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Lyrien sat stiffly in the chair, arms crossed, eyes locked on the man across from him.
The man—not his father.
His father was supposed to be warmth. Guidance. Expectation wrapped in quiet strength.
This?
This was the king of House Evercall. Cold. Calculating. Stoic.
The man who had exiled his own son like a political inconvenience. A flaw in the bloodline.
Lyrien refused to speak first. He wouldn’t give him that. Not after everything. But the silence stretched too long, and that familiar feeling—that buried, ugly, hated feeling of being a purposefully abandoned child—started clawing its way to the surface.
His father had barely reacted when he walked in. No flicker of recognition. No hesitation. No grief. Not even relief that his son—the one he’d cast out—was alive.
Just silence.
Nothing.
Lyrien’s jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Fine.
If his father had come here looking for damage control, then he’d get exactly what he created.
“Well?” His voice cracked. “Isn’t this the part where you tell me what a disappointment I am?”
The king didn’t flinch. “You think this is about your defiance?”
Lyrien laughed—but it wasn’t humor. It was hollow, sharp, scraped from something raw. “Oh, I don’t think. I know.” His voice hardened, words sharper now. “Why else would I be here?”
His arms tightened across his chest, fingers digging into his biceps. “You didn’t send me to Earth to grow up. You didn’t want me humbled or changed.”
He leaned forward slightly, voice cutting low.
“You sent me to disappear.”
The accusation rang with perfect certainty.
“You exiled me like a smudged name on a ledger. An inconvenience. A threat. A mistake better left buried far from the kingdom.”
He smiled—but it was all teeth.
“And for a while, I almost bought it. That maybe it was about reform, maturity, redemption.”
The smile faded.
“But I figured it out. You never intended for me to come back. You just didn’t want to deal with the fallout of killing your son.”
A pause.
No rebuttal. No reaction. Just that same void of expression—the face of a ruler making calculations, not a father facing the child he left to die.
Lyrien leaned back, bitterness rising like acid.
“You never checked on me. Not once. And now you want answers from the weapon you buried?”
He gestured toward the mirrored wall behind him, where the Recon team still watched.
“You don’t even see me,” he said. “You never did. You see a threat. A malfunction. A bloodline hiccup that somehow crawled back from the grave.”
Still silence.
That same suffocating quiet Lyrien remembered too well. The kind that made him feel like a child screaming into a sealed chamber.
His voice dropped. Not soft—but raw.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said. “I didn’t want to be some kind of... thing.”
The bitterness cracked, and pain slid beneath it.
“If this was in me all along—if this was even a possibility—you should’ve told me. Prepared me.”
His hands clenched against the edge of the table, knuckles white.
“But you didn’t. You just sent me away.”
The words he didn’t say filled the room anyway.
You abandoned me. You left me to figure it out alone.
And still, his father said nothing.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
And somehow... that made it so much worse.
Lyrien had changed.
Not in the subtle way time softened and reshaped a face.
But in the way a blade changes after a decade buried in frost and stone.
He had been seventeen when he was exiled.
Barely a man. Still reckless. Still reachable—at least in theory. And now?
Ten years gone, and Lyrien sat across from him like something carved from war and resistance. The soft lines of youth had been burned away. What remained was all edge and quiet fury.
His shoulders were broader. His posture no longer impulsive but controlled, coiled. Every inch of him broadcasted tension—not the frantic kind of someone trapped, but the dangerous stillness of someone who had learned to wait, to strike when it counted.
There were scars on him that didn’t show. Not visible ones. But the kind you could feel when someone no longer looked over their shoulder—they just listened for the breath before a betrayal.
Even his clothes made him seem like a different species.
A black, leather close-cut jacket. Civilian. Earth-born. But it didn’t look borrowed. It looked lived in.
Worn like armor.
He sat like a man used to enemies on every side.
And his eyes—
Gods, his eyes.
Not angry. Not wild.
Sharp. Watching.
Lyrien was not the boy the king had sent away.
He was the weapon forged in his absence.
And somehow... even that truth wasn’t the worst of it.
He had exiled a reckless, idealistic child.
And now—now this man sat across from him, silent and sharpened. Forged in absence.
A man with knowledge. With scars. With power.
And worst of all?
A man who was dangerous.
Not because he was unpredictable.
Because he had learned patience.
The Lyrien he had known would have lashed out by now—voice raised, accusations flying like arrows in the dark. But this one?
This one was studying him. Calculating. Waiting.
The king’s chest tightened.
This was no longer a child in need of correction.
This was the result of abandonment.
And gods help him—he wasn’t sure it could be undone.
He had known, in theory, that time on Earth would change his son. But knowledge was not the same as witnessing it.
Lyrien had grown older without him.
Had hardened without guidance.
And the king had not been there to shape it, to redirect it, to hold back what was now unfolding before him.
A cold ache began to bloom in his chest.
But he pushed it down.
They were watching.
He could not afford weakness. Not now.
“You were sent to Earth because you were reckless,” he said evenly. “Because you were beginning to sway the younger generation—stirring them against the traditions that hold us together.”
Lyrien’s scoff cut like a blade. “You mean against you.”
He met the words without a blink. “You challenged my rule.”
“I was a teenager,” Lyrien snapped. “I had ideas. I wanted change. And instead of talking to me—instead of trying to teach me—you sent me away.” His fists curled tightly on the table. “You exiled me because I embarrassed you.”
The king said nothing.
But inside, the words landed hard.
Because they were true.
It hadn’t just been frustration or wounded pride. It had been fear. Lyrien had charisma. Influence. Fire. He had wielded it recklessly, yes—but even then, even at seventeen, the Court had started to whisper.
He would be a dangerous heir.
Too emotional. Too unpredictable.
And so, the king had done what he thought was necessary.
He had removed the threat before it became one.
And now?
Now that choice sat across from him—unbowed, unbroken, and unknown.
“I did what was necessary,” he said finally, voice carefully neutral.
Lyrien let out a breath that was almost a laugh—but not quite. It was too sharp, too hollow. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Of course you did.”
Silence fell again. But it wasn’t stillness.
The air shifted.
His son’s fingers twitched on the table, almost unconsciously—and the light in the room dimmed.
Barely.
But it wasn’t mechanical. It wasn’t atmospheric.
It was a disturbance.
Something deeper.
Lyrien didn’t seem to notice.
But the king did.
And in that moment, clarity struck like a blade drawn in the dark. His son wasn’t just different. He was becoming something else. Something none of them had language for. Something they could no longer control.
The king’s voice remained calm. Measured. As if the air itself weren’t tightening around them.
“Come back to Elysia.”
Lyrien didn’t move. His chest rose, just slightly—but otherwise, stillness.
“We can help you understand what’s happening to you.”
Lyrien exhaled—sharp, quiet. His fingers flexed against the chair. And then—
He laughed.
Not the kind that warmed a room.
The kind that sounded like something breaking apart and liking the noise.
A short, bitter sound that echoed off the sterile walls like mockery.
He shook his head, slow and sardonic.
“Help me?” he repeated, as if tasting something foul.
The king said nothing.
Lyrien let the silence build before leaning forward slightly, eyes burning.
“You want to study me.”
The words weren’t a question.
His gaze was too steady. Too knowing.
And the king—for the first time—hesitated.
Because Lyrien saw it.
Saw how carefully he was choosing his words. Saw that the offer wasn’t safety—it was strategy.
This wasn’t a homecoming.
It was a waiting cell.
Lyrien leaned back again, dragging a hand over his jaw with that slow, unnerving calm.
“No thanks.”
The king’s eyes narrowed.
Lyrien smiled faintly. “I like it here.”
Then—movement.
Subtle. Wrong.
The Recon leader stepped into the room, too confident for the moment he was entering.
“This interrogation is no longer a royal matter, Highness,” he said.
The king didn’t look at him. Not fully. But the line of his jaw clenched.
The man continued, tone too sure. “Vaelcrest is a risk to all of us now.”
Lyrien didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
He raised a hand. Casually. Almost lazily. Just a small motion in the air, like brushing dust from an invisible thread.
Nothing happened.
Or so it seemed.
Until the Recon leader walked into it—an unseen barrier, solid and soundless. He stumbled, startled, reached out, and met air that felt like glass.
He froze.
Confused. Then afraid.
Lyrien watched him with detached interest, head tilted slightly, the faintest smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
Then he exhaled.
“Oops.”
The king heard the breath shift in the room.
The sudden awareness in the soldiers outside. The realization. The change.
The Recon leader’s eyes darted between them.
Between the king, who hadn’t moved.
And Lyrien, who no longer needed to.
The man backed away. One step. Then another. Until he turned and left the room, the door whispering shut behind him.
Lyrien didn’t watch him go.
He just sat there.
Calm.
Present.
Unbothered.
The king stayed silent.
Because now, he understood something else entirely.
Lyrien hadn’t just survived exile.
He had transcended it.
And whatever he had become... It had nothing to do with the Council’s control.
And everything to do with what the Council feared most.