Chapter 185: Returning...
"I was the real reward, hmm?"
Bella’s voice carried that teasing lilt, amused and light, trailing down Aaron’s ears like something he hadn’t quite expected. He blinked, caught off guard for just a moment, before his composure settled back into place as naturally as breathing. He turned toward her and nodded without a shred of hesitation.
"That’s correct, empress." His words came out steady, unbothered. "You’re very beautiful and also very patient and understanding. In my eyes, having you as a partner is much more valuable than any bloodline connection."
Bella said nothing to that. She didn’t laugh or dismiss him or throw a sharp remark back. She simply remained quiet, and her hand moved instead. Another swipe of her fingers through the air, and a new screen bloomed into existence before them — but this one was different from the others. It hung perfectly still, motionless, like someone had plucked a painting from a gallery wall and suspended it in the middle of the air.
And then Aaron saw what was painted on it.
A woman. Tall, fair-skinned, with a pair of eyes so multicoloured they looked almost impossible — like someone had shattered a prism and set the pieces into her gaze. She wore a black dress that clung to every curve of her body so perfectly that it almost seemed like a trick of the light, like she wasn’t wearing anything at all. Her skin was visible in several places, deliberate and unashamed, bared to the eye in ways that left very little to the imagination — all except where it mattered, which somehow made the whole thing worse.
Aaron’s blood moved south without asking his permission. His hormones went completely, thoroughly bonkers. His mouth opened slightly and just sort of stayed that way, his eyes fixed on the image with the kind of dumb, helpless attention that no amount of willpower was going to fix in the next few seconds.
"That’s Karen," Bella said, her voice carrying a faint smile. "The empress of destruction." She paused just long enough to let the name settle. "I can assure you that she is more beautiful than any of your lovers, and she isn’t that hard to please either. Just give her a lot of compliments and she would pretty much give you the bloodline."
Aaron didn’t immediately reject the offer. His little brother was refusing to cooperate, forming an unmistakable tent in the fabric over his nether region, and Bella noticed — of course she noticed — but she chose to let it pass without comment. She understood, even if she didn’t say so out loud. He was just a human. A young one at that. Expecting him to look at something like Karen and feel nothing would have been the same as expecting a river to flow uphill.
Still, she was mildly irritated. Just mildly. She’d been told since birth that her beauty was comparable to Karen’s, that they stood in the same rare, unreachable category. So watching Aaron’s jaw go slack over Karen’s image in a way it hadn’t quite gone over her stung a little, even if she understood the reason. Then again, she reminded herself, she wasn’t dressed like an open invitation. Karen’s entire presentation was calculated for maximum impact, and Bella’s was not. So naturally, the numbers skewed in Karen’s favour. That was all.
"I would still like to return back to Solaris, empress."
Bella pulled herself out of her own thoughts to find Aaron shaking his head, his eyes having finally found somewhere else to land. The surprise hit her before she could compose herself around it.
"Really?" She looked at him with genuine curiosity. "Why so?"
"Although I do not know of Lady Karen," he said carefully, "considering that she’s at odds with you — the empress of serenity and peace — I can only understand that something’s wrong. In addition, I do not want to get trapped in the primordial business with such weak strength."
Bella nodded slowly, though her inward agreement with his first reason was limited. She knew better than most what the relationship between her and Karen actually looked like from the inside. She’d done plenty over the years to deliberately get under Karen’s skin — not out of hatred exactly, but in the way that only siblings could antagonize each other with perfect, practiced efficiency. Calling it a noble conflict of ideals would have been generous. Still, she wasn’t going to correct him.
What she did feel, quietly and without making a production of it, was something warmer. Something close to satisfaction. He had looked at Karen — really looked, with his entire nervous system engaged — and had still turned back around and chosen to go home. That meant something.
"Alright," she said. "I can send you directly to the city of Drax, which will finish your trial mission and send you back to Solaris."
Aaron nodded. Beneath the surface of his expression, he carried a small, private disappointment. The window for anything more with Bella was closing, if it had ever truly been open. He’d had half a mind to push a little harder — find some angle, apply some charm — but he caught himself before the impulse turned into action. They had reached something good between them, something balanced and calm without hostility on either side. That wasn’t nothing. Desperate men didn’t get to keep things like that. Desperation was practically a blueprint for rejection, and Aaron had no interest in walking that road. So he let it go, and told himself that at the very least, she would remember him as someone worth remembering. Someone with a little dignity.
He hoped.
But then something snagged at the edge of his thoughts — a detail he’d let slip past without properly registering. His gaze drifted toward the hammock chair where the two of them had been sitting not long ago, and he found what he was looking for immediately.
Alyssa was perched on the armrest, small and still, watching the two of them with wide, careful eyes. The purplish glow of the rocks fell across her skin and made her look more ethereal than she already was, luminous in a way that seemed to come from somewhere inside her. The tea’s benefits had already worked their way completely through her system — her height had shot up from the four or five inches she’d been before to somewhere between fifteen and twenty inches, a transformation that should have seemed absurd but on her looked almost natural, like she’d always been meant to take up more space than she’d been allowed.
"Empress," Aaron said, his voice taking on a careful quality, his eyes still on Alyssa. "Can I take her along with me?"
Both of them looked at him. Alyssa’s expression flickered — startled, something unreadable moving quickly behind her eyes. Bella tilted her head with open curiosity.
"Take her along? To Solaris?" she asked.
"Yes," he said simply.
Bella hummed and lifted a hand to stroke her chin, genuinely turning the question over. Mushfolks were among her more recent creations, and she still considered them among her most interesting — their bodies capable, in theory, of absorbing virtually any kind of nutrient. The potential locked inside that design was genuinely impressive. The problem was that unlocking it required an elixir only she could brew, and she had never quite gotten around to it with any consistency. The result was that mushfolks had grown smaller and weaker with each generation, until they occupied the bottom rungs of her realm’s hierarchy. She’d sealed off their land eventually, surrounded it with narcoshrooms that kept other creatures at bay — a patchwork fix to a problem she’d never fully solved.
Alyssa was the exception. Through absorbing Aaron’s potion, she had slipped past whatever limiter had been suppressing her kind. She couldn’t affect living creatures yet — her ability was still too new and undeveloped — but objects, potions, nourishing tea? All fair game, as the evidence sitting on the armrest made clear enough.
Then an idea settled into the back of Bella’s mind. Unique, a little mischievous, and entirely playful. Once it arrived, it showed no interest in leaving.
"Does she even want to go?" Bella asked, glancing between the two of them.
Aaron smiled, and there was a confidence in it that sat on him almost too naturally. "So if she doesn’t come with me, you’ll send her back to the venom tribe, correct?"
Alyssa’s eyes went wide. She didn’t speak — she wouldn’t dare, not in the middle of a conversation like this — but the panic was right there on her face, plain and unguarded.
"Yes," Bella said simply.
"See?" He tilted his head slightly, as if confirming a point that had never truly been in dispute. "They’ll turn her into a gold shroom at worst, or she’ll spend the rest of her life living in her little sister’s shadow at best. Neither of those is a good scenario. But if she comes with me, she gets an entirely new world. And I’ll take care of her. That I can promise."
Alyssa’s lips parted. No words came out.
Bella simply shrugged with the ease of someone for whom most things were ultimately flexible, and looked directly at Alyssa. "Your choice."
Alyssa nodded fast — emphatic, almost frantic, like she was afraid the offer might disappear if she waited even a second longer.
Bella let out a quiet, genuine laugh and snapped her fingers. The world went white for both of them simultaneously, Aaron’s vision and Alyssa’s dissolving into blank, weightless nothing as the space around them began to warp and fold. And just before everything came completely undone, Bella’s voice reached them one final time, unhurried and almost gentle.
"Well... if she dies again, just submerge her into a nourishing bath."
Then the warping took them whole.