Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Queen Felicity Valorian knelt at the center of the great hall of Vraven with her crown held out in both gauntlets, and her question hung in the silence of six hundred held breaths.

Vassalage.

The word had finished echoing off the far doors, and nobody in the seat of the nation had remembered how to breathe since.

The chroniclers had stopped writing altogether.

The Primordial Villain looked down at the fourteen-year-old sovereign offering him her entire kingdom as soon as she was given the power to.

Then he reached down, wrapped her offered gauntlets in one big hand, and drew the queen of Vraven back up onto her feet, the crown still held between them.

Felicity blinked up at him, and for one second the queen of Vraven was entirely fourteen, glowing. "...Hehe."

Then she stepped back, and her voice rang clear off the marble.

"Before you answer, there is something I have to do first."

She settled the great crown onto her own head and turned her back on the most dangerous man alive to face her peerage.

’Oh?’ Quinlan’s brow climbed, and he gave the stage away without a word, because villains understood theater.

"Hear the crown," said the queen of Vraven.

The hall flinched. Her first decree had made a hardened countess weep into her handkerchief. Nothing in the young queen’s face promised the second would be as gentle.

"House Silverwind." Her voice reached the last banner. "House Greenvale. House Duskmere. House Thornhollow. Step forward."

Movement rippled through the packed velvet.

Kaede Fujimori detached from the back rows in Silverwind’s colors, Elder Chizuru a half-step behind her. Duke Alastair of Greenvale came grey and quiet, his twin daughters on his arms. Duke Zaren of Duskmere arrived white-haired and pleasant with Calienne on his arm, looking mildly delighted to be included in anything.

Duke Harland of Thornhollow came last, grizzled and heavy, lord of the realm’s orchards and its moonwine. He wanted to be anywhere else on the continent.

Four houses stood before their queen.

The fifth name went unspoken, and every soul in the hall heard it anyway.

Felicity looked at the four of them for a long moment, and when she spoke again, the royal formula was gone. What was left was fourteen years old and completely serious.

"Long ago, my ancestors conquered your kingdoms." She said it plainly, a child reciting the family sin. "They took your crowns, wrote the Law of Accord, and named you stewards of the lands your houses had ruled as kings."

She let one breath pass.

"And every duke since has hated it."

"She cannot just say that..." an old count whispered somewhere in the middle rows, scandalized to his bones. Then he realized the only realistic explanation for all this. "Wait, am I dreaming?"

"Everyone knows it," Felicity continued, unbothered. "Plots, secret meetings, marriages nobody wanted. Hundreds of years of scheming, all of it about the same thing. Getting free of my family."

The young queen lifted her chin, and the too-big crown wobbled and held.

"My father had to become a tyrant today. Just for one afternoon, just to cut the rot out of the realm." Her voice stayed level. "But I will not have this nation be built upon fear alone."

She raised one gauntleted hand.

"So. By royal decree, the second of my reign: the crown releases the Law of Accord. Any ducal house that wishes it may leave this kingdom tonight, as a free and sovereign nation."

"Your lands go with you. Your armies go with you. Nobody will punish you, nobody will chase you, and no monarch of Vraven will ever come to take them back."

The great hall detonated for the third time in a single day.

"She’s gone mad!"

"Independence?! The crown is handing out independence?! Right after asking for vassalage under a man who had a bounty just days ago?!"

"Generations of endless plotting, and she just... gives it?!"

An elderly baron sat down hard on a bench that was not there. Two barons caught him without looking, because neither could stop staring at the floor of the hall.

At the adventurers’ table, Lilith stopped mid-bite. "...Holy shit," said the captain of the Scarlet Lilies, apple forgotten in her hand. "My niece might be crazier than her mom."

Beside her, Void sat up. All the way up, spine straight, both hands flat on her thighs, her closed eyes pointed straight at the queen. Nobody at that table had ever seen the Void Mage awake at such an angle.

"So fun..." she breathed.

Near the center of the hall, Feng Jiai was grinning so wide it looked painful. "I taught that hopeless girl everything," the young jade beauty informed the nearest baroness, who had not asked.

"Blossom is confused for the fifth time today!!" Blossom reported proudly, tail going crazy.

"You’re not alone this time..." Vex giggled. "What a beautiful mess this ended up becoming~"

The rest of the family watched the fourteen-year-old gamble a kingdom with varying degrees of open delight.

And on the dais, Alexios Valorian, who had schemed for years to hand his daughter an unbreakable realm, stood absolutely still while she offered to let it walk apart. The hall’s eyes went to him in one motion, hungry for the old king’s fury.

His carved face gave them nothing at all.

"Choose," said Queen Felicity Valorian. "Bend the knee with Vraven and join the future where we follow Quinlan Elysiar, or go on your own."

Silence.

<Move already~> Lucille instructed her father, eyes utterly villainous.

<...Daughter, I-> Duke Alastair of Greenvale began.

Her voice lost all of its playfulness as she now demanded:

<Kneel.>

Duke Alastair of Greenvale stepped forward and knelt to his queen.

He went down smoothly, immediately, before the offer’s echo had left the rafters, his twin daughters sinking in unison beside him.

"Greenvale declines the crown’s offer," the duke said to Queen Felicity, in a voice with nothing left in it to read. "Greenvale kneels."

The hall gasped as one chest.

"Greenvale?!" a baron blurted, court manners abandoned. "Greenvale declined?!"

"He fought the Accord his whole life...!"

"If any house walks free tonight, it should have been..."

Duke Harland of Thornhollow stared at his closest ally’s bent back with his mouth open. Whatever he had braced himself for tonight, watching Alastair of Greenvale kneel like a man setting down a heavy crate had no place on the list.

’That fast, Alastair?’ he thought. ’You didn’t even make them wait for the echo.’

"House Silverwind," Felicity said.

Kaede Fujimori crossed the hall.

*Clack.* *Clack.*

Her heels were the only sound in the seat of the nation. The woman who had once held that duchy’s seat in her own name stopped before the queen and knelt to her with a perfectly straight back, Elder Chizuru bowing low at her side.

"Silverwind made its choice, Your Majesty," Kaede said. "We stay."

Short, composed, finished. Chizuru’s complaint-brush hung motionless over its scroll for the second time in recorded history.

"House Duskmere."

Duke Zaren of Duskmere blinked.

The white-haired duke looked at the queen, then at the enormous hall, then, with honest confusion, at his wife.

"I mean, why not?" he asked her, forgetting entirely to whisper. "Would you like to be queen?"

Calienne Valorian smiled at her husband with immense sweetness, and her elbow found his ribs, pointedly.

"Kneel, dear."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!