Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

"Kneel, dear."

"Ah. Yes. Obviously." Duke Zaren of Duskmere knelt to his queen with visible relief, beaming up at her. "Duskmere declines, Your Majesty. Wholeheartedly."

Calienne sank down beside him toward her baby sister in a reverence of flawless elegance, and only her father, watching from the dais, caught the grin she aimed at the marble on the way down.

And then one duke remained.

Duke Harland of Thornhollow stood alone in the middle of the great hall of Vraven, every eye in the kingdom on his weathered face. The one thing his house had wanted for its entire recorded history lay at his feet, free for the taking.

Thornhollow had been a kingdom once.

He could be a king.

"He’s going to take it," somebody whispered in the middle rows. "Look at him. He’s going to take it."

The word had weight on his tongue, actual weight, handed down with the deeds and the vault keys.

His eyes moved without his permission.

To the Villain’s family first, draped along the royal marble and thoroughly entertained. The samurai, the serpent, and the red-eyed woman whose arm was still bent wrong from caving in the chest of a duke.

To the flagstones next, the unmarked ones where the burning seam had been, the only whole stones left in the hall.

House Ravenshade had been the mightiest thing in this kingdom that did not wear a crown, and the crown’s new friends had dismantled it between breakfast and dinner.

And his Thornhollow fed people. That was the whole of its power. Orchards, granaries, moonwine, good roads. His soldiers guarded wagons. A pale shadow, the military men had always called the Sustaining Arm’s forces, usually to his face.

A king, then. A king of orchards, standing alone outside all of this.

Outside the realm his harvests fed, outside the crown’s roads and the crown’s protection, outside whatever came next. And anyone with working eyes could see the Villain was not finished, that everything he had touched so far had ended in a kneel.

And Alastair.

Harland had once pledged Alastair his full support with nothing but a nod. Together, they would become independent one day. Such was their promise.

Tonight the same man had gone down before the offer finished echoing.

’What did you see?’ he thought, staring at the kneeling grey duke. ’What do you all see that I don’t?’

But that was the lie, and he was too old to tell it to himself.

He saw it too. Everyone in this hall had seen it today, framed in ember light, screaming.

Duke Harland of Thornhollow closed his eyes, and let go of the dream his house had carried.

When he came forward, his steps were even. When he spoke, his voice was not.

"Your Majesty." He stopped. Started again. "My house... for my whole life, my house has wanted nothing in this world so much as the offer you just made."

Felicity looked up at the grizzled duke and waited.

"And I find..." His eyes went to the sealed flagstones, where Iris’s hell had closed its gates. "...I find that the world in which we wanted it is gone. It went into that floor."

Duke Harland of Thornhollow knelt to Queen Felicity Valorian in the middle of the great hall.

"Thornhollow declines," he said, down at the marble.

The exhale that moved through the hall carried six hundred held breaths out with it.

"..."

Alexios Valorian watched from the dais and gave the hall nothing at all.

He had spent his entire reign scheming to rein in the rebelious dukes. His daughter had placed the finishing touches on his life’s work.

The old king’s eyes had an unnatural sheen to them.

Queen Felicity Valorian stood before four kneeling ducal houses and let the moment breathe.

Then she turned back around to face the Primordial Villain, reached up, and took the crown of Vraven off her head for the second time that day.

"Now it’s whole." Her voice was clear and young, and it did not shake at all. "Every ducal house in Vraven was given the choice tonight, in front of everyone."

She held the crown out to Quinlan Elysiar in both gauntlets, and this time she stayed on her feet.

"So I will say it again. Vraven asks for vassalage."

The nobles watched the crown of the realm being held out to the most feared man alive, and this time nobody had any doubts left to hide behind.

Quinlan looked down at her.

’Fourteen years old,’ he mused. ’What an amazing little lady you’ve become, Felicity.’

The Primordial Villain crossed the last of the distance and took the crown out of her gauntlets. He gave it one slow, appraising turn.

’It feels far heavier than it actually is,’ he chuckled inwardly, weighing the invisible half of it in his hand.

He had dodged this exact fate once already, in a palace of living wood, by handing a freshly founded holy nation to two capable women and making a strategic retreat before any work could find his lap.

Overlord suited him far better than king. Kingdoms run by people he trusted, prospering in his name, while he handled the one job nobody else alive could do.

Becoming a supreme, undeniable existence.

In a harsh world like Thalorind, good governance was only half of the job. The other half was being powerful enough that no enemy could come and take what was yours.

Quinlan specialized in that area, and intended to keep things that way.

Thankfully, this realm already had its ruler.

A good girl who had already etched her name into the hearts of Vraven.

With his Tyrant of Commerce at her side, this little queen would run the human kingdom better than any villain with a saber ever could, and the two of them would enjoy every minute of it.

And the old bastard on the dais was not going anywhere. Alexios had no intention of dying anytime soon, and nobody knew this kingdom’s machinery better than the man who had spent his reign running it. Felicity would be getting an advisor whether she wanted one or not.

He set the crown back on her head.

It slid straight down to her eyebrows.

"Keep it. It fits you better."

Then the same hand came down, petting the queen of Vraven’s hair in front of her entire assembled peerage.

"Ehehe~" The giggle escaped before Felicity could stop it, and she stood there under his palm on her nation’s most historic night, happy from crown to sabatons. <Lazy!!> she laughed into his mind, which was promptly ignored.

The grin came down at her, warm and villainous in equal measure. "I accept your vassalage, Queen of Vraven. You keep the crown and rule your people. But from today onwards, the kingdom, and everyone in it, is mine to look after."

He said the next part to the entire hall.

"And I take care of what’s mine."

Far away in Elysaria, an entire nation would have cheered the sentence. Vraven’s peerage did what humans do before a power they have finally stopped pretending to measure.

The four ducal houses bowed where they knelt, to the Villain now. Behind them the peers of the realm went down rank upon rank, velvet folding to the marble in a slow tide, to Quinlan Elysiar, liege lord of Vraven.

In the eastern gallery, Prince Elias lowered his head to the overlord his queen had chosen, and found the second submission of the day easier than the first.

Arch Priestess Elisabeth inclined her head to the man her doctrine had no Chapter for.

Stormlord knelt to the Villain because the crown he served had spoken, gauntlet flat on the marble, iron all the way through.

Near his own pillar, the Mediator had gone very still, hands folded deep in his sleeves, watching hereditary sovereignty kneel on open marble, and keeping whatever he understood behind his beard.

Felicity beamed up at Quinlan from under the crown’s rim, scarlet-eared and radiant. "Hehe!"

And into the girlish giggle of a monarch, a window unfolded across Quinlan’s vision, a pane of quiet script hanging between him and six hundred bowed heads.

[The human people of Iskaris have acknowledged your dominion.]

[Peoples of Iskaris conquered: 2/4]

[Conquer the dwarven people and the beastkin people to claim rulership of Iskaris.]

[Reward: ???]

Quinlan read it once, unhurried.

’Already halfway,’ he mused. ’And I didn’t even have to draw the saber for this one.’

He flicked the window shut over the bowed heads of the human race and swept his gaze across the seat of the nation. The grin that arrived was slow, villainous, and thoroughly content.

"Let’s get to work, shall we?"

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