Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1900: Rapid Development

The study door had barely stopped shuddering from Morgana’s exit when Jasmine slid the next decree in front of Quinlan, folded open to the right line.

"Sign here, my love."

Quinlan signed.

"We’re through the worst of it. Hang in there~" she purred, kissing his cheek lovingly.

The pile under her arm had stopped looking infinite somewhere around the stable fees; what remained was the stubborn tail of a kingdom changing hands.

Across the room, Alexios’s stamp kept its even rhythm over the crown’s half. Ayame had never left her window seat, chin back on her knee.

Halfway down the next page, a chime started up from inside his pocket ring. He fished out a fist-sized communication crystal, glanced at it, and answered without breaking his signature.

"Myra. Miss me already?"

"Miss you?!" The crystal crackled with the force of it. "Do you know what reached my desk tonight, you impossible man? Do you know what I have been listening to for the past hour?"

"Enlighten me."

"My royal guard!" A stomp came through the crystal, distant and unmistakable. "Elowen! The one I ordered to guard your family with her life! I gave her to you whole, Slaver Son. Armored. Sober. And tonight she calls me on a borrowed artifact, from a drinking hall, under the dwarven mountain, where you left her!"

Ayame sat up on the window seat. "The escort," she whispered, delighted. "The one who always hissed so much."

"I thought it’d serve her well to spend some time with the dwarves," Quinlan said into the crystal.

"She has been there for days!"

"Yes. And?"

A rustle came through the link, and then a second sound arrived, tinny and distant: Myrasyn holding her crystal against another one. Live from under a mountain, the royal study of Vraven received several seconds of an elven royal guard leading what sounded like an entire drinking hall through the chorus of a dwarven song.

"That," Myrasyn said, returning, "is what guards your family’s honor tonight. But she did not call me to sing drunkenly all night, Quinlan."

Quinlan listened.

"The mountain’s council has declared my people treacherous and every treaty between our races void. And you, they named enemy of the mountain. To be resisted and eliminated."

"Eliminated," Quinlan chuckled darkly, savoring it. "That’s adorable."

"An hour after they posted it, the mountain rose. Smiths, commoners, soldiers, the whole under-tier. The First Hammer lit every forge in the royal smithy and declared open rebellion against her own lords."

The study had gone quiet, Jasmine’s pen had stopped mid-line, and Ayame’s chin had come off her knee entirely.

Quinlan leaned back in his stolen chair, and the grin that answered it was pure, warm villainy.

"Brokk made her choice quicker than I expected," he said fondly.

"What do you intend to do, Quinlan?" Myrasyn’s voice pressed. "They’re gearing for war."

"If it’s war they want..." He set the pen down and stood. "Then war they get."

"Haha..." Myrasyn giggled under her breath. "I knew you’d say this. Do you need help? I can organize-"

"I’ll not use the first deployment of my adorable elves on such a small matter," Quinlan declined with extreme nonchalance. On the other end of the line, the blonde woman’s lips went from ear to ear.

’Here he is... The man I kneeled to.’

"I understand. Good luck."

Quinlan cracked his neck. "I’m afraid not even a Goddess of Luck can help those ignorant sons of bitches."

The crystal vanished back into his ring.

Jasmine was already pulling a ledger from the bottom of her stack, flipping pages with two fingers. "The joint reconstruction drafts are on the table," she murmured. "We need to rein the dwarves in so we can start delivering the terms promised to the Beastman Confederation."

In return for turning back after Elvardia’s defeat, Quinlan and Myrasyn had promised war reparations for their people. But to actually deliver they needed dwarves doing construction work.

"On it," Quinlan grinned, visibly ready to shed dwarf blood.

"So." Jasmine set the ledger aside, gathered the unsigned remainder of his pile, and tapped it square against the desk. "Dwarf lands."

"Dwarf lands," Quinlan agreed.

And then he didn’t move.

Jasmine looked at the most feared man alive standing in the middle of the royal study.

He looked back at her like a misbehaving puppy.

She smiled softly with the tired patience of a mother whose little ruffian had just begged her to be let out to play.

Jasmine sighed, long and deep, and the sigh ruffled the top of the decree pile.

"Fine." She waved the decree toward the door. "Go. I’ll handle the rest of the pile and take care of things here."

He crossed the study in three steps, caught her by the waist, and lifted her clean off the floor.

"Quin...!"

The kiss was big, unhurried, and entirely indifferent to the state documents pinned under her elbow. Her toes left the ground, found nothing, and stopped looking.

When he finally let her breathe, he didn’t set her down. He brought his lips to her ear instead.

"Brace yourself, you beyond amazing creature," he whispered. "I’ll be imprinting that delicate belly of yours very soon."

"!!" Jasmine stopped working. All of her, at once.

Her eyes went wide, then bright gold, then wide and bright gold together, and the flush climbed from her collar to the roots of the working knot in one smooth pour.

The Bloodfather ritual...

"I... you..." The Tyrant of Commerce, negotiator of nations, stammered. "Quin! I don’t have time to spend knocked out! The handover, the tax rolls, Greenvale’s quarter-close...!"

"The girls all got through it quick," he whispered, supportive.

"The girls are strong." It came out small, with a little laugh that didn’t fit her at all. "I’m..."

He kissed her again, mid-word.

Her protest died between his mouth and hers, and into the quiet where it had been, his voice arrived directly against her mind.

"> <No excuses, my love.>

She had deferred the mark once because of schedules and priorities until even she believed the costume.

Every woman in the family had let her keep it. He had let her keep it. The only woman in the house wearing no mark at all was the one who ran the house.

"> <We’ve stalled long enough. Both of us.>

Her breath stopped against him.

Then they closed, and she kissed him back, state documents and all, her fingers curling into his collar with none of the boardroom in them.

When they parted, she stayed in his arms a moment longer, forehead against his jaw, and the words came out in a murmur he felt more than heard.

"...Okay," she breathed. "Just... give me some time to prepare mentally. A little. That’s all I ask."

"Just a little," Quinlan agreed, and set her down gently on her feet.

Jasmine straightened her blouse, retrieved her dignity from around her ankles, and reassembled the governor piece by piece in front of him. The blush stayed. It went magnificently with the gold.

"Out," she declared, snatching up a decree folder and shooing him with it. "Out! Some of us have a kingdom to transfer. And that kiss goes on your account, young man, don’t think I wasn’t counting!"

"Scary."

"Shoo, shoo!" she huffed, more adorable than ever before.

"Do try to leave the mountain standing," Alexios said to Quinlan, not looking up from the desk he had reclaimed. "It’s very valuable."

"I know. I’ll just massacre some dissidents. I consider the dwarven people mine already, so I won’t destroy them."