Thanks to Ys, the suffocating tension in the meeting room had finally started to fade. Li exhaled a heavy, defeated sigh before waving her hand toward her escorts. "Leave us. The rest of this conversation will bepletely private."


    Her guards hesitated, their expressions filled with concern, but after several moments of convincing and a stern re from Li, they reluctantly obeyed and filed out of the room. The heavy door shut behind them with a dull thud, leaving only Li, Rex, Ys, and Cleo at the table.


    Now alone, Li turned her full attention to Rex. His golden eyes bore into her like burning embers; his anger was palpable, his jaw clenched tight.


    Her gray eyes met his atst, though it took all her courage to hold his fiery gaze. "First of all, I want to say this wasn''t my idea. I''m not saying that to excuse myself from the responsibility of being here, but I need everyone in this room to understand my stance on this matter."


    Li said with her voice steady, though her hands trembled faintly at her sides.


    There was a reason she rarely opened her eyes fully around Rex. She could sense his presence even with them closed, but the moment her gaze fell on him, the truth of his nature wasid bare before her, more vivid than she could bear.


    As her gray eyes widened, the image of the man in front of her shifted. The Rex she saw was no longer the fiery, wrathful figure of the moment. Instead, she saw a being of impossible beauty.


    His skin gleamed like porcin, showered with a silvery light that seemed to emanate from within. His hair, usually a deep ck, was now a radiant white, and his golden eyes had turned to shimmering silver, each holding the glimmer of stars within them.


    It was the same vision she had seen as a child, the same ethereal radiance she had once associated with the Lady in White.


    Even as she tried to steady her breathing, Rex''s voice thundered across the room, bringing her back into the harsh reality of the moment.


    "Even if you say that now, it doesn''t change a damn thing! You''re all stabbing us in the back! How do you expect any rtionship between us to remain intact when you bring us this... this abomination of a contract?!"


    His fist mmed against the table with a deafening crack, his anger spilling over like a tidal wave.


    Ys sighed and ced her hand lightly on Rex''s, her touch a stark contrast to his violent outburst. "Darling, please stop interrupting her," she said with her voice calm and soothing but with an edge of firmness.


    "I know how unreasonable you can be when you''re angry, just like that Kaelzar girl sitting beside you, but for my sake, let the little saintess finish what she has to say."


    Her words caught Rex off guard. He stared at Ys in disbelief, his fiery temper momentarily subdued. It wasn''t just her unexpected defense of Li that struck him, but also the way she carried herself now, graceful, mature, andposed, so unlike her usual yful and childlike demeanor. Readtest stories on empire


    With a heavy sigh, Rex leaned back in his chair, his gaze cold and distant as he folded his arms across his chest. "Fine," he said, his tone sharp as a de. "You can continue, Saintess of the Human Race."


    The words cut through Li like a knife, sharper than any of his previous outbursts. He had never called her by her title before, only by her name.


    The formality of it, the icy detachment in his voice, it was like a door mming shut, a signal that whatever bond they had shared was now severed. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest, but she swallowed the hurt, determined to keep herposure.


    She took a deep breath and prepared to speak again, though the ache in her chest lingered like a shadow she couldn''t shake.


    "While everything in that contract represents the stance of the Human Council, it is not my own," Li said, her voice steady, though her gaze faltered under the dangerous aura of Rex''s.


    "The contract hasn''t been made public to anyone outside the council, and they''re still redacting it as we speak. I wanted to show it to you before it goes any further."


    Rex''s eyes narrowed, the anger in his gaze still simmering, but he said nothing. It was Cleo who broke the silence, her expression sharp with understanding. "Then this contract is nothing more than a prototype, isn''t it?"


    As the realization dawned, Cleo''s expression shifted slightly. Without missing a beat, she reached for her connection with the Kaelzar tech, issuing silentmands to halt the powering up of the Cleopatra''s main cannons.


    She had been preparing to obliterate the humans main carrier, but now her hands moved swiftly to reverse the preparations.


    Rex leaned forward, his piercing gaze still locked on Li. "Then tell me this: what do you want to achieve by showing me this now?" His voice was calmer than before, but the fury lingering beneath it was unmistakable.


    "What I want... " Li began, her voice loud and desperate at first, but it softened as her resolve wavered. By the end, it was barely above a whisper. "What I want is for you to forgive the humans for what a few at the top are trying to do."


    Rex''s expression darkened as he leaned back, his arms crossed, his voiceced with ice. "And aren''t you one of those ''few at the top, saintess?"


    Li hesitated but quickly forced herself to respond. "It''s true," she admitted, her voice trembling slightly, "that I''m one of the higher-ups. But my influence isn''t as great as you think it is. While I might be a symbol of hope for humanity, that''s all I am... a symbol. Thanks to certain circumstances, I don''t hold the kind of power you imagine. At best, I have one vote out of ten in the council."@@novelbin@@


    Her honesty hung in the air like a fragile thread, her voice steady but burdened with the weight of her confession.


    "The reason I came to show you this was to plead with you. I''m begging you, please forgive those who have no hand in this. Forgive those who know nothing of what''s happening behind closed doors."


    The room fell silent for a moment. Rex didn''t speak, but the tension in his expression was palpable. The heat in his gaze bore into her like a me, threatening to consume her entirely. Li tried to keep herposure, but the pressure of his presence was suffocating, making her voice shake as she spoke.


    It was Cleo who finally broke the silence once again. Her cold voice cut through the stillness like a de.


    "You can''t im the other humans are innocent, saintess of the human race. If this contract were to go through, no matter what variables were in y, every single human would benefit from it. There are no innocents here, saintess."


    Cleo''s words struck like hammers, each one deliberate, each one sharp. Li flinched slightly but didn''t look away. Even as Cleo''s cold tone sent shivers down her spine, Li stood her ground, knowing that she could not afford to falter now.


    Li couldn''t find any words to refute what Cleo had said. As much as she wanted to, the truth of her statement was undeniable.


    "This so-called Human Empire hasn''t evensted ten years, and it''s already showing signs of internal infighting," Cleo said coldly, her expression as unyielding as steel.


    With a wave of her hand, she summoned several holo-screens, each disying damning evidence gathered by her spies embedded within the human ranks.


    The screens floated around the room, each one illuminating the dark truth. They showed rampant corruption among human officers and high-ranking officials, their greed and betrayalid bare.


    There were records of secret deals made with alien races, pacts to sell military grade weapons and restricted technology, and equipment meant solely for human defense. The humans had bartered away their future for personal gain, undermining their fragile empire piece by piece.


    "As you can see, this has been going on for months," Cleo continued, her voice cutting through the air like ice. "The ambition of your race is astonishing, even to me. So tell me, saintess, do you have an excuse for this as well?"


    Li stood frozen as more holo screens appeared, circling her like specters of guilt. Each one disyed a newyer of treachery, a new betrayal, a new failure of the system she had once believed in.


    Her gray eyes scanned the damning evidence, her heart sinking deeper with every passing moment.


    She had believed, truly believed, that she was leading humanity down a righteous path. But what Cleo was showing her shattered that illusion. It was as if the very foundation of her faith had been ripped out from under her, leaving her stranded and hollow.


    The overwhelming weight of the truth bore down on her shoulders, making it harder to breathe. Cleo''s words, sharp and relentless, reverberated in her mind.


    "Do you have an excuse?"


    Li''s lips trembled as she searched for something to say, anything that could lessen the impact of what she was seeing. But no words came. How could there be? Everything she was seeing was real. And the worst part? She hadn''t known. She had been blind to it all.


    The room fell silent, save for the hum of the holo screens. Li''s chest tightened as the proof of humanity''s sins surrounded her, their greed and corruption pressing in from all sides. Her gray eyes began to water, her vision blurring as the truth became unbearable.


    Her knees wavered, and her head lowered as a single tear escaped and slid down her cheek. Then another. And another.