[BL]Reborn as the Empire's Most Desired Omega
Chapter 188: Matriarchy

Chapter 188: Chapter 188: Matriarchy

The doors closed behind Trevor and Lucas with a quiet finality that echoed louder than any slammed insult.

For a long moment, the table remained still. The air was heavy with unsaid things and polished malice.

Then Lucia set her wineglass down, quietly, carefully, like a blade being sheathed.

"So," she said, her voice like velvet dragged over glass, "this is what you wanted, isn’t it?"

Serathine didn’t look up. She dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin, serene as a storm eye. "If you’re asking whether I support the only competent man in this bloodline marrying someone worthy of him, then yes. Fully."

Cressida tilted her head, resting one elbow on the arm of her chair, chin in her hand. "You gave him nothing but debt and silence for over a decade. Don’t be surprised he found a better family elsewhere."

Lucia’s gaze snapped to her. "You always loved replacing things, didn’t you? Your husband. Your heirs. Now your name."

Cressida’s smile was slow, poisonous, and practiced. "And yet somehow I always replace them with better ones."

Alaric glanced between them, his napkin sketch forgotten now, his expression shifting toward curiosity. "You really don’t regret this, do you? Turning Trevor into what he is now."

"Regret?" Serathine finally looked at Lucia, her expression cool as snowfall. "I would’ve raised him myself if I’d known what kind of rot he was surrounded by."

Lucia’s hands curled faintly around her wineglass stem.

Milo leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying the unraveling. "She’s mad because she thought she’d return to ashes and found a palace instead. Built without her."

Lucia didn’t look at him. Her eyes were locked on Cressida now. "You always had a knack for collecting strays. Broken men, bastard sons, disgraced wives."

Cressida gave a soft laugh, resting her chin on her knuckles. "And you always had a talent for leaving your children behind the moment things got hard. We all have gifts." NovelFire

"You think you’ve won?" Lucia asked, quieter now. "You think this spectacle of a wedding means you’ve rewritten the Fitzgeralt legacy?"

Cressida didn’t even blink. Her voice was soft, laced with silk and steel.

"He is marrying the long-lost child of the Emperor. Excuse me if I consider you irrelevant when the entire court has already given their permission."

The words landed like a slap.

Lucia’s lips parted, but no retort came. For a woman so practiced in elegance and disdain, the pause said everything: she hadn’t known. Or hadn’t believed. And now it was too late to undo either.

Milo choked on his wine. "Wait. Wait. You mean that child?"

Alaric dropped his ink pen. "Oh, fuck."

Serathine glanced down the table with mild amusement, as if watching dogs try to process opera. "It’s adorable, the way you all keep forgetting you’re not the power in this room anymore."

Lucia stood abruptly, the scrape of her chair echoing through the chamber. Her hands trembled slightly at her sides. She was enraged. The cold, bitter kind that comes from realizing you’re no longer needed.

"Then enjoy your little empire," Lucia said, voice taut and trembling with polished contempt. "But don’t expect us to bow to it."

Cressida didn’t rise.

Neither did Serathine.

They remained exactly where they were, seated, composed, and unmoved, like apex predators who didn’t need to growl to show their teeth. The flicker of shared distaste passed between them, quiet but unmistakable.

They didn’t like each other. They had never pretended to.

But for Lucas and Trevor?

They would set entire bloodlines on fire.

Cressida leaned back, one hand draped lazily over the armrest, the other smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her skirt. "Bow?" she repeated, the word tasting like amusement. "Darling, you already have. Every time you stayed away, every time you let Trevor carry what was yours to shoulder, you bowed."

Lucia’s jaw clenched. "You think turning my son into a weapon makes you proud?"

"Why not? Or... did you wait for Trevor to beg you to take him away from his legacy too?"

Serathine tilted her head at that, an almost imperceptible movement, but one that carried the weight of imperial courtrooms and buried knives. "He never begged," she said evenly. "Because unlike you, he doesn’t waste breath on lost causes."

Lucia’s eyes snapped to her, sharp enough to draw blood. "And you think yourself better? You, who parades grief like jewelry and raises orphans like propaganda?"

Cressida hummed, folding her hands in her lap. "Better? No. Merely useful. Which is more than can be said for someone who vanished the moment the estate needed her."

"Trevor was never your responsibility," Lucia hissed.

"True," Cressida said, her smile returning, blade-thin. "But it’s funny how those who weren’t obligated to care for him did, while the ones who birthed him fled the first time the silver tarnished."

Alaric had gone still. Milo had stopped smirking.

Lucia stood there for a beat longer, eyes burning, pride withering.

"You’ve surrounded yourselves with weak men and hungry ghosts," she said coldly. "Don’t be surprised when they devour what you built."

Serathine rose slowly, her tone never lifting above conversational. "Let them try."

Cressida remained seated. "And if you ever think to return for more," she said, her voice like sugared poison, "remember: today, we and Trevor were polite only because Lucas was here."

She didn’t need to raise her voice. She didn’t even look at the door Lucia had exited through. The threat didn’t lie in volume, but in precision. In the unspoken truth that the only leash around Trevor’s fury was a young man with imperial blood and ice in his spine.

The moment the doors closed, Milo exhaled a slow breath and reached for the wine. "Well. That was more fun than the last exhibit I opened."

Alaric rubbed his temple. "Remind me not to sketch dinner tables anymore."

Cressida sipped her wine with delicate disdain. "Do sketch Lucia, though. Her fury might age better than any landscape."

Serathine sat again, calmly adjusting her napkin. "And let her rage. It only makes Trevor stronger." NovelFire

And from the shadows of the corridor beyond, Windstone, who had stood as silent as marble the entire time, turned and walked back to report that all had gone precisely as expected.