Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1480  Perfect Revenge

The original bounty of one million gold coins had been crossed out in heavy charcoal. New words were scrawled beneath in a hand that trembled with either rage or desperation.

Bounty: One Royal Boon.

Anything. The Valorian family, the Vraven Kingdom's ruling house, was offering anything within the king's power to grant. Nobility. Artifacts. Secrets. Whatever the killer wanted, it was theirs. A blank check signed by the crown itself, born from the kind of fear that turned gold into an insufficient currency.

Silver stared at the sketch.

Then he spat on it.

The saliva hit the drawing square between the eyes and dripped down the paper, warping the ink.

Silver's claws closed around the parchment. He crushed it in his fist, then tore it apart. Strips of paper fell to the table like dead leaves.

"I don't need their boon," he hissed quietly.

This was personal.

The memory still burned. Standing in the great hall of the beastkin confederation, surrounded by the lords of every major tribe, when that boy walked in and dismantled Silver's authority with words alone. He'd made the leader of the foxkin people look foolish. And then he'd humiliated one son and killed the other in consequent duels, the method of arguing the tribes respected.

Quinlan won. It meant in the eyes of the brutish creatures, he was right.

Silver's claws dug into the table. Grooves appeared in the wood, thin and deep.

His sons. His heirs. The continuation of his bloodline, cut short by a boy who treated their lives like obstacles in his path, swept aside without ceremony. While one son survived, he was no longer fit for inheritance.

Silver breathed through his nose until the rage settled into something colder. Something useful. He chuckled.

"Well…" He leaned back, rolling his neck until it cracked. "Those beastkin lords can think whatever they want about me."

He'd already betrayed them, after all.

When the lionkin had launched their bid for dominance over the confederation, backed quietly by Elvardian gold, armor, and weapons, Silver had seen the opportunity before anyone else. He'd played both sides with a precision that would have made the foxkin ancestors proud. Sat in confederation war councils by day, fed intelligence to the lionkin by night. Every troop movement, every defensive plan, every alliance negotiation passed through his hands and into enemy ears.

When the lionkin lost and Silver's betrayal surfaced, he hadn't even bothered to deny it. He'd simply left. Walked out of the Beastkin lands with his tail high and his people behind him, straight into the arms of an Elvardia that valued his skills far more than a fractured confederation ever had.

Now he was here. Fourth pillar of an invasion force. Indispensable. Respected, if not trusted. The fox among wolves, which was exactly where a fox performed best.

The chuckle faded.

His gaze dropped back to the torn poster on the table. The shredded face. Those arrogant eyes, still visible on one surviving strip.

The amusement drained from his features.

Quinlan Elysiar.

And his memory showed one more thing.

That white-haired foxkin bitch at his side.

The Nine-Tailed Sorceress with a gorgeous body, the perfect trophy.

Kitsara.

Silver's jaw tightened.

She was foxkin. His people. His subject. A woman of his race who should have stood beside her leader, who should have recognized the hierarchy and submitted to the natural order as every foxkin had for generations.

Instead, she'd chosen an outsider.

Silver's tail went rigid behind him.

He pulled a fresh map toward himself and pretended to study it, but his eyes saw nothing on the parchment. His mind was elsewhere. In a future he'd already decided on.

He would kill the boy. That was a certainty carved into the bedrock of his ambitions, as unshakable as the tunnels the Covenant had dug beneath Ravenshade. Not for the boon. Not for Elvardia. For himself. For his sons, whose graves he couldn't even visit because they'd been buried in foreign soil. And Kitsara would pay for her betrayal in a different way.

She would become his wife. She would bear his children. New sons to replace the ones that the filth had taken from him, raised properly this time, raised to despise humans and everything they represented.

Silver found a twisted sense of justice in that.

Quinlan took his sons. Silver would use Quinlan's woman to make new ones.

Fair was fair.

His claws retracted. His breathing steadied. The cold settled back into its proper place behind his eyes, where it could be useful instead of destructive.

He folded the fresh map and placed it neatly atop the torn remains of the bounty poster.

Then he stood, adjusted his coat, and stepped out of the tent.

The foxkin encampment spread before him in neat, precise rows. Every tent aligned. Every supply cache organized. Every patrol route drawn and memorized. His people moved with quiet purpose, tails low, ears attentive, speaking in murmurs when they spoke at all.

Beyond them, the distant glow of siege fires marked the horizon. Another city falling. Another step toward the capital.

Ravenshade's heart was close now. A handful of major cities stood between the alliance and the royal seat. At this pace, the kingdom would be fighting for its survival within the week.

Silver inhaled the cold winter air.

Smoke. Stone dust. The faintest copper tang of blood carried on the wind from the distant front lines.

He smiled.

Somewhere in that chaos, the Primordial Villain was lurking. Stealing. Scheming. Playing his own game within everyone else's war, as if the entire invasion were a personal buffet laid out for his benefit.

'Enjoy it while it lasts, boy,' Silver thought.

He turned and walked toward the command tent where the Elvardian generals waited for his evening report.

There was a war to win.

And after that, a debt to collect.

…

The Valorian throne room was empty save for the king.

Alexios Valorian sat alone. Not on the throne itself, but in the smaller chair beside it, the one reserved for reading reports and making decisions that didn't require an audience. His crown rested on the armrest. His sword lay sheathed against the wall. A cup of tea sat untouched on the table beside him, long and cold.

The communication artifact hummed.

He knew who it was before accepting the call. Only three people had direct access to this particular artifact, and two of them were dead.

He pressed his thumb to the sigil.

Duke Tharion Ravenshade's face materialized in the light above the artifact. Broad jaw. Hard eyes. But tonight, those eyes carried a weight Alexios had not seen in them before.

"My king."

Alexios inclined his head. "Duke Tharion."

"You were right."