The regent's subordinates were confused about why she was taking so long to return, but the more astute among them immediately understood the reason.
She was probably collecting her "reward" for a job well done over the past year.
Her relationship with Ashen was never a secret, so it wasn't strange for people's minds to wander in that direction, and they weren't wrong…
The woman who commanded them with a cold face and iron authority was having her mind destroyed by their lord's bestowed pleasure and her body ruined by his manhood.
She only returned by evening. The faint flush on her face and the relaxed demeanor slipping through her supposedly unbreakable cold facade told even the slowest among them everything they needed to know.
What they didn't know was that if Ashen hadn't already promised a certain con artist that he would visit her, they likely wouldn't have seen their commander again for the rest of the day.
***
After finding out about Alice's bottled-up feelings, Ashen grew anxious about his partner, thinking that she might also have some unresolved grievances.
Thankfully, he was overthinking.
Despite having come to place an importance even above herself on Ashen, and despite knowing that her feelings for him transcended mere puppy love, Lucia did not allow her emotions to cloud her logic the way her "elder sister" had.
Perhaps her feelings weren't as strong. Or perhaps Alice was simply too obsessed with Ashen to retain her rationality where he was concerned. But if Lucia were ever asked, she would say it was a skill that came with the job.
Manipulating people required understanding their feelings first, and that understanding inevitably led to knowing her own. In the end, all she had to do was turn that same craft inward.
Manipulate the jealousy. Turn it into harmless attention-seeking. Manipulate the resentment. Turn it into desperate dependence. And so on, and so on.
So it was no surprise that when Ashen arrived anxious, all he found was a needy, attention-seeking cutie.
She even gaslit him into spending the whole night with her after she offhandedly mentioned him appearing in her dreams.
Whether he knew exactly what was running through her head and chose to play along, or whether he was genuinely clueless, was difficult to say. But one thing was certain: he was content to have his way with her all night long, just as she had wished.
***
The next morning arrived with a particular leisure that was eerily out of place for what had been transpiring for the past few months in the territory.
At least that was true in the lord's quarters
Ashen lounged comfortably on the sofa… sprawled with unhurried ease, basking in the peace of mind that came from surviving that hellish challenge.
Lucia occupied his left thigh as though it had been built for exactly this purpose, her weight easy and familiar against him. She was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and, with the other, bringing pieces of toast to his lips at irregular intervals, occasionally diverting the cup toward him without looking up from where her thoughts had wandered.
He ate. He accepted the coffee. He occasionally held a piece of toast to her lips in return.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a domestic scene of almost offensive tranquility.
Then the door opened.
"Ash! Good morning~"
Seraphine entered with ceremony and moved directly to Ashen, plucked the last remaining piece of toast from his hand, or rather, from his mouth, and installed herself on his right thigh confidently, as if someone who had reserved the spot in advance.
Lucia watched this happen.
Then Seraphine's hand extended toward the coffee cup.
The hand that held the cup extended it without resistance, accompanied by the faint curve of an amused mouth.
Seraphine accepted it and began drinking.
Alice, who had followed her through the door at a pace that communicated everything about how she felt regarding mornings, surveyed the sofa arrangement with a brief, comprehensive look. Casually, she nudged Ashen's knees further apart, lowered herself into the space she'd created, and leaned her back against his torso.
A lull passed.
The other two women noticed it before anyone said anything; something in her had shifted, subtle enough that naming it would have required more thought than any of them were prepared to spend on it. The invisible partition that had always existed between the three of them, the one none of them had ever directly acknowledged, seemed to have quietly dissolved overnight. What remained was something more carefree.
Ashen looked at the three of them arranged around and against him, the toast gone, the coffee being passed around, and smiled.
"I'm glad," he said, "that we're all finally here."
No one answered… no one needed to. Seraphine leaned into him slightly, and Alice's hand found his forearm and rested there, and that was answer enough.
After a comfortable moment, he shifted.
"Alright." His tone remained easy, but the three women's attention honed on him. "Tell me what I missed. Everything."
The expected voices did not begin.
Seraphine sat up slightly straighter. "Me! Me! I'll go first~" She bounced once on his thigh playfully, drawing the exasperated glances of the other two.
She proceeded to show them her new innate skill, the one granted by the Beholder upon her return, without a trace of self-consciousness about whether the others should see it.
They read it.
Ashen read it twice.
Then he pressed both palms over his face.
"…my harem," he said, from behind his hands, "is slowly becoming a slave harem." A pause. "First Lucia. Now Seraphine…." His hands dropped. He looked at Alice. "And that one doesn't even need a leash."
Alice said nothing. She was, in fact, thinking something she chose not to share; specifically, that given the nature of the Carnal Directive Protocol currently bound into Ashen's soul, and the way the chain of authority logically extended from that point, it was entirely possible that both women were her slaves by some technical definition. She silently looked at the two women with a mildly entertained expression.
'I suppose this is as much my harem as it is yours, love. Heh.'
Lucia, for her part, glanced at Seraphine like she was extending a professional courtesy.
"Welcome to the club," she said.
Seraphine blinked. Then grinned.
*
The update that followed was thorough, and most of it was grim.
It was Alice who delivered it with her usual precision. The Narkal attacks had not been isolated to Solmara. They had extended all the way to the Ashbastion, which explained the absence of reinforcements from that front. As for the Sin Lord, the current intelligence had Cornelia mid-ascension, which rendered her unavailable for external deployment for the foreseeable future.
"So that's why…" Ashen let the sentence rest unfinished. The unanswered question that had been sitting at the back of his mind since the battle finally had its answer.
"Then?"
He waited.
The room didn't offer the next piece of information immediately. Instead, there was a pause.
He looked at the three of them. Seraphine's expression matched his own, genuinely unaware of what was coming. The other two did not quite meet his eyes.
"…Something else?" he asked.
Lucia set down the coffee cup.
"Before we talk about the territory," she said, "there's something you need to know."
"What."
"Your sister." A beat. "Lapis is in Seravelle."
The room held the silence for him while he processed that.
"…"
"And I used Braun's daughter's feelings for her father to manipulate her into tagging along with your sister."
"…"