Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1671 Unexpected Arrivals

<Master.>

Scar's voice arrived across the link without preamble.

<Please open a gate to my position.>

She left it at that. Quinlan could feel her through the bond, steady and sure, and the faint thread of anticipation beneath her composure was the only tell that the request carried more than it said.

He raised his right hand, and [Warp Gate] tore the air open.

Scar came through first. Mask drawn, cloak settled, posture straight, and the ice-blue eyes that found him the moment she cleared the gate were bright with quiet pride.

<I brought guests.>

The Lilies stepped through behind her.

Lilith Ravenshade at the front by a half step, white hair pulled back, blade sheathed and back rigid. Bronnya at her left shoulder, arms folded over her breastplate, every line of her massive frame locked tight.

Jallen with her spear low and her grip tight on the shaft, gaze already cataloguing the terrain. And Void, upright on her own two legs, which was remarkable enough to qualify as a declaration.

Four women who had spent the better part of a year trying to kill him, standing on his side of the gate, voluntarily...

The grumble that left Lilith the moment the gate closed behind them was low and bitter.

"So he really could just open a gate to our location whenever he pleased..."

"Of course," Scar nodded. "Master is amazing."

A growl left Lilith through her teeth.

Scar's eyes danced behind the mask, visibly entertained by the situation.

Then Void.

The lazy mage, instead of being tense and ready to jump into action at a moment's notice like her three allies, lifted both hands toward Quinlan and the gang. Palms out, two fingers up on each.

She was making V signs.

"Stop it!" Jallen's hand shot out and caught her wrist. She pulled it down in a single sharp tug, and the look she aimed at Void could have stripped paint.

Void let her hand drop but not without complaint. "Using brute force on a weak mage... Tyrant. Barbarian."

Jallen looked one second away from slapping some sense into her good old friend.

"Lilith?!"

Morgana's voice cracked across the camp like a whip. The Queen of Vraven stood apart from the others, the permanent hatred she wore for everything and everyone around her blown off her face and replaced by naked horror. Her eyes were locked on her younger sister with an intensity that had nothing to do with reunion and everything to do with watching her walk into a trap.

"What are you doing here?! Leave! Go back, now!"

Several of Quinlan's women watched the Queen of Vraven come apart with open, undisguised relish. Grins spread across faces that had spent months on the receiving end of Morgana's manhunt, and not one of them lifted a finger to help.

Lilith's gaze found her sister properly for the first time, and every line of the scene hit her at once. The wretched expression. The isolation. The hatred radiating off Morgana's skin. Her elder sister, among the Primordial Villain's people like a piece removed from the board.

Her restraint broke as if it never existed.

"What have you done to her?" The words left Lilith aimed at Quinlan with animosity, sisterly instincts flaring. "I swear on the Goddess, if you-"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ayame cut in, her tone so polite it looped all the way back around to vicious. The playful energy the samurai wore whenever Quinlan was within arm's reach was gone entirely. "I must be confused because if not, the hypocrisy is out of this world. Is the greedy bitch who willingly allied herself and every friend who trusted her with Kaede Fujimori really standing here throwing a tantrum right now?"

She tilted her head, and the smile she wore was all teeth.

"Kaede. My younger sister. The one who poisoned me and sold me into slavery." Her blue eyes pinned Lilith in place. "You knew things weren't right with that woman, but you ignored everything for personal gain. And now you're here, threatening my partner like a rabid animal, because your elder sister was turned into a slave?"

Lilith's mouth closed. The threat she'd been building toward Quinlan died in her throat, because Ayame was right, and four centuries of practiced composure couldn't manufacture a rebuttal for a truth she'd swallowed the day she signed Kaede's contract.

She looked back at Morgana, and the fury was gone from her voice when she spoke again, deflated.

Lilith had been through far, far too many emotions recently. The hardy adventurer wasn't used to so many issues arising that she couldn't cut through.

"Have they been treating you well?"

The question came hard from her throat, stripped of the authority that usually carried her every word. Instead, she sounded small for who she was.

"No-"

"Speak the truth and only the truth, lunatic."

Feng interjected with her arms crossed. The smirk on the girl's face could have gotten her beheaded in any court on the continent, and she was savoring it, her stare resting on the Queen of Vraven with open, shameless delight.

Two oriental ladies interrupted the Ravenshade sisters in quick succession, both with far too much sass.

Morgana's mouth shut for a moment, then it opened, slower.

"...Aside from deploying me as a one woman army to help their sieges and the many condescending sneers I've received from my captors," she said, each word sounding like it was being extracted against her will, "I have not been particularly mistreated."

Lilith's gaze stayed on her sister for a long moment after the words landed, tracking the isolation, the bitterness, the way Morgana stood apart from the others like a woman marooned on an island in the middle of a crowded room. The elder Ravenshade had always been difficult, always been proud, always been a headache wrapped in madness and privilege, but she was still her sister, and seeing her reduced to a war asset among people who openly enjoyed her misery put a taste in Lilith's mouth that no amount of diplomatic restraint could wash out.

But then...

"Lilith."

Jallen's grip found her shoulder. The spearwoman's fingers closed with the kind of firm, unhurried pressure that came from pulling her commander back from a hundred edges before this one, and her voice carried the same steady weight.

"Not now."

Lilith's stare stayed on Morgana, and the refusal was visible in the white knuckles forming around the hilt.

"Your sister's safe and sound, considering," Jallen continued, her grip unmoving. "The rest comes later."

Three seconds passed in which Lilith Ravenshade fought a war against the part of herself that wanted to draw steel, and the veteran won over the sister by a margin so thin it left marks.

She nodded once, let go of the hilt, and turned toward Quinlan.

The warmth was gone. Whatever Lilith had been carrying beneath the anger for her sister, she had packed it away, and what faced the Primordial Villain now was the leader of the Scarlet Lilies in full: control rebuilt in a single breath, ice-blue eyes that gave away nothing, and a voice pitched for diplomacy the way a blade is pitched for cutting.

"Let me be clear, Primordial Villain. I do not trust you. I have watched you operate for months, and nothing I have seen has convinced me that-"

"Oh, come on. I can't take this farce anymore..."

Void sighed.

Then her eyes opened.

The Void Mage's eyes were closed more often than they were open, a fixture of the disinterest she wore like a second skin.

When they opened, the effect was immediate.

Deep violet and too sharp for the face they sat in.

"Stupid! Don't!" Bronnya's hand shot out toward Void's shoulder, because four centuries of fighting beside the mage had taught her exactly what those eyes opening meant.

Too late.

"[Void Step]," left her delicate lips, and the air where the lazy mage had been standing split and sealed in the same heartbeat, a ripple of spatial distortion so fast it registered as a flinch in the atmosphere. Bronnya's gauntleted fingers closed around nothing.

The mage was already standing in front of Quinlan, close enough to be rude, her pointy witch hat angled sideways on her head from the displacement, her dark robes still settling around her frame. She was shorter than him by a margin that forced her chin upward, and the angle left her looking up at the armored man the way a cat looks up at a closed door it has decided to open.

Those violet eyes found his and held.

The courtyard went still. A slow smirk spread across Void's face.

"Void, what are you..." Lilith started.