Page 27 of Vylit: Glowing for Her
Finally, the ancient judge spoke again, voice trembling with age and something like fear.
"Who is Asset P?"
Silvyr’s projection glitched, then stabilized. "Unknown. But the pattern is clear. Maya Poe’s abduction was not random. Neither was Vylit’s selection. Every unbound mate on the Agency network is at risk. Unless we act, Asset P will own the future of both our species."
The projection dissolved. Silence reigned.
Vylit looked at me, his chest still scrawled with living light, his eyes raw and unguarded.
My brain, always a couple of years behind my mouth, finally caught up.
I looked at the assembly. I looked at the man who had carried me through a battle, who had bared his soul, literally, to save me from being a pawn in someone else’s algorithm.
I could feel the words burning in my own chest. This time, when I reached for his hand, I didn’t hesitate.
"Asset P can go fuck itself," I said, voice steady. "You want a war? We’ll give you one."
Vylit’s biolights pulsed in perfect, impossible time with mine.
"The Oath proves the warrior's dedication but not the humans." Another elder called out.
Dread pooled in my gut. How would I prove to the Mavtros tribunal that I wanted this as much as Vylit did?
CHAPTER 12
VYLIT
The words hung over the tribunal like a black wave cresting. The silence pressed in on me, thicker than water, thicker than the shame that burned through every filament of my being. In the ancient stories, a Mavtrosian could lose a limb, lose an empire, but nothing compared to losing honor. My ancestors had cast their own brothers into the crushing depths for lesser slights. And here I was, standing at the center of a reef-palace packed with every dignitary and warlord the sector could vomit up, as the entire room waited for the single human in the spiral to declare whether she’d been forced.
I could have braced for a blade in the gut. I could have faced exile to the brine deserts, or even death, with something like dignity. But this? This was annihilation with an audience.
I tried not to show it, but my bioluminescence betrayed me. A cold, bruise-colored pallor rippled across my chest, every spiral and glyph that moments ago blazed with the Glow Oath now blunted and ugly. I didn’t dare look at Maya, but I could sense her in the heat-haze of my peripheral vision. The whole world narrowed to the hot, impossible spot where she stood.
She didn’t say anything at first.
The tribunal’s center judge—Elder Ustred, carapace so thin I could see the threads of light weaving his bones together—leaned forward with predatory patience. "You are called Maya Poe," he said, the name spiking through the comm-translation like a flare. "Speak for yourself, before the registry and the ancestors."
I wanted to shout, to plead, to explain that I had done nothing against her will. That every touch, every word, every fragment of the bond had been offered and not demanded. But on Mavtros, the voice of the accused meant less than nothing. The only thing that could save me, save us, was her word.
"Speak human. You will not be punished for the warrior's misdeeds," the elder proclaimed.
She stepped forward. It wasn’t dramatic… there was no flourish, no slow-motion heroics. Her legs almost buckled, and for a pulse I thought she would collapse right there, and that would be the end. But she caught herself on the moss-liner, straightened, and looked straight into the hive of eyes focused on her. The glow from her mating marks flashed up the side of her throat, brighter now than even the initial bonding. The effect was, in a word, stunning.
She took a breath. The entire chamber seemed to suck it in with her.
"My name is Maya Poe," she said. Her voice trembled at first, but not from fear. It was the kind of tremor you get right before a thunderstorm. "And I was taken from my world without my consent."
The gasps came instantly, not just from the Mavtrosian side, but from the Agency delegation too. One of the insectoid envoys recoiled, knocking over a floating data globe… a half-dozen surveillance miniatures darted to catch it. The judges leaned forward as a single organism, mouths opening in a chorus of horror and greed. My own breath stilled, every heart chamber locked in a stasis of pure dread.
She didn’t stop. "My DNA was sampled and sold. My abduction was arranged by the Intergalactic Dating Agency, without my knowledge or consent." Her gaze flicked to the IDA envoys, who actually tried to duck, as if being smaller might shield them from the blame radiating off her words.
"Everything I am—every cell, every instinct—was auctioned before I even knew aliens existed." She glared at the humanoid spokesman in the Agency cluster. "You call it matching. I call it trafficking."
No one breathed. Even the microdrones in the upper gallery went still, lenses locking into place to record every angle.
She turned back to the tribunal, and her eyes found mine. In that instant, I knew it was over. Not for me, but for the Agency, for every tradition that thought it could grind the individual down to fit the shape of the machine.
"But." She let the word hang, letting the silence draw out until I thought I might go mad with anticipation. "The only being in this galaxy who ever gave me a choice is the one standing next to me. Vylit of Mavtros asked for my consent. He risked his own life for my freedom. And when the pirates came, he became my shield. My warrior."
