.

The taste of her mana lingered on my tongue: dense, old, and sharply displeased.

She stood where I had left her, black gown immaculate, and for the first time since she had entered the hall, she smiled with real, open amusement.

"That was what I wanted to know."

I stayed low, breathing hard, the system warnings still fading from the edge of my vision.

"What the hell was—"

The rest of the sentence died when I remembered exactly who I was speaking to.

I forced my voice flatter.

"That wasn’t what you wanted to do."

"It wasn’t."

Yelena smoothed one sleeve, still smiling.

"But I needed to confirm the shape of the reaction. You tried to drain something. You did the same thing to my daughter, didn’t you?"

Ice slid down my spine.

If she understood the true nature of the absorption- that I didn’t simply deplete, that I took and kept- the conversation would end with me in a containment cell or worse.

I kept my face as neutral as the ache in my core allowed.

Yelena paced a slow half-circle, red eyes never leaving me.

"Did Jenna teach you that little trick? Forcing a core link so the stronger party can drag the weaker one dry? You can’t finish the absorption when the compatibility refuses to seat. It’s a blunt instrument, but useful in a crisis. Nice reflex."

Relief hit so hard my knees almost loosened.

She had the mechanism wrong.

Yelena thought it was a contested drain that simply failed when the target was too strong: not a permanent, intimacy-gated theft that stored pieces of other people inside me.

As long as she kept that misunderstanding, the worst of the secret stayed buried.

I managed a tight nod.

"Something like that."

’But how did I do it again?’

[Because of me,] the voice murmured, no longer laughing.

[The compatibility gate is mine.]

[You weren’t intimate with her. The draw had nothing to stand on.]

’Then why did it work with Gianna and Giselle?’

[Gianna happened while you were inside her, balls-deep and losing rhythm.]

[Giselle happened tongue-to-tongue with her core already half-open from the fight.]

[You haven’t established that channel with the Empress.]

[My power doesn’t fire on cold contact.]

’Suddenly it’s your power? I was the one training until I couldn’t stand.’

[My power. Your body.]

[You’ve barely scratched thirty percent of what I can actually do.]

[Stop sulking and listen to the woman who nearly pulled your core out through your teeth.]

I shut the private argument down and focused on Yelena.

She had stopped pacing.

One hand rested lightly against her own sternum, as if she were reviewing internal diagnostics only she could see.

"Your body is highly unstable," she said at last.

"You cannot fully control the constructions you form. You don’t yet understand the chains you carry. And you change every single day. That combination is unacceptable inside my sector and fatal inside an academy cohort."

She lowered her hand.

"Tomorrow you will present yourself to Sera. She will run a full spectrum analysis: quiet, off the main logs. I want every fluctuation, every foreign signature, and every evolution marker documented before I allow you near the intake gates."

Sera.

The woman from the party whose hand had lingered too long and whose scent had spiked with sudden, poorly hidden want.

Of course it would be her.

"Is she a researcher?"

"Something like that. She is precise, discreet, and loyal to me above any guild. You will answer her questions. You will not attempt another trick in her presence. And you will keep whatever is leaking inside you under tighter rein than you have managed so far."

Yelena walked to the door control, then paused with her back still half-turned.

"You are not currently strong enough to permanently harm my daughter. That is the only reason you are still standing in this room instead of a null cage. But strength is not the only variable. You change. The changes are accelerating. If the next one threatens Giselle, or this sector’s stability, I will end the experiment personally."

The threat was delivered in the same mild tone she had used to ask for a demonstration.

That made it worse.

"Okay."

"Good."

The door behind her slid open before she could finish the dismissal.

Giselle stood in the threshold.

She had changed into a fresh set of training clothes.

The damp evidence was gone.

Her expression was carefully blank, but the fragment of her core under my ribs pulsed once in complicated recognition.

She had waited.

Yelena didn’t look surprised.

"I told you to leave."

"I left the room...," Giselle answered.

"I didn’t leave the wing. The containment field registered a core spike. I came back."

Her red eyes moved from her mother to me, taking in the scorch marks on the mat, the residual black dust from the broken chains, and the fact that I was still breathing.

"You’re alive."

"For the moment," I said.

Yelena’s smile had vanished.

In its place was the cooler expression of an Empress reminded that her daughter possessed both loyalty and inconvenient initiative.

"Since you insist on remaining, you will escort him to the lower medical tier tomorrow at 08:00. Sera will be expecting him. You will not enter the analysis chamber. You will not interfere."

Giselle’s jaw tightened, but she inclined her head.

"Yes, Mother."

Yelena’s gaze lingered on me one final time.

"Better be worth it, Giselle. He doesn’t seem that powerful to me."

The tail stirred inside my spine.

[...]

[Let’s fuck her, Revien.]

’Stop trying to fuck everyone... and what do you mean let’s?’