Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

She glanced down at her own hand and turned it over once, considering the work on the back of it.

"I'm glad you like them. I did the ones on my hand myself," she said.

"You did them yourself? That's impressive," Zaeryn said. "I've been thinking about getting tattoos myself. Well, not excessive, just a single one."

Celestine nodded. "They would suit you," she said. Her hand moved toward his hair.

She disturbed the front of it deliberately, lifting one uneven section and letting it fall back into the wrong place.

Zaeryn sat very still.

"Another thing though that would suit you is a better haircut. It doesn't suit you at all. Did someone lose interest halfway through cutting it, or did you do it yourself?" she teased.

Zaeryn touched his hair. "I cut my hair myself," he said. That was the truth, but also a lie.

Ysmeine usually cut his hair. But for the last two times he decided to start doing it himself because he was a grown man now, and grown men cut their own hair… according to him.

No one else had been consulted on the rule.And the results? Bad haircuts.

"Well, you're bad at it," she said, and she took her hand back out of his hair without a trace of apology in the gesture. "Not a little bad, either. Whatever it is you think you're doing up there, the results are speaking for themselves."

Zaeryn opened his mouth to defend himself and discovered there was nothing to defend. She was right. He had known she was right on both of the last two occasions he had stood in front of a mirror and decided to say nothing about it to anybody.

"It's not that bad."

"Tch." She clicked her tongue at him. "It's that bad." She looked at him a moment longer, unhurried about it, and there was no cruelty anywhere in it.

"Come by the shop when you've made up your mind about the tattoo. Off the main strip. You'll find it if you're looking." She lifted her chin at him. "I'll do the ink myself. And I'll fix this while you're in the chair, because I won't be able to work with it sitting in front of me."

"Sure. I'll see if I can come by tomorrow," Zaeryn said, just as Hela came through from outside, and the arrival of her drew both of their attention and shifted the whole dynamic of the room.

"There she is." Hela greeted Celestine with the easy familiarity of a woman who had known her a long time, and then her attention moved across the room and settled on Zaeryn, and her mouth curved. "And you. Are you and Leia finished with that school work of yours?"

Zaeryn answered her plainly. "Yes. We finished everything we needed to."

"Good." Hela set her glass down on the low table beside the archway. "And where is she?"

"Upstairs," Zaeryn said.

Hela looked up at the ceiling above them for a moment, as though she could see through it to whatever her daughter had decided to do with herself up there.

"Do me a favour," she said, bringing her attention back down to him. "Go and tell her to come here for me, please."

Zaeryn nodded and went up the stairs.

The house turned out to be considerably larger than it had looked from the outside, and the corridor at the top of the stairs ran off in two directions, and there were doors along both of them, and not a single one of those doors had anything on it to indicate whose room lay behind it.

He stood there for a moment and understood that he was going to have to either guess or start knocking, and neither option struck him as something he wanted to explain afterward.

He was spared the decision. A door partway down the left-hand corridor opened, and Leia came out of it, and she stopped as soon as she saw him standing at the top of her stairs.

"What are you doing," she said.

"Your mother told me to come and get you."

Leia said nothing at all. She looked at him for the length of one breath, and then she walked past him and started down the stairs, and Zaeryn followed her because there was no other reasonable thing left to do.

Hela and Celestine were still standing where he had left them.

"There you are," Hela said, and she pushed off the archway she had been leaning against. "Go and get changed. It's the weekly session, and I've been standing around all day waiting for you to finish your homework."

Leia stopped at the bottom step. "I'm ready."

"Good."

Zaeryn's attention moved between the two of them, and it took him a moment to work out what he had just heard.

"Wait," he said. "You're going to spar?"

"We are," Hela said.

"Can I join?" He asked, and he couldn't contain the excitement in his voice.

"No." Leia's answer came before he had finished asking, and it came mean and immediate and without a single moment of consideration behind it. "You've done what you came here to do, and you can go home and stop finding new reasons to be inside my house."

Hela was nicer to him. "I'm afraid the answer is still no, though for different reasons than hers," she said. "I'm interested to see what you have to offer. But I don't have the authorization to fight you, and until somebody sees fit to give it to me, I'm not going to be the woman who puts her hands on a Strategic Asset in her own lounge."

Zaeryn's disappointment was immediate, and he did not bother trying to hide it. It had been a long time since anyone had told him no in a way he had no argument against.

Footsteps came back down the hall then, quick and unbothered, and Rhenna reappeared in the archway holding a slim, dark case in one hand, the dermal stylus visible inside it where the lid had not shut all the way.

"I couldn't find it anywhere," she announced, to nobody in particular and to Celestine in particular. "I tore my whole room apart, and then I remembered I left it in Isla's room from the last time, because she isn't here to complain about it."

"Finally," Celestine said, already moving toward the door. "Let's go."

Rhenna followed her, but she stopped in front of Zaeryn on her way past, and she was smiling openly at him, and there was nothing in the smile that she was trying to keep off her face.

"I'm leaving," she said. "I had a lovely time earlier. We should do it again."

Do it again. With a woman the system had put somewhere in the band the Queendom conscripted, whose ceiling might be Tier 2, whose bond had already begun forming from one kiss on a couch. And with the additional benefit that she happened to be Leia's sister. So having anything with her will annoy Leia. How could he say no to that?

Zaeryn did not have to think about it at all.

"Yes," he said.

Leia observed their little interaction at the foot of the stairs. Her attention moved from Rhenna to Zaeryn and back again, and something in her expression had changed in a way that Zaeryn found he was enjoying far more than he should have.

"What are you two talking about," she said.

Rhenna rolled her eyes at her sister. "Your closed mind wouldn't understand," she said, and she went out the door after Celestine without waiting for a reply.

The door sealed behind them. Leia turned to face him.

"Now you can leave," she said.

Zaeryn was unbothered. He got up off the couch and straightened his clothes and looked at her.

"Goddess. You really are a rude person, aren't you?" Then he turned to Hela.

"I'm leaving now. Thank you for having me."

"You can stay," Hela said. "Don't listen to her."

Zaeryn nodded."I appreciate it. But I have other plans, so I should go anyway."

He went, and the door closed behind him, and the sound of the cruiser starting up carried faintly through the wall a moment later.

Hela turned around and looked at her daughter, and there was no warmth anywhere in the look.

"What," she said, "is your problem with that boy?"

"Let's go," Leia said, already moving toward the exit that led to the training chambers. "And put in an actual effort today. I'm tired of you holding back like I'm made of glass."

"You say that every time." Hela didn't move from where she stood. "And every time I don't hold back, you spend the next three days complaining about your ribs."

"Then don't hold back tonight either. See how I feel about my ribs after I finally land something on you."

Hela's mouth curved, slow and unbothered. "Confident. I like that in you. I liked it a great deal less when it belonged to Zaeryn an hour ago, and you couldn't manage to beat him at all."

Leia stopped walking.

"What." she said. "How do you know about that."

"I know a great many things. I told you once, I have friends across the Council and High Command, and it turns out one of them was very entertained watching a Tier Two Warlady get put on her back by a boy nobody's even cleared to hold a rank yet." Hela's tone stayed light, almost fond, the way she said most things.

"News like that doesn't stay quiet in this city. I'd have thought you'd know that better than anyone."

Leia's hands closed into fists at her sides.

"Zaeryn." She said his name like it had a bad taste attached to it. "I hate him for that. He doesn't fight fair. He cheated."

"Zaeryn." Leia said his name as though it had left a bad taste in her mouth. "I hate him for that. He doesn't fight fair. He cheated."

Hela stared at her.

"How?"

Leia turned around. "How what?"

"How did he cheat?"

"He used an unorthodox way of fighting."

"Were you inside the arena?" Hela asked.

"Yes." Leia answered, "Why does that even matter?"

"Had the match started?"

"Yes."

"Then it doesn't matter how he fought. What matters is that you fought and who won."

Leia's expression hardened. "He used Sensory Jolt before making any physical move. No warning. No opening stance."

Hela nodded slowly. "So he used one of his abilities during a fight."

"That isn't the point."

"It sounds very much like the point."

Leia looked away from her and resumed walking toward the training chambers. Hela followed at an easy pace, in no hurry at all.

"He is a parasite who feeds on other people's powers," Leia said. "I didn't know that, and that's the only way he won, by hiding his powers."

"Sounds to me like that was intelligent."

"It was cheap. How was I supposed to know he'd come to the fight with Ingrid's powers?"

The door at the end of the corridor opened at their approach, revealing a broad training chamber beyond it. Pale strips of light awakened one after another along the walls, spilling across the reinforced floor.

Leia entered first. She turned and faced Hela again. A faint crimson light had begun gathering around her hands.

"Enough about outside people. I thought we came here to fight," she said.

"We did." Hela walked past her. She had not changed her clothes, activated any armor, or shown the slightest concern for the energy building around her daughter.

Leia lowered her stance.

"And Mother?"

"Yes?"

"Don't hold back."

Hela's mouth curved.

"Try not to complain about your ribs tomorrow."

★★★★

By the time Zaeryn arrived home, the light outside had begun turning gold, and for once he was glad to be walking somewhere without an itinerary waiting on the other end of it.

He crossed the entrance hall and immediately noticed that the house was quieter than it should have been. There was no conversation coming from the main lounge, no holographic display running somewhere in the background, and no sign of anyone occupying the long settees.

He had taken only a few steps farther when Ravena emerged from the kitchen.

She had changed into a black swimming suit that fit close against her body, with narrow golden lines running along the sides and across her waist. A sheer wrap had been tied loosely around her hips, doing very little to hide the long shape of her legs beneath it.

She looked stunning.

A tall glass rested in one hand, filled with a pale orange citrus spritz over crushed ice. Thin pieces of fruit floated near the surface, and condensation ran down the glass between her fingers.

Ravena noticed him, watched him over the rim of the glass, and took an unhurried sip.

"You're here. Good," she said, continuing toward the rear of the house.

"Come outside. We're talking about you."

Zaeryn watched her walk past him.

He had been home for less than a minute, and somehow that was already happening.

"Okay," he said, turning to follow her. "What happened?"

Ravena did not answer.

"Ravena."

She took another sip.

That was not reassuring.

Zaeryn followed her through the rear lounge, where the glass wall had been drawn completely aside to open the house onto the backyard.

The pool occupied most of the space beyond it, its water lit from below by soft blue light. Marceline was already inside.

She had both arms folded along the edge and her chin resting on them, while the rest of her body drifted lazily beneath the surface. Her dark hair had been gathered above her head to keep it out of the water, although several damp strands had escaped and now clung to her cheek.

She appeared comfortable enough that she might have been there for hours.

Aeris sat near her on the edge of the pool, her feet submerged to the calves.

She wore a deep-green bikini and had leaned back on both hands, listening to the conversation taking place a short distance away.

Kayla stood beside one of the poolside seats in a dark-red two-piece, speaking quietly with Ysmeine. A light robe hung open around Ysmeine's own swimming clothes, while her arms stayed folded beneath her chest.

Whatever the conversation was, she did not look pleased by it.

Zaeryn and Ravena were still approaching when Kayla spoke.

"I'll accompany him."

"You have to." Ysmeine drew in a slow breath and let it out through her nose. "I don't like this at all."

Aeris noticed Zaeryn first. Her eyes moved toward him, and the others followed them.

The conversation stopped.

Zaeryn looked from one woman to another.

"Well," he said. "This looks ominous."

Ysmeine's expression changed the moment she saw him. The tension did not disappear, but it softened beneath something warmer.

She crossed the distance between them and pulled him into her arms.

Zaeryn returned the embrace, although his confusion only deepened.

Ysmeine held him firmly against her, one hand settling at the back as though he had returned from somewhere far more dangerous than Leia's house.

He looked over her shoulder at Kayla.

Kayla gave him nothing.

"What happened?" he asked again.

Ysmeine finally drew back, though her hands remained on his arms.

"The Citadel received a formal communication from the Capital this afternoon," she said. "The Imperial Council has been informed about you."

Zaeryn's face became still. They knew about him?

"They want you brought before them," she said. "To be evaluated."

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