Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1648 Distance

Nyxara tilted her head a fraction, and the corner of her mouth lifted into amusement that did not reach the rest of her. "I prefer this atmosphere. So when I am alone in here, I make some changes sometimes."

Her gaze drifted across the line and settled on Lyra. She read the Juggernaut's careful stance, the tightness at her mouth, the way the pink tanker had not eased a degree since arrival.

She grinned.

"I would never harm him. This is purely cosmetic."

She raised one hand and snapped two fingers, the click precise.

The realm answered.

The wine-decanter sky brightened in a single breath into the clean serene dark Quinlan kept it at, the crushed-petal undertone thinning into the simple sap-and-grass scent of his actual soul, the black soil paling toward warm loam, the crimson roses drawing their petals back into themselves and returning white.

A second snap arrived an instant later, and her preferred version returned in one smooth breath.

A third snap.

A long-stemmed glass of dark crystal bloomed into her free hand, holding a deep red that matched the moon at the horizon. She rested it against the knuckles where her cheek had been a moment earlier.

"I like this place. Much better than the primordial dimension..."

She said it softly, more to the realm than to her audience. Then her stare lifted back to the women and held them, the wine still and patient at her side, her stillness unmoved.

Despite the words and the display of reassurance, Lyra had not eased her shoulders.

Her gauntleted hand drifted, slow and unobtrusive, to the hilt at her hip and settled there.

Her gaze swept the realm a second time, slower, taking in the canopy and the soil and the empty branches above.

"...Where is Mimi?"

She asked it carefully, formally, the words barely carrying.

A delighted giggle answered her from somewhere behind Nyxara.

"BOO!!"

A blue shape vaulted the high carved back of the seat in one bouncing scramble, landed firm-footed on the succubus's shoulder, and threw both little hands up at the line of women, every nail freshly painted a deep murderous crimson.

"Fear me!" she shouted, high pitched, with the 'scary' tone she had clearly been workshopping for some time now.

She even bared her tiny pearly teeth.

The dryad had been at Nyxara's shoulder, and the corrupting influence of the demon had never been clearer.

Nyxara's free hand drifted up off the armrest and settled into the back of the blue head on her shoulder. Her fingers, demonic-marked and glowing faint pink, ran a slow scratch along the canopy of vine-strands at the base of Mimi's neck.

The dryad's bared teeth lasted exactly one and a half heartbeats before her eyes squeezed shut and an ecstatic giggle escaped her, the deep murderous crimson nails forgotten in midair. The 'fierce' posture went out of her in a single breath.

"You are getting fiercer every day," Nyxara murmured. "If any bad person dares invade Quinlan's realm, I am sure they will be scared away any day now."

Mimi's chin lifted, eyes still half-lidded in the bliss of being scratched.

"They better! Scary Uncle has Mimi's protection!" she announced solemnly to the line, then pressed her cheek harder against Nyxara's knuckles.

Nyxara smiled, soft.

"We will keep practicing," she said, her thumb stroking once behind a pointed ear. "But for now, Auntie has to talk to the ladies."

Mimi nodded with solemn purpose. Her feet curled under her on the curve of Nyxara's shoulder. She folded both little hands in her lap, sat upright, and turned her eyes onto the line of women, her focus refusing to miss a single word her auntie was about to say.

Then Nyxara's pink eyes lifted off the dryad princess and back across the line.

The pressure that had filled the soul realm a minute earlier was nothing compared to what came down on the line now. The patient wave receded, replaced by a different weight: heavier, edged, and unmistakably from a predator that could end their lives on a whim. Every woman in the line felt her own breath stop in her chest as the regard of the Primordial Demon of Lust narrowed onto her like a blade laid against her throat.

"The rite is rejecting you," Nyxara said, and her voice carried in a register that cracked the breath inside their ribs, "because, for various reasons, none of you are suitable."

Lyra's voice cracked off the formal register she had been holding for two minutes straight.

"...What...?"

A breath, pushed out of her without permission.

Nyxara did not answer. The Primordial Demon of Lust let her regard drift along the line again, slower, taking each woman in one at a time. Sylvaris. Lyra. Ria, hood half-up, weight low. Shallan, then Liora. Then her gaze slid the last yard along the line, past Raika, and stopped on Orianna.

The Flower Queen stood toward the back of the line, composed and observing, dry distance held in reserve.

Nyxara suddenly bared her teeth.

"How dare you even assume you have the right to accept the offer? That you belong to his family on the same level as the women who have walked through every fire with him? Who know his deepest secrets and share everything with him?"

Orianna's composed eyes blew wide.

"You're a distant ally, brought together by circumstance. A tagalong who came packaged with the women he actually cares about."

Feeling the extreme hostile intent and contempt oozing from the primordial, the Flower Queen took one careful step backward on the black soil.

Nyxara lifted her attention off the Flower Queen and resumed the slow drift along the line.

They stopped on Liora and Shallan.

"Subordinates," she said, the predator's register still riding the soil between them, "who have never once tried to step closer to him."

The two veterans did not move. Neither denied the read.

Her gaze slid sideways and landed on Ria.

"A fangirl. Whom my ruin is genuinely grateful to for helping his allies on their little adventure." Nyxara tilted her head a fraction. "And, I'd wager to assume that it strokes his ego just right, having a cute and sexy blonde like you go full fangirl mode as soon as you hear his name."

She shrugged a single shoulder, with absolute neutrality.

The blonde assassin's cheeks went the color of a lamplit ribbon.

Nyxara's eyes moved to Sylvaris.

"A mother-in-law I happen to know my ruin cherishes fully." A pause. "But even you have kept your distance, haven't you?"