Read Novel Full Chapter 1897: Council of Hags
Chapter 1897: Council of Hags
"Radiant and educational with all the swear words she introduced to our posh audience," Aurora chuckled.
"Nobody ever tells her we saw the tears, okay?" Serika asked. "Or the brilliant smile for that matter."
"Obviously," said everyone else.
"And the cutest queen of them all." Lucille pressed a hand over her heart. "Fourteen. She shooed the king off his own throne. ’Up, up!’ With both gauntlets!"
"I nearly bit through my own tail trying not to break into howling laughter at that," Kitsara admitted. "It would’ve ruined the moment."
"She offered four dukes their freedom to make the kneeling real, in front of six hundred witnesses, on her first night under the crown." Serika whistled low. "As an ex-ruler, her guts simply floored me. Who would’ve thought that I’d end up having a fourteen-year-old role model?"
"Well, your husband is like eleven months old, so it kind of fits..." Lucille shrugged, full of playfulness.
"..." Serika’s eyes narrowed. "You’re one to talk. Your daughter is what, twenty times older than your husband?"
"D-don’t put it like that!" Lucille yelped suddenly.
"Can we agree, for all our sakes, to never bring up Quin’s biological age again?" Aurora begged.
"Hehe! I don’t mind. It’s not shameful," Kitsara snickered into Lucille’s breasts.
"Same. Hubby is hubby, no matter how old or in what physical form..." Vex muttered with eyes that would’ve alarmed any sane person. Her four friends, however, were fully used to her manic expression.
A second bottle had appeared from somewhere, already half gone.
"Look at us." Kitsara sighed happily, moving the topic along. "Runaways, criminals, exiles, and two grannies, lounging on the roof of the world."
"Excuse me." Vex’s eyes moved with dangerous precision. "Grannies?"
"Elders! Respected, beautiful elders."
"You’re fifty, foxy."
"And in fifty years I’ll join the council of wrinkly hags with grace, unlike some people."
"A hundred doesn’t qualify you to join the council," Serika scoffed. "That’s too young."
"Khm! Damned gatekeeping hag! Khm!" Kitsara coughed into Lucille’s bosom.
Serika elected to wrap her fist around five lush tails.
"H-hey! Don’t you dare-" Kitsara yelped immediately.
Serika didn’t pull. "That’s right. Be a good girl and respect your elders."
"Ugh! Blackmailing hag- I mean nice and beautiful tanned lady!"
"...Good," Serika smirked. Then she turned her head to her dejected friend in the wrinkly hags council. "Cheer up, Vexie. Between us? I don’t think we’ll be the eldest ladies around here for much longer."
Vex opened her mouth for the obvious question.
Nothing came out.
The rooftop had gone conspicuously quiet. Lucille smiled at the horizon and said nothing at all. Aurora studied her tart.
The question answered itself before the Hexwitch finished asking it.
She remembered the glimpse of violet glow above her master’s womb. She remembered the rescue nobody would explain, one heated far past all sense. The same flat voice had filed the whole matter away back then: it did not concern her.
Warmth arrived, sudden and fierce, all of it for her master.
One of Vex’s hands drifted, without asking her permission first, to rest low on her own belly, over the mark that made her his.
Her master had pulled a starving orphan out of a lionkin-ravaged village, handed her a knife and a forest, and built her into the woman who seduced the greatest man to have ever existed, one merciless lesson at a time.
In all the years since, as far as Vex had ever been allowed to see, Black Fang had kept nothing warm for herself.
"Good," she whispered, slowly, fondly. Her thumb moved once over the fabric above the mark. "She deserves it... She deserves all the happiness in the world..."
Nobody asked who. Nobody teased her. Lucille reached over and squeezed Vex’s ankle once, and the rooftop let her be.
The peace lasted right up until Aurora frowned.
"Wait," said the group’s foremost scientific mind, tart halfway to her mouth. "Are you two actually sure you’re the eldest in the harem?"
"...Huh?"
"You keep saying it like a confirmed measurement. Who confirmed it?" Aurora set the tray down, professionally troubled now. "What about Kaelira?"
The name landed on the rooftop and sat there.
"What about Kaelira?" Vex asked, with the first stirrings of a growl.
"She’s an elf. Elves live long and consider the subject rude. We all treat her like the shy little tomboy sister of the group." Aurora looked around the circle. "Has she ever actually told anyone her age? A number? Ever?"
The girls thought about it.
The girls kept thinking about it.
"I’ve been talking down to her for months," Kitsara said, stricken. "She let me."
"She lets everyone," Lucille murmured, awed. "She blushes, says nothing, and lets us all assume."
Vex was already reaching for the family link.
"> <Kaelira.>
The link took its time answering, which was unusual for the most dutiful member of the family.
came the smith’s voice, wary from the first syllable."> <...Yes?> came the smith’s voice, wary from the first syllable.
"> <How old are you?>
Silence.
The pause stretched for entire seconds. "> <I... um.> The pause stretched for entire seconds. <I don’t... know?>
Five women who had all watched Kaelira measure a hair’s width of steel by eye recognized the dodge before it finished crossing the link.
"She’s lying~" Kitsara sang.
Vex growled down the link.
The next pause was the longest one yet. Serika used it to take a satisfied pull off the bottle.
The shy voice climbed half an octave, aiming for casual and missing by a league.
"> <Older by how much?!>
The link went quiet on the smith’s end, with great politeness.
"> <Kaelira. KAELIRA!!!>
Nothing came back. The forge was closed for the night.
Vex stared straight up at the stars.
"She hung up," she announced to the rooftop, flatly. "She hung up on me."
The rooftop broke.
Serika howled. Lucille laughed herself sideways into Aurora, who was wheezing something about sample sizes. Kitsara simply fell over.
"This shameless bitch!" Vex was upright now, gesturing at the uncaring sky. "She let me wail in my inferiority all this time while being the actual oldest harem member?!"
Serika recovered her breathing first, reached over, and thumped Vex on the back.
"Hey. Hey. It doesn’t count."
"It counts!" Vex hissed. "It absolutely does count!"
"She’s an elf. Elf years are a different coin entirely." Serika waved a generous hand. "Even if she’s five hundred, in human years that’s... what, fifty? You’d still be the older woman. By quite a bit, actually."
Vex’s head rotated toward her, slowly, joint by joint. Her eyes were two red pentagrams of murder.
"What did you just say to me?"
"That we’re still the grannies of the gang for all intents and purposes."
"No! I refuse!" Vex flopped back down onto the ledge with a huff they probably heard at the gates.
After a moment, her hand found its way back to the warm spot low on her belly, and stayed. "I hate you all so much... Messing with this old lady’s feelings... At least hubby would never..."
"Hehe!" the girls giggled together.
Below them, the last carriage rolled out through the palace gates. Blossom waved after it from the gatehouse.
It was time to finalize the details of the handover to the budding empire in the making.