SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

His answer rippled out across the table, and every branch of the family had a reaction to it.

They had all heard the same thing underneath the words. Hand Trafalgar the patriarch’s seat, and he would take it without a breath of hesitation. They were not wrong about that. What none of them grasped was that the seat had never been the point.

He wanted no crown from these people. What he wanted was older and colder than ambition, and it carried a plain name: payment. For everything this family had done to him, and to others who could not fight back, he had forgotten none of it. He never would.

Ysolde was the first to move into the gap.

”Allow me to be the one to say it, Trafalgar. Congratulations on finishing at the Academy.” Her voice carried the warmth the rest of the table lacked, and her manner held none of Verena’s edge. ”And Euclid has done remarkable things under you. Anyone with sense can see the territory has thrived.”

Elira picked up the thread with an ease her brother could not manage. ”It is true. What you have built is impressive. Few could have managed the same.” She inclined her head, all courtesy, playing the game a full turn ahead of Darion.

Darion tried. That was the kindest thing to be said for him. ”Yes. Well done, Trafalgar.” The words came out stiff, and he could not keep his shoulders from drawing tight the instant Trafalgar’s attention swung to him, a man congratulating the animal he privately prayed would never look his way again.

Trafalgar read the play without effort. This was not loyalty. Not one of them was pledging him anything. They were buying insurance, making certain that whatever he grew into, he did not file their branch under enemies.

’Look at them,’ he thought. ’Treating me like shit for years, and now, one shift in the wind, all smiles and congratulations. Their word was never worth anything, and it is worth less now. I have no idea what to make of people like this.’

Before he could give Lady Ysolde anything back, the doors opened again.

Lysandra came through first, and one look at her told him she was in a foul mood over something. Behind her walked Lady Seraphine.

The first wife looked well. That was the part he did not care for.

’Recovered already?’ The thought arrived unbidden. ’Hm. Enough time has gone by, so it is possible. And with Valttair shut away these two years, she has had every chance to claw back influence from the lesser branches. She is going to be a headache. And there she is, staring at me already.’

Seraphine was indeed watching him, gold eyes steady above a crimson collar. ”It has been a while, Trafalgar,” she said. ”You appear to be doing well for yourself.”

Lysandra measured the open seat beside her brother against the one waiting near Maeron, and chose Trafalgar without a flicker of doubt. She lowered herself into the chair at his side.

Seraphine’s arrival changed the weather in the hall. Maeron let his shoulders down a fraction, on surer ground now that his half of the table had its heavy piece in place. Verena grew more careful. Ysolde stopped talking altogether. And Seraphine, easing into her own chair, took in the spot her stepson now held so near the center, and understood in a heartbeat what it meant. Valttair had raised him.

”So Valttair decided to move you up,” she murmured, watching her daughter choose the seat beside him. ”A great deal has changed here, it would appear.”

Her attention traveled the length of the table. ”And what were you all discussing? The air in here is thick enough to cut with a knife.”

It was Maeron who answered. ”We were weighing whether Trafalgar has spent these past years building House Morgain, or only the name of Trafalgar.”

”How fascinating.” Something pleased moved through Seraphine’s face. ”And what verdict did the table reach?”

Every face in the room turned toward Trafalgar at once.

Lysandra saw it, saw the whole family lining up to take their turn on her brother, and her jaw set to say something. Trafalgar caught her forearm before a word left her. ”It is fine,” he murmured, low enough for her alone. ”This is nothing new. Nothing here changes.”

Seraphine folded her hands. ”I hear you have taken another wife,” she said lightly. ”I should very much like to meet her. We ought to give her a proper welcome. The way we did the last one.”

There it was.

Some barbs are thrown wide. This one had been honed on purpose and aimed at the softest thing he owned, because it had been Seraphine herself who gave the order that put Mayla in that coma. She smiled at him across the table as though she had offered nothing warmer than a pleasantry.

His mana answered before he chose to let it.

It rolled off him and flooded the hall, heavy and cold and vast. By the count the family kept, he was still only a first core, and after two years he stood a hair short of breaking past it. That count told them nothing worth knowing. Advancement crawled the higher it climbed, turning brutal past the fifth core, yet the number had never been where his strength lived. He was a Primordial, and a Primordial’s mana ran purer, denser, and deeper than anything the rest of them carried in their far higher cores. Not one soul in this room knew it. Not one of them knew a Primordial had been at their table all along.

Maeron pushed up out of his chair, and his own pressure rose to meet it. The two forces ground together in the middle of the hall, mana against mana, and the space between the brothers thickened into something with weight and teeth.

The clash fell hardest on the ones with the least to guard them. Nym went white. Darion’s hands clamped the arms of his chair. Elira, every scrap of her earlier poise gone, fought to keep her breathing even. Naevia moved without thinking, planting herself between the pressure and Nym, and Ysolde drew her children in close under the cover of the table, quiet about it, and quick.

The hall was one breath from something far worse when a voice cut in from the entrance.

”What exactly is happening on the day of my return?”

Every ounce of pressure in the room died at once, snuffed out as though it had never been there.

As one, the table turned toward the doors. Valttair had come home.