Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1630 Fertility Checked

The road west of Sylvaenor had been a farm lane when Quinlan first set foot on it.

It was an army now.

The host ran a half-mile deep down the chalk-white stretch between the city and the coastal hills, and at the head of it, alone, twenty paces clear of the vanguard, walked the Holy Son. [Synchra] held her full combat form around him. Black plate swallowed the noon sun. [Soul Reaper] hovered in the air behind him, and his pace was unhurried.

Following him, tens of thousands of elves were marching.

Youthful shrine maidens were carrying numerous quivers filled with arrows. Next to them came matriarchs in ceremonial white with a staff in one hand and a sword that had been their mother's in the other. Behind the matriarchs walked elders with a great deal of centuries in their backs, inside a ring of younger women who had insisted on nothing less.

Every woman in the column had the same eyes.

No performance. No speech-making. The Council had voted their Queen a traitor for the crime of friendliness to the First Elf's only living son, and they had finished processing that.

The road bent around a low rise.

On its crest, a small cluster of his women waited for him.

Ayame held the front. Arms crossed over her pauldrons, katana at her hip, gaze narrow. She had started shaking her head when the column was still a speck in the middle distance, and she had not stopped.

Her head-shake was patient and performative. Across the open ground, it was the second-in-command of the Primordial Villain asking her man, without opening her mouth, what exactly he thought he was bringing home.

'Quin,' the shake said, 'you left for only a couple of hours. What the hell?'

At her shoulder, Seraphiel was having a different reaction entirely.

Her lips had parted when the column crested and had not closed since. Her blue eyes were huge, her cheeks had gone pink, and she was leaning a fraction forward without knowing she was doing it. Her thighs had pressed together at some point during the column's approach. The curve of her chest had lifted against the edge of her attire, and it was not settling back down.

"Quin..."

It left her on an exhaled murmur before the vanguard had reached the base of the rise.

No one around her looked surprised. Her man was walking at the head of an adoring elven army in his full armor. She was not going to be subtle about how that made her feel.

The others had fanned out along the crest of the rise in an unspoken welcoming line.

...

The vanguard reached the base of the rise.

Isveth stepped out from the front rank.

The Head Maiden's ceremonial armor robes were chalk-dust at the hem. She planted her sword, crossed the last stretch of grass alone, and stopped at a respectful distance from the hilltop.

Then she dropped to her knees and bowed low enough that her forehead touched the ground.

"We greet the wives of the Holy Son."

Behind her, the half-mile of elves bowed in perfect sync.

The sound of it traveled up the rise like one held breath exhaled by a nation. Cloaks rustled. Armor settled. Heads lowered to the dirt in a single long wave. Shrine maidens, matriarchs, elders, soldiers, and women whose grandmothers had prayed at the same altar for thousands of years. Every one of them on a knee for the women on the hill.

Ayame's arms stayed crossed.

Her gaze, however, had not stayed on Quinlan.

She had started tracking the first rank. Then the second. Then the third. What had caught her attention was not the bowing. The bowing was uniform, solemn, and sincere.

It was where the maidens' eyes were going while their foreheads were on the ground.

Specifically, every third woman in the formation was sneaking a glance at her.

More specifically, at her belly.

Ayame's eyes narrowed further.

The scrutiny clarified itself in a single beat. These women, from the youngest shrine maiden to the oldest matriarch, were inspecting the midsection of the Holy Son's second-in-command for a bulge that would indicate the First Elf's bloodline was already being continued.

They wanted little holy children.

And they wanted them yesterday.

Ayame, as well as the rest of them, were being assessed like broodmares at a stud market.

A cluster of elders in the second tier had stopped being subtle about it.

One of them, a matron with more wrinkles in her face than a folded map, was looking at Ayame's flat stomach with an expression that went past disappointed into personally offended.

'How,' the expression said, 'have you been sharing a bed with the only living son of the First Elf and produced NOTHING? And you dare call yourself a woman?'

Another elder beside her had evidently moved past offended into full judgment. Well, into even more judgment. Her mouth had pinched. Her gaze raked Ayame from womb to hip to thigh and back up with grim efficiency.

She was pricing livestock.

The matron on that elder's other side went a step further. Her stare could've been translated and carved into stone:

'Get him home, girl. Strip. Do your duty to the bloodline. How DARE you deprive the elven nation of the Holy Son's children when he has chosen YOU?'

Ayame, on the hill, received all of this through the air.

Her crossed arms tightened.

Her head gave the column one more slow, disbelieving shake.

The rest of his women looked at him with eyes of amazement.

Vex had gone rosy all the way up to the tips of her ears.

Blossom's tail had entered full propeller mode somewhere in the last ten seconds. The blonde blur at her lower back was kicking up actual dust. Her ears had perked straight, both hands were clasped at her chest, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet with pure undiluted 'Master! Master! Master!' energy.

Kaelira was blinking. A lot. Once every second or so, as if the image in front of her wasn't finishing processing and she had to reset.

...

Seraphiel drew a breath and stepped forward to the edge of the rise.

The flush at her cheeks did not go anywhere. The look in her eyes, however, shifted. Something behind it had been building for a century, and it had finally been handed an audience worth delivering it to.

She lifted her chin.

"Rise, Descendants of Luminara."

Her voice carried further than her body had any business making it carry. The hand that had been at her chest went still. Her other hand came up, palm open, over the bowed formation of her own people.

The formation did not rise.

A quiet ripple of hesitation ran through the kneeling ranks. Heads did not lift. They had bowed to the wives of the Holy Son as a body, and a single wife's call was not yet the whole ceremony.

Seraphiel's voice did not waver for it.

"I am Seraphiel Vaelorith, heir of the Vaelorith clan."

The name landed.

On the front rank, Isveth's forehead stayed on the dirt, but her shoulders reset by a fraction. Further back, three matriarchs exchanged a fast glance, and it was the wrong kind of glance.

"House Vaelorith has had the honor of aiding the Holy Son for months."

The back of the formation twitched.

"Despite the adversity the women of our clan have endured at the hands of Elvardian leadership, we have labored at his side without rest. We fought with him. We healed his wounds. We fed him when he was hungry."

Seraphiel's blue gaze moved out over the kneeling column.