Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

Ysmeine remained outside for another minute before the practical demands of the situation began reclaiming her attention. There were arrangements to confirm, messages to send, and questions that only Athea could answer before Zaeryn left for the Capital.

"I need to speak with Athea," she said, looking down at him. "Please do not sit here imagining the worst until I return."

Zaeryn gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I won't."

Another lie. How could he not overthink and imagine the worst in this situation? Even with his overpowered system, the truth was that he was nowhere near the most powerful people here, who if they decided to, could end him, so he was right to overthink.

Leaning in for a kiss, Ysmeine rested one hand briefly against his shoulder before turning toward the house.

Ravena followed her inside, taking her drink with her, while Zaeryn remained seated beside the pool.

Aeris still sat at the edge of the pool with her feet in the water, although she had shifted closer to Marceline during the conversation. Marceline remained inside the pool, her arms resting along the edge while she watched Zaeryn from across the water.

Zaeryn could feel her looking at him, but he kept his gaze lowered.

"Come into the pool, Zae," Marceline eventually said.

He looked up. "Right now?"

"No, sometime next year," Aeris responded. "Of course she means right now."

"I am dealing with a potentially life-ending political crisis," he responded.

"And you can deal with it inside the pool just as easily as you can from that bench."

Aeris glanced between them. "She has a point. Sitting over there looking miserable is not making the Imperial Council any less aware of you."

"I don't look miserable."

"You do," Marceline and Aeris answered together.

Zaeryn stared at them.

Aeris smiled. "That should tell you something."

Marceline lifted one hand from the water and beckoned him toward her. "Get in."

Zaeryn considered refusing, if only because both of them had decided too quickly that he would agree. However, remaining on the bench would accomplish nothing except give his thoughts more time to circle the same fears.

"Fine," he said, rising to his feet. "But I need to put on my swimming wear."

He walked back inside.

The house had regained some of its usual noise. He could hear Ysmeine speaking to someone through a holo-comm in one of the adjoining rooms, her voice too low for him to make out the words. But he guessed it was Athea she was speaking to.

He continued to his own bedroom and changed into a pair of black swimming shorts. The process took less than two minutes, although he stopped briefly after fastening them and looked at himself in the mirror.

Nothing about his reflection had changed.

He still looked like the same person who had left the house that morning, but the circumstances surrounding him were no longer the same. Three days from now, he would leave Sector Seven and enter the Capital under the observation of women powerful enough to alter the course of his life with a vote.

Zaeryn turned away from the mirror before his mind could begin circling the subject again.

When he returned outside, Aeris had finally entered the pool. She was floating on her back near the centre, her dark hair spreading around her head across the illuminated surface. Marceline had moved away from the edge and was treading water nearby.

Aeris noticed him approaching and lifted her head. "Finally, get in."

Zaeryn walked to the edge. Instead of lowering himself into the water gradually, he stepped forward and dove.

The impact sent a broad wave rolling across the pool. Aeris barely managed to lift her face before the water washed over her head, destroying the relaxed position she had been maintaining.

She came upright immediately and pushed her wet hair away from her face.

"You couldn't have just lowered yourself in like a normal person?"

"I could have," Zaeryn agreed as he surfaced. "But that would have been less satisfying."

Aeris swept both hands through the water and sent a sheet of it directly into his face.

Zaeryn turned his head too late to avoid it. "That was childish."

"You started it."

"I started nothing. I just entered the pool."

"Yes, like a fucking idiot."

Marceline watched them with quiet amusement as Zaeryn wiped the water from his eyes. When Aeris prepared to splash him again, Marceline caught her wrist and lowered it.

"Give him a moment before you declare war," she said. "He has already had enough powerful women threatening his safety for one afternoon."

"The Imperial Council has not threatened me yet," Zaeryn corrected.

"Then you are frightened by women who have not even threatened you. That is much worse."

Zaeryn looked at her. "You are supposed to make me feel better."

"I invited you into the pool. I never promised to lie to you."

Marceline released Aeris and swam toward him. Once she reached Zaeryn, she placed both hands against his shoulders and studied his face.

"You keep thinking strength is the only thing that can protect you." She said.

Zaeryn nodded, his expression growing a shade more serious. "Against the Imperial Council, I imagine it wouldn't help."

"Of course it wouldn't, but it is not the only weapon you have."

Zaeryn waited for her to explain.

Marceline lifted one hand from his shoulder and touched two fingers lightly against his cheek.

"You have this."

"My face?"

"Your face, your mouth, and whatever deeply irritating quality makes dangerous women become fond of you before they remember that they should know better."

Aeris nodded immediately. "She is not wrong."

Zaeryn looked between them. "Your advice is for me to seduce the Imperial Council?"

"Not the entire council," Marceline said. "That would be excessive, even for you."

"Besides, we do not have enough rooms for that many councilwomen," Aeris added.

Marceline ignored her. "The Imperial Council is not one mind, Zae. It is a room filled with powerful women who have different loyalties, interests, fears, and desires. You do not need to overpower all of them. You only need enough of them to become personally invested in keeping you safe. Once two or three councilwomen decide they like you, want you, or simply find you too valuable to lose, the rest can no longer act against you without opposition."

Zaeryn considered that. "You make taming members of the Imperial Council sound remarkably easy."

"I am not saying it will be easy. I am saying you have already been doing it without understanding that you were doing it." Marceline's fingers moved beneath his chin, turning his face slightly as though presenting evidence.

Zaeryn looked from Marceline to Aeris before releasing a slow breath. The water was pleasantly warm, and the pressure around his body made it easier to relax than he wanted to admit. Neither woman was pretending that the Imperial Council was harmless, but Marceline had handed him something more useful than comfort.

Marceline's hands slid away from his shoulders.

"For the next ten minutes, we are not discussing the Council, the Tribunal, the Capital, or anything else that might end with you being examined inside a reinforced chamber."

"That is an unusually long list of prohibited subjects."

"You will survive."

"That remains the subject of considerable debate."

Aeris splashed him again.

Zaeryn reacted immediately, sweeping one arm through the water and sending a much larger wave back at her.

Aeris twisted away, laughing as most of it struck her across the shoulder, and the war that followed was brief, loud, and without any dignity on either side. It ended the only way it ever ended between them, with both of them running out of ammunition at the same moment.

Aeris declared herself the winner on no evidence whatsoever and withdrew toward the shallow end to float in satisfied silence, and Zaeryn let her have the victory, because contesting it would have cost him another twenty minutes he did not want to spend at war.

He turned and found Marceline watching him from the deeper water, exactly where she had retreated to when the fighting began, her dark hair slicked back from her face and her expression carrying the particular warmth she kept only for him. He swam to her without deciding to.

"There you are," she murmured when he reached her.

He answered by closing the last of the distance and kissing her. One of his hands rose out of the water to cradle the side of her face, and Marceline made a low, satisfied sound against his mouth and gave herself over to it without any hesitation at all, her arms winding around his neck, her body settling against his beneath the surface. There was no hurry anywhere in her.

She kissed with the same intensity she usually did, with the whole of her attention, and for as long as it lasted, the rest of the day had nothing it could say to him.

From the shallow end, Aeris observed to no one in particular that some people had no shame at all. Neither of them paid her the slightest attention.

When they finally parted, Zaeryn stayed close.

"Since I have you in a good mood," he said, "I want to ask you about something. You once promised me a private showing at your boutique. Your new collection. I was supposed to be your handsome escort, if I remember the exact wording."

Her mouth curved. "You remember the exact wording."

"I remember everything the women in this house say to me. It is a survival skill." He tipped his head at her. "So when is it happening? You made that invitation a long time ago, and I still have never seen this famous boutique of yours."

"The showing is this week." Some of the mischief in her expression gave way to something more rueful. "And you, my darling escort, will be in the Capital by then."

"Too bad," Zaeryn said, and he found that he meant it more than the two words carried. "I was looking forward to it."

"Then you will accompany me another time." She said it as though the matter required no negotiation at all. "The boutique is not going anywhere, and neither am I. There will be other collections, and as far as I am concerned, you owe me an escort for every one of them."

"That sounds like a debt that compounds."

"It does. I suggest you begin paying it down early."

"Hey." The voice came from the direction of the house. Ravena was leaning out through the open glass wall, one hand braced against its frame. "Sorry to interrupt whatever this is. Ysmeine wants you inside."

Zaeryn climbed out of the pool, dried off with one of the towels folded near the loungers, and went in. The evening air had begun to cool against his wet skin by the time he crossed the threshold.

Ysmeine was waiting for him in the lounge. The holo-comm beside her had gone dark, and she stood with her hands folded in front of her, her composure too deliberately arranged for the news to be good.

"There has been a change of plans," she said. "You won't be leaving in three days. You leave tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he repeated, and the alarm arrived right behind the word. "Why? What changed? Did something happen?"

"Nothing has happened," Ysmeine said, and her voice gentled without losing any of its certainty. "Athea wants this finished and behind the both of you as quickly as it can be managed. She thinks the waiting does nothing for either of you except make everything heavier. She would rather, this is taken care of immediately. So you leave tomorrow, and you should be back here before the gala."

Zaeryn nodded slowly. Then he closed his eyes, and for a few seconds he simply stood there with the new shape of things. The three days he had been promising himself had become one evening while he was in the pool.

He breathed out. "Okay," he said.

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