Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1549  Battle Sisters Reunited

Scar kept walking.

The undead army marched behind her in disciplined ranks, blue-skinned soldiers stepping in unison across the scorched field with weapons drawn and eyes glowing, and at their head the woman who had scouted ahead of the Scarlet Lilies for four hundred years walked with a stride that Lilith almost didnʼt recognize.

Because Scar had never walked like that.

The Scar that Lilith remembered moved in half-shadows. She scouted ahead alone because she preferred it that way, spoke when spoken to and sometimes not even then, ate her meals at the edge of camp with her back to the group, scouting for trouble even while eating.

That woman had hidden from the world. Every step sheʼd ever taken was designed to go unnoticed.

The woman walking toward Lilith now was not hiding.

Scarʼs head was held high, her spine straight, her shoulders squared. She walked at the head of an army with the measured confidence of a general who had earned her rank and intended everyone on this field to know it. The mask was the same, that half-face cover that hid the ruin of her mouth, but everything about the woman beneath it had changed.

Those eyes found hers across the field.

The gaze that met Lilithʼs was steady and calm and deeply, uncomfortably intelligent, the look of a woman who recognized exactly who she was facing and had already weighed every possible outcome of this meeting. There was command in those eyes. Authority. The kind of presence that the old Scar would have flinched away from if sheʼd seen it in a mirror.

That was worse.

Because a mindless puppet would have been easier to accept. A hollow shell with Scarʼs face and nothing behind the eyes would have let Lilith believe the woman sheʼd loved was gone, consumed by necromancy, reduced to a weapon wearing familiar skin. Mourning a puppet would have been simple. Fighting one, simpler still.

But Scarʼs eyes were alive.

Behind the cold composure and the mask and the blue-tinged skin, the intelligence that had kept the Scarlet Lilies alive through their thousands of hostile encounters was still in there, reading the field, assessing threats, running the kind of quiet calculations that had made Scar invaluable.

She just wasnʼt using those calculations for the Scarlet Lilies anymore.

ʼShe knows me,ʼ Lilith thought, and the ache in her chest had teeth. ʼShe remembers everything. And sheʼs walking toward me anyway.ʼ

The memory hit her before she could stop it.

ʼLilith Ravenshade. Abandon vengeance. Pursue no debt of blood. Walk away while you still can, or my Master, the Primordial Villain, will claim your soul as his own.ʼ

Scarʼs voice that day had been flat and clipped. The tone of a woman delivering a warning she knew would go unheard, because sheʼd known Lilith for centuries and understood exactly how stubborn the white-haired swordswoman was.

ʼCherish the memory of the human Scar, for you will never meet her again. No matter what you do.ʼ

Lilith had refused. Of course sheʼd refused. Sheʼd shouted it, raw and desperate, the kind of declaration you made when the alternative was accepting that four hundred years of trust could be severed by a man with a glowing sword and a necromancerʼs ambition.

ʼI will not do that! Iʼll keep searching for a solution!ʼ

And Scar had shaken her head and drawn her daggers and walked toward her, and the last words sheʼd spoken before the fighting started had settled into Lilithʼs bones like a prophecy sheʼd been too angry to hear.

ʼAll you will find is Eternal Damnation.ʼ

Eternal Damnation. The spell that ripped souls from the dead and bound them to the Primordial Villainʼs blade. Sheʼd watched it happen to Scar with her own eyes, watched the necrotic light pulse through the pitch black sword as her friendʼs spirit was torn from her corpse and reforged into something that served an unholy master.

Scar hadnʼt been threatening her. Sheʼd been telling her exactly what would happen, and Lilith hadnʼt listened.

And now here they were again. The same woman in the same mask, daggers drawn, walking toward her across a field of the dead with an army at her back, aimed at the party sheʼd once called family.

ʼYou warned me,ʼ Lilith thought. ʼAnd I didnʼt listen. And youʼre still here, walking toward me with those daggers drawn, serving him, and I still canʼt accept it.ʼ

Her grip on her sword tightened.

Behind Scar and the undead ranks, Quinlanʼs women spread across the field in loose formation. Battered but healed, wearing the damage of fights theyʼd won against officers who should have buried them, and every single one of them carried themselves with the quiet confidence of people who had just proven they belonged on this battlefield.

Kaede Fujimoriʼs gaze swept across them.

She found Ayame first.

The samurai stood near the front with her katana sheathed and blood still flecked across her cheeks. Kaede didnʼt break stride as she looked at the big sister sheʼd betrayed.

Ayame met her eyes.

Kaede held her sisterʼs gaze across the closing distance with the absolute stillness of a woman who had made her choices and would not unmake them.

Then Kaedeʼs gaze moved past her sister and found the foxkin.

Kitsara stood a few paces behind Ayame with her three tails swishing lazily and an expression of cheerful innocence that fooled absolutely no one. The Nine-Tailed Sorceress who had taken Ayameʼs form to win, who had worn her sisterʼs face as bait and watched Black Fang nearly cut Kaede in half while the real Ayame was somewhere else entirely.

Kaedeʼs eyes narrowed.

Kitsaraʼs ears twitched. Her head tilted and a bright, sunny smile spread across her face, the kind that said she remembered exactly what sheʼd done and considered it one of her finer performances.

And then Kaede found the woman walking next to them both, and the cold composure cracked.

Black Fang moved at the front of Quinlanʼs formation with her blade drawn and resting against her hip, purple eyes locked on Kaede Fujimori with the focused hostility of a woman who remembered leaving a job unfinished.

The deadliest assassin on the continent walked with the same unhurried pace as the rest of the group, but her gaze never left Kaede.

Just Kaede. Only Kaede. The one who should have stayed dead.

Like it was already over and the other person simply hadnʼt realized it yet.

Kaede remembered the blade. She remembered the speed of it, the impossible precision, the way Black Fang had dismantled her guard stroke by stroke. She remembered the killing blow, the cold shock of realizing she was dead before her body caught up to the information, and the burning light of her blade dragging her back from the edge.

Her hand settled on the hilt of that sword, and the grip was steady.

Then a voice cut across the field, young and clear and utterly out of place on a battlefield.

”Mom! Auntie Lilith!”

Felicity Valorian stepped out from behind Quinlanʼs formation and ran to the front. The third princess of the Vraven Kingdom, daughter of Queen Morgana Ravenshade, stood in the gap between two groups about to collide with the wind catching her hair and the earnest, wide-open expression of someone who still believed people could be reasoned with.