Read Novel Full Chapter 1839: Good Girl
Chapter 1839: Good Girl
Beside him, Isveth’s gaze rested on her lord with open gratitude, because the Head Maiden knew how dejected Myrasyn was the whole day, riddled with the guilt of her past actions.
Her friend, meanwhile, had reached her limit.
"I have worked for four thousand years," Myrasyn said, volume climbing with every word, ears climbing with it, "and you stand there demanding I work more? What are you, a slaver?!"
"Yes." No pause at all. "Literally. I’m the Primordial Subjugator. Being a slaver is a major part of who I am."
Myrasyn stomped, actually stomped, one royal slipper cracking against the ancient living wood, and glared at him with her regalia still on. "You... I didn’t..."
Quinlan turned and resumed walking, not waiting for her to hiss out a rebuttal.
Isveth flowed after him without a heartbeat of hesitation.
Sera hooked Kaelira’s arm and followed, both elves grinning at nothing in particular, and the maids peeled off the walls to trail the procession at a reverent distance, leaving the Queen of the Elves standing alone in the middle of her own hall.
Myrasyn watched that tall, broad back recede, taking her entire people’s future with it like the load weighed nothing.
Then, without turning around, Quinlan patted his thigh twice and whistled, short and bright. The universal signal for: come here, girl.
Somewhere along the wall, a maid walked into a pillar.
"I am NOT your dog!" The second stomp echoed off the distant ceiling.
Then the last Queen of the Elves picked up her hem and dashed after him with an enormous smile, crown and all, and wrapped her arms around him from behind, cheek pressed flat between his shoulder blades. The maids’ eyes went wide down the entire length of the hall, and nobody remembered how to keep walking.
"Cruel bastard," she said into his back. "Hmph. Demeaning bastard. Hmph. Sadistic bastard. Hmph."
He kept walking. She kept holding and scoffing. For a while the procession moved like that, a nation’s sovereign wearing its former queen like a cloak.
A cloak that cursed him out while adorably pouting the entire time.
The hmphs slowed, then stopped altogether. Her arms changed the way they held him. She walked a good stretch of corridor without saying anything.
"I want to say something." Her voice had gone quiet and serious. "I stood at your side while you faced the beastkin lords, named Luminara your cherished mother, and declared in the same breath: I am the Primordial Villain, I am called as such because that is who I am."
Her arms tightened around him. "Your words have been sitting wrong in me ever since and I wish to correct them. You are not a villain, Quinlan. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and to every soul in Iskaris."
Quinlan was silent for three full steps.
"Tell that to the millions I’ve killed." He didn’t slow down, and he didn’t soften it. "And the billions I’m going to kill."
His women had told him he was good before. It had never once changed the number, and it did not change it now.
For a dozen steps, the only sound was the city still singing his name, far away behind the doors.
Then Myrasyn’s gaze found Seraphiel and Kaelira walking ahead, arm in arm, and the sorrow that crossed her face was old and personal.
Two of her own. One conscripted and sold off to a slave block in dancer’s silk, one sentenced to die for the crime of crafting, and every page of it signed under her seal while her own hands stayed clean.
"I never massacred anyone," she said at last. "I ruled lawfully. Gently. Righteously. And my righteousness did that."
A breath.
"Even the mighty must make sacrifices. A ruler only gets to choose what the sacrifice buys. Mine bought my council more years of rot and my people more years of slow decline."
Her cheek pressed harder between his shoulders. "Yours bought tonight. If you won’t let me be dejected about my past, then I refuse to let you feel guilty about yours."
Quinlan said nothing. But hands came up and closed over the small ones clasped at his chest, and stayed there for a long stretch of corridor, and that was answer enough.
"...By the way." Myrasyn’s voice returned to full volume against his back. "I still do not want to work."
"Tough luck. Your Holy Son demands it."
"Hmph! Slaver Son! I want a vacation!"
"Sure."
The arms around him loosened. She leaned out sideways to see his face, suspicion blooming. "...Wait. Really?"
"Yes. I’ll enslave you and a few of your aides. Then you can take your vacation anywhere on the continent and keep working the entire time through [Master’s Link]."
Myrasyn went completely still. Her arms slipped loose, and she let him walk out from under them.
"Subjugation," she repeated. "Me?" Her eyes were wide, and there was nothing in them resembling horror. His subject. His actual, marked, bound-by-power subject, the way his women were his. No elf alive could be granted a higher station than that.
Before she could assemble a response, two figures detached from the trailing column at speed.
"Holy Son." An aide with a treasury sash bowed to him mid-stride, deep and urgent. "I have served the crown’s ledgers for five thousand years. My loyalty is absolute. Please choose me."
"I take dictation at any hour," a second aide announced over her, elbowing into the bow. "ANY hour."
"H-Holy Son." Isveth materialized at his other side, palms pressed flat together, dignity and hope having a visible fistfight across her face. "In a holy dominion, the head of the faith carries considerable burdens. The rites, the canonizations, my own court to establish. I would require... that is, it would only be proper if I were also..."
"Sure, Isveth. I’ll enslave you as well." He never broke stride as a lazy tilt of his head took in the two aides. "As for you two, I’ll let Myra decide."
A pane of quiet script unfolded in front of the Head Maiden mid-stride.
[The Primordial Subjugator, Quinlan Elysiar, offers you a place among his subjugated people.]
[Do you accept?]
Isveth’s finger went through the accept button before the second line even finished forming, and the smile that broke across her face belonged to a girl a fraction of her age. "Thank you!"
At the same time, the two aides began looking at Myrasyn with pleading eyes.
He kept walking, and the corridor ahead of him kept wanting.
The maids lining the walls began to quiver in unison as he came level with them, hands pressed to skirts, not one of them daring to voice what the entire line was vibrating with.
"Want to be my slaves too?"
"As a maid, efficient communication..." the old maid began, but cut herself off. An uncharacteristic, sheepish nod replaced her lengthy speech alongside healthy pink cheeks. "Yes, please..."
"All of you?" Quinlan grinned.
"It’d be our greatest honor!!" the maids shouted in unison.
"Granted."
Down the length of the corridor, dozens of panes unfolded at once, the same quiet script blooming in front of every maid in the line.
The joyous shiver that followed traveled wall to wall, accept buttons lighting up one after another.
At the junction, a guard blinked at him through her visor, armored fists tight on her spear.
"H-Holy Son..." She bit her tongue, knowing she was well out of her station. She could lose her job, and worse, make a joke out of herself before him.
"Property of the Primordial Villain?" Quinlan asked.
"Property of the Primordial Villain!!" She shed all pretense, screaming her desire.
A pane unfolded in front of her visor, and a gauntleted finger rose and pressed accept with the solemnity of an oath.
And on the Primordial Villain walked through his brand-new palace, never once slowing, confiscating freedoms left and right and leaving a trail of rapture in his wake.
At the edge of his vision, subjugation confirmations had begun stacking like receipts.
Myrasyn caught back up to his side mid-glow with her own pane of script trailing her like a faithful hound, opened her mouth to accept the highest honor of her long life, and froze mid-step instead.
"...Wait." Her eyes narrowed, the arithmetic landing at last. "Did you just say I would be working the entire time I am on vacation?!"
"Rest is for the dead."
"Tell that to your Elite Souls..." Seraphiel snickered.
"Technically, they’re not dead. They were only truly dead until Quin claimed them," Kaelira spoke up, defending her man from the cheeky gal.
"Exactly." Quinlan nodded. "You got it."
"..." Sera sent a scrutinizing look to her friend, who had rescued their lover instantly.
’Did getting plowed for hours on end,’ Sera wondered, ’confuse the girl about where her loyalties lie?’
Kaelira avoided her gaze.
While the two friends conducted their wordless discussion, Myrasyn aimed Seraphiel’s exact look at Quinlan himself.
’...Why,’ the last Queen of the Elves wailed into the privacy of her own skull, ’is this cruel bastard so hot even while he sentences me to work myself to the bone for him?!’
Ahead of her, serene as deep water, Isveth did not break stride.
"We are going to be gloriously busy, my friend."
Myrasyn’s groan chased the procession all the way down the hall.
Her finger, mid-groan, had already pressed accept.
...
With his business in Luminareth done for the time being, or rather, all his duties having been passed down to his two joint rulers of the elven people, Isveth and Myrasyn, Quinlan quickly made a strategic retreat before any work found his lap.
He stepped out of his [Warp Gate] and into a war.