Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1833: Back in the Royal Elven Palace

Quinlan stepped out of the [Warp Gate] and onto the high terrace of Luminareth’s palace with an elf under each arm and the deep forest’s traces still clinging to all three of them.

The capital met them with its best hour. The sun was going down somewhere beyond the canopy, and its light came in low and sideways, strained through a million leaves until the whole city ran amber and rose.

Walkways of living wood glowed like banked coals, the great trunks wore the evening on their western faces, and far below, in the blue shadows between the roots, the first lantern-buds were waking one by one.

”Sweet Goddess’s Lacy Panties~” Sera arched against his arm and drank the view down. ”Fine, I’ll say it. The palace evenings are almost as good as our home’s.”

”It’s beautiful, but nothing beats a sunset happening from under Rosie’s tree,” Kaelira said.

”Exactly!” Sera nodded, joyous.

Somewhere behind them, a tray nearly died.

The yelp came first, then the rescue: a young maid caught her own tray out of the air with reflexes her posture immediately apologized for. Then the terrace staff converged on the three of them with the speed and coordination of a practiced strike team.

Cool cloths appeared. Chilled fruit wine appeared. A cushioned bench was aimed at Quinlan’s general direction and deployed with military urgency, and a dozen elven maids in palace livery arranged themselves into a half-circle of trembling readiness, ears high, eyes shining.

”Welcome back, Holy Son!” the eldest of them said, bowing deep to Quinlan while the rest of the half-circle sank with her. ”Welcome back, honored... Ladies of the Line?”

”Holy Consorts?” another whispered from the second rank, testing it.

”Sacred Companions?”

Sera let the titles pile up a moment longer, savoring every one, then raised a gracious hand and stopped the auction.

”You can call me,” she said, letting it purr, ”the First Elf.”

The half-circle went white. A dozen spines locked at once, and the youngest maid’s lips started moving in what was unmistakably prayer. The whisperer from the second rank swayed where she stood, eyes flicking from Sera’s face to Sera’s ears and back while a life of theology tried to rearrange itself around a blue-eyed healer with moss in her hair.

Quinlan’s hand tightened on her butt.

”...of the Holy Son~” Sera finished.

The exhale that traveled down the line was strong enough to stir the lantern-buds.

”Kaelira is fine,” Kaelira then spoke her own preferred title.

Nobody was going to call the Holy Son’s woman just Kaelira, and the resulting negotiation carried them across the terrace in a warm, fussing cloud.

A maid relieved Quinlan of nothing, because he carried nothing, and looked briefly devastated about it. Another crouched to brush moss dust from the hem of Kaelira’s trousers and found the trousers largely made of moss dust at this point. A third reached up to pluck a small white blossom from Kaelira’s hair.

She froze with it between two fingers.

The petals were fresh. It was midwinter. That flower barely bloomed at all, and every elf on the terrace knew where the old trees grew that it fell from.

The maid looked at the blossom, then at the moss, then at the three of them, all that monstrous, half-dressed, forest-smelling contentment, and arrived, with an audible swallow, at the only conclusion the evidence allowed: the Holy Son had spent the better part of a day rutting his two consorts senseless in the Progenitor’s own deep forest, on the sacred moss, under the sacred trees, and then all three of them had warped directly from the scene to a royal ceremony without so much as a comb between them.

Very carefully, with both hands, she tucked the blossom back into Kaelira’s hair like a relic being reshelved.

”...Don’t,” Kaelira warned, ears already heating.

”I said nothing, honored lady.”

”Loudly,” Sera added.

Quinlan drained his cup, handed it back to a maid who received it like a holy vessel, and rolled his shoulders against the last of the forest’s pleasant ache.

”So.” He looked over the half-circle. ”Is Myra ready for us?”

The terrace stopped.

It was a warm sort of stop. A dozen elven maids stood there while the syllables settled over them, and their ears did the talking, tilting one by one toward some private, wistful horizon.

”...Myra,” the youngest repeated under her breath, tasting the shape of it, as though checking whether saying it secondhand required penance.

”Your Queen,” Quinlan clarified, but that was not the problem. All of them understood who he was referring to, their ancient, legendary matriarch who had been ruling over them for four thousand years, the bringer of light, one of the strongest mages their people ever produced.

And that woman...

”The Queen has a pet name...!!” someone whispered from the back.

”What a lucky woman,” someone else whispered, with feeling, and half the line nodded before their discipline caught up.

The line’s composure buckled down its entire length until the eldest maid clapped twice, order snapped back down the line, and she turned back to Quinlan with her dignity reassembled.

”Her Majesty is in the final preparations, Holy Son. She asks for a little more of your patience, and commands us to see to your every comfort until she sends for you.”

”Daddy!”

The shriek arrived ahead of its owner. Rosie rounded the terrace corner at a full sprint, flanked by two royal guards who were trying to escort her with ceremony and failing at a jog, and behind them a palace clerk clutched a leaf-paper folio to her chest like it held state secrets. Which, in a sense, it did.

Quinlan crouched, caught the incoming dryad princess, and stood up with her already halfway through her report.

”Papa, Rosie GOVERNED!”

She had flowers threaded through her curls and the unmistakable air of a professional. ”Rosie attended four meetings! Rosie only slept in one! Auntie Myra let Rosie sign real documents, look, look!”

The clerk, summoned by a small imperious hand, presented the folio. On the top sheet, beneath dense elven legal script, sat an enormous, laborious ROSIE in letters of three different sizes, decorated with a small drawing of a root.

”That one makes a road wider,” Rosie explained gravely.

”A fine road it’ll be,” Quinlan said, equally grave, studying the signature like a connoisseur. ”Strong signature. Good root.”

”Rosie knows.” She preened. Then her whole body lit up with the next thing, and she grabbed a double fistful of his collar. ”Daddy, tonight there’s a... mmmph.”

Both of her hands had clamped over her own mouth.

The terrace held its breath. Rosie held her breath. Her eyes bulged with the effort of containment, and when she finally spoke again it was through her fingers, muffled and solemn.

”Nope. Rosie is not a snitch.”

”Is that so?”

”Yes!” She wriggled down out of his arms, landed, and smoothed her ceremonial sash with two tiny palms, composure restored. She held up one finger at him, a perfect miniature of a lecturing minister. ”No asking.”

And with that she marched back to her guards, who fell in around her with straight faces and shaking shoulders, and the delegation departed the way it had come.

Sera watched her go, misty-eyed. ”How can she be such an adorable cutie? If Mom saw this, she would’ve fainted on the spot. Or suffered a heart attack.”

”Probably both?” Kaelira asked.

”Probably both,” Sera agreed.

It was then that the eldest maid stepped forward again, folded her hands, and made the evening’s real opening move. Her gaze went to Sera and Kaelira, took in the moss, the petals, the forge-and-forest state of them, and turned tactfully, delicately hopeful.

”Honored ladies. The ceremony tonight is... significant. If you would permit it, the palace would be honored to prepare you.” A breath. ”Baths are drawn. The salon is ready. Everything is ready.”

The two elves looked at each other.

”Oh.”

It was in this moment that the two of them realized they looked like naughty elves who’d just had hours of raunchy sex and, once done, had arrived at a royal ceremony without even brushing their hair.

Which was exactly what had happened.

Kaelira’s ears had gone scarlet at the tips, and the color was still traveling, down her jaw and heading for territory her collar wouldn’t cover.

Sera’s grin spread slow and shameless, but a telltale pink had crept up her neck too, because there was being shameless behavior and also pure trashy behavior, and the Dawnbringer knew perfectly well which faction she wanted to be a part of.

”...Well, if it’s for the ceremony,” Sera decided, chin up, entirely failing to sound casual.

”Please take care of us,” Kaelira managed, sheepish.