Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1615  Free

"May I?"

The Archduke's fingers closed briefly around the vessel. The hesitation lasted only a heartbeat, but it was the first time since the conversation had begun that the ancient creature had revealed anything resembling vulnerability. His Mirethiel's last gift. His penance and his purpose, both.

Then he opened his palm.

The vessel sat there, exposed.

Quinlan called the wind.

A current rose through the chamber, warm and aimed, and the vessel lifted from the Archduke's palm, drifted out over the black marble, and settled into Quinlan's waiting gauntlet.

He turned the artifact between his fingers.

His mother's tears. Each one shed at the death of one of her children. He could feel them, each one warm against his palm, and the warmth pulsing against the glass carried what he remembered from her embrace.

He thought of Luminara's smile, the way she'd held him against her chest and called him her son. Her long golden hair, her bare feet on the moss of her gardens, the socks she'd knit him with the toes cut so he could feel the earth beneath him, and the strong pouts she produced when Quinlan refused to wear them. Each one of these tears had been wept for a child she had buried.

Determination swelled in his chest.

He would not add to that count. He refused to die out here, refused to let his mother weep one more tear into this vial. Luminara had buried enough children, and he would not be the next. Quinlan pulled the stopper free.

A single drop tilted toward his lips. He let it fall onto his tongue.

The effect was instantaneous. Light bloomed out of him in a rapidly expanding wave, golden at the heart and warming through every shade the autumn forests of his mother's lands had ever held. It rose from his armor seeking the ceiling, and the cold of the chamber broke around it like ice taken to a fire.

The chamber filled.

The crimson banners stirred in a wind that was not there. The cobwebs on the candelabras fluttered. The black marble warmed beneath the women's bodies. From the light surrounding Quinlan there poured a presence so vast and so impossibly tender that the air itself sang with it. Pride. Joy. Fierce maternal love that would have put torches to the world's roots.

The Archduke's eyes widened. Relief, compressed for epochs and now expanding all at once, trembled through his withered hands where they rested on the armrests.

He had waited eons. The failure that had pinned him to this throne lifted at last.

A sound broke from his throat, half a sob.

A cry rose from the women.

It was soft and wounded, and they dropped before it had finished leaving their throats. Knees, palms, foreheads to the black marble in a single, synchronized kowtow. Even Isveth folded, her braid spilling across the floor, the blade she had drawn forgotten beside her.

The staff-bearer who had once demanded Quinlan's blood spoke first.

Her voice trembled, but the formality of the temple held it together.

"Holy Son of the First Elf. We knew you not. We raised our voices against you. We raised our staffs. We named you blasphemer where we should have prostrated ourselves before your mere shadow. Forgive us, holy one. We beseech the Mother through you, forgive your wretched servants their grievous misjudgment."

Another elder pressed her brow harder to the marble.

"Punish us as you see fit. We will accept the rod, the blade, the silence of exile, whatever decree falls from your lips. Only do not let the First Elf hear that her servants spat upon her son's name."

Isveth's voice came last.

It was steadier than the others, though only just slightly.

"As Head Maiden of this sanctuary, the disrespect was foremost mine. Punish me first, Holy Son. Let the rest go unscathed if your mercy permits it. The blade I drew on you was raised by my hand, and no other."

Quinlan looked at them for a long moment then he sighed.

"Enough. Stand up. I gain nothing from your deaths."

The wail that broke from the women might have shaken loose dust from the vaulted ceiling.

"His mercy! His mercy is boundless!"

"The First Elf's grace flows through his every breath!"

"We are wretched! Unworthy! And yet he bestows upon us the gift of our continued lives!"

"Praise the Holy Son! Praise his measureless heart!"

The staff-bearer pressed her brow harder to the marble until her wrinkled forehead reddened against the stone, and her voice climbed in fervor with each fresh syllable. The other elders matched her, then exceeded her, and within seconds the chamber rang with overlapping fanaticism that nobody was attempting to moderate.

Quinlan exhaled tiredly a second time. Religious fanatics seemed hard to deal with, no matter the race or religion…

He turned back to the throne.

"What do you think, gramps?"

The Archduke regarded him in silence.

When he spoke, the voice that had filled this chamber for epochs came thinner than before, gentled by the lifting of a burden he had carried since his Mirethiel had drawn her last breath.

"My duty is at last complete."

The shriveled body sagged.

"I am free…"

It was a small movement, no more than a settling of the shoulders into the throne's back, yet upon a creature who had not stirred in centuries it carried the weight of a mountain finally laid down. The hands on the armrests went slack. The high collar of his robes sank by a fraction. The terrible compressed presence that had pressed against the chamber's vaulted ceiling eased into a quieter shape, vast still, but no longer holding tight.

Quinlan held the ancient gaze.

There were no words for this exchange and neither man reached for any. A widower who had outlasted his wife by epochs, and a man who would burn continents for the women he held. The respect between them passed in silence.

"Primordial." The Archduke's voice settled back into its dry cadence. "I desire to see the face of the man who lifted this burden from my shoulders."

[Synchra] receded.

The armor flowed back across him in a slow wash of red veins, the visor parting and the gorget peeling away until his head emerged uncovered into the chamber's silver light. Black hair and platinum eyes.

The Archduke studied him.

The red gaze traveled across the angles of Quinlan's face with patient curiosity, lingered at the eyes, and held.

"There is great fury beneath this gaze of yours," the vampire said at last. "Hidden, yet vast enough that I perceive it across the distance between us. You're a man embarked upon a mission, are you not?"

"My allies betrayed me." Quinlan's voice came flat. "They hurt and either killed or captured a woman I intend to cherish for the rest of time."

The Archduke's eyes hardened.

"If she yet draws breath, you must reclaim her. And if she does not..."

He bared his fangs, slow and terrible.

"...the world will burn," Quinlan finished for him.

The two men held the moment.

…

"As recompense for the burden lifted from my shoulders," the Archduke spoke at last, "and as small aid toward your quest, I shall grant you a single boon."