Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1888: Wagered Daughter

"That his third daughter, Felicity Valorian, would be named heir to the throne of Vraven and crowned its queen."

The hall detonated.

Half the peerage came up shouting. The other half turned as one to stare at the eastern gallery, at the princes, and the words flew over the floor like crossbow bolts.

"The third princess..."

"...passed over both princes? The king had gone senile..."

"...sold the succession, the succession itself, to Ravenshade..."

At the foot of the dais, Princess Felicity Valorian stood absolutely still, and her face had gone white as her armor.

And the deal was exactly what the duke said it was.

Three years ago, a dying king had traded his youngest daughter’s future to the most dangerous house in his realm, buying the strength he needed to rule.

Tharion had chosen her himself: the youngest, the sweetest, the one who would come to her throne knowing nothing, owing everything, reaching for the first steady hand offered.

Her dear uncle’s hand. Both men had sworn to it, and it had sat under three years of Vraven’s history like rot under a floor.

Felicity’s lips moved twice before sound came out of them.

"...What?"

Nobody answered her.

"Father, what is he..." Her voice cracked up an octave, and her gauntlet was gripping the royal seal on her chest like it had grown too heavy to carry. "What is he talking about?"

In the eastern gallery, Prince Elias had not moved at all, and his stillness had stopped being dignity.

"Named heir," the first prince said, to no one, in a voice like a door coming off its hinges. "We were told it was merit!"

Beside him, Caelum had begun, helplessly, horribly, to smile. "Brother. Brother, breathe."

"Do not tell me to breathe, Caelum!"

At the place of honor among the peers, Calienne Valorian, first daughter of the king, wife of Duskmere, had gone bright-eyed over a grin that was wide, mad, and entirely her father’s.

"Oh, this old fox father of mine..." she whispered, delighted, while her husband looked back and forth between his wife and the throne in complete, honest bewilderment. "You didn’t."

Tharion felt the hall in his hand, and he turned back to the throne to close it.

"So judge, peers of Vraven!" Tharion spread his ringed hands wide, the picture of a wronged pillar of the realm. "Your king charges my house with conspiracy, on the word of a pit! Very well!

"Then let the crown stand in the light beside me. Let the realm see every deal made in the dark. And let my king remember..."

He turned back to Alexios, lowered his voice, and made sure every soul in the hall could hear him lower it.

"...that a man who breaks an oath sworn on his own blood is only a liar with an army. Charge my house, Alexios, and you must first tear up your own sworn word... and every banner in this hall will watch you do it."

He straightened, magnificent, finished.

"That is my defense."

And on the high throne of Vraven, for the first time since the charge was read, the old king moved.

He chuckled.

It was a low, dry sound, a few grains of gravel turning over, and it did to the great hall what no herald’s staff could have done.

"This defense... is far too outdated."

"What?" Tharion gasped, confidence disappearing from his face.

"Blackmailing me with this information would’ve worked a few months ago, but now..."

Alexios shrugged.

Every voice died. Every eye went up.

Alexios Valorian sat on the high throne of Vraven, under the weight of his own crown, and chuckled at the ruin of his reign being read aloud. The peerage did not know what to do with that at all.

"Your Majesty..." somebody began, in the middle rows.

"It’s the truth."

The king said it plainly, at speaking volume, and it reached the last banner anyway.

"Every word of it. The winter, the oath, the blood. The price." He looked out over his hall, unbent.

"Three years ago I rode north to Ravenshade as a beggar with a crown on, and I sold my youngest daughter’s future to the strongest house in my realm. Tharion asked for Felicity by name. I knew exactly why but I swore anyway."

At the dais’s right, a white gauntlet closed around the royal seal until the metal edges bit.

The hall’s murmur rose, broke, and died, because the king was still speaking.

"So there will be no talk of forgeries and no talk of madness. The duke’s memory is excellent." His eyes came down and settled on Tharion like frost settling on a field. "It is his understanding that has failed."

"My understanding," the duke repeated.

"Mm." Alexios rose from the high throne.

He came down the dais steps one at a time, an old man in heavy regalia descending toward his accuser-turned-accused, the sword of state left lying across the throne’s arms behind him. The hall held its breath around him step by step.

"Three years ago, you believed you were buying a dying man’s kingdom," the king said. "A few months of support, you thought. A year of patience at the outside. Then a grave, a young child on the throne, and your guiding hand on the child."

He reached the floor.

"But I was never going to die on the schedule you bought, for I was already taking the Fujimori life-extending concoction when I swore that oath."

His voice stayed level, conversational, and merciless.

"You priced my death in months, but I intended decades. However long it took to finish the work I started when I was crowned."

Felicity had begun to stare at her father, and the recognition drained out of her face.

The hall detonated for the second time that day, and this time the duke’s voice was in the middle of it, stripped of all its music.

"YOU!" Tharion’s composure cracked down the center like river ice. "You swore on blood with your thumb on the scale... you stood in my hall dying, your healers wrote to my healers, and the whole time, some eastern... some clan potion..."

"Yes," said Alexios, head tilting in extreme cruelty. "What about it?"

The look took the duke’s voice away entirely.

In the western gallery, Ayame’s head had turned very slowly, all the way across the hall, to the two women standing at the back in Silverwind’s colors.

"...Heh," she breathed, one syllable ahead of her composure. "Gramps was truly playing a lot of angles all at once."

Then she grinned, pinching Quinlan’s skin. "Your arrival really did mess up his centuries-old masterplan in the making."

Quinlan didn’t so much as blink. He’d had the whole of it from the old man’s own mouth already, in a sealed room with Iris sprawled over a cask.

"Well," he chuckled under his breath, eyes amusedly on an old man who had just taken the ugliest deed of his reign and swung it like a mace in open court. "I’ll consider apologizing when I feel like it."

"..." All his women watched him with dry gazes, knowing such a time would never come.

Meanwhile, Kaede had gone white to the lips. Beside her, Elder Chizuru’s brush hung motionless in her hand.

Alexios turned from the duke and walked back toward the dais, and his voice rolled over the hall as he went.

"Your ’defense’ is dismissed."

Somewhere in the galleries, a noble laughed, one sharp bark of pure disbelief, and strangled it immediately.

"But... That leaves the price of my oath," the king said.

He stopped at the foot of the dais, turned, and looked at his youngest daughter.

"Felicity. Come here."

The princess flinched like the name was a thrown stone.