Chapter 31: The List of Traitors

In the wake of the battle came a time of grand celebration. The militiamen were fiercely proud of such an effortless victory.

For the first time, they had tested the new muskets in genuine combat, and now they were certain they could defend their homes against any foe. Above all, however, they trusted Seraphine without reserve.

Word of how the young heir had stood on the front line, firing upon the enemy shoulder-to-shoulder with common girls, spread like wildfire across the entire region.

For months to come, the women spoke of nothing else over their ale.

Seraphine promised a grand revelry, but the battlefield had to be cleared first. Hundreds of corpses could hardly be left to rot in the sun. The militia dug several massive common graves where Ulrike and her host were laid to rest.

Had Seraphine told her mother the unvarnished truth of the slaughter, she would have had a difficult time explaining where she had acquired such murderous weaponry.

Though tempted to flaunt her own genius, she chose instead to lie and drastically downplay the scale of the engagement.

Every mercenary knight and man-at-arms had fled far beyond Karsfeld's borders, while the surviving enemy peasant women were rounded up and mercilessly put to the sword against the wall.

Thus, no inconvenient witnesses remained. The heir ordered her girls to hold their tongues and parrot only a single, rehearsed tale, ensuring no outsider learned of the true power of her new arsenal.

The version she presented to Adelgarde sounded smooth and innocent. Seraphine recounted how Ulrike had attempted to murder her, and how she had been forced to rally a handful of peasant women to hold the hill against a small band of rebels.

She concealed the existence of the cannons, portraying them as crude, heavy hand-culverins that merely made a great noise and spooked the hostile farmwives. The vanishing of hundreds of people from the hamlets she explained away as a mass flight into the mountains out of terror of the Baroness’s wrath.

Adelgarde swallowed it without hesitation - especially since the vassal’s armed retainers had indeed fled the territory. Everyone in this world knew that unarmored common women panicked at the mere crack of a powder charge.

Ulrike’s own demise Seraphine framed as a pure accident: a stray ball supposedly struck the vassal square in the eye through her open visor, whereupon the rest of her retinue scattered in disarray.

Adelgarde did dispatch trusted guards to inspect the field, but they uncovered only modest, staged graves prepared specifically for the occasion. To the rest of the world, it was merely a minor skirmish of two hundred peasant women armed with matchlocks against three hundred rebels.

In the feudal world, slaying a noblewoman without demanding ransom was heavily frowned upon, so the tale of an unfortunate accident spared Seraphine a world of trouble.

Following the treacherous vassal’s death, her infant child became the new Lady of Eisenwald. Since the girl was still a babe in arms, Adelgarde appointed a loyal regent from her own court, ensuring the traitor's widow would not raise the child into a rebel.

The only hard evidence tying Cordelia to the conspiracy had been the captured pit boss. Unfortunately, before an official confession could be extracted from her in the dungeons of Karsfeld, she was found dead.

She had supposedly hanged herself from her chains, but Seraphine knew full well it was the handiwork of Cordelia’s agents tying up loose ends.

The only living witness to the conspiracy remained Vivienne. Yet Seraphine could not use her against her sister - the breathtaking noblewoman was far too valuable a spy in the enemy camp to burn her cover.

It had become abundantly clear that traitors loyal to Cordelia lurked among the castle guard and household, vipers that would need to be quietly purged the moment Seraphine assumed absolute power.

Explaining the entire affair to her mother had consumed a great deal of time. It was already the dead of night by the time Seraphine could finally wash the grime, blood, and powder from her skin in the castle bathhouse.

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Hot water steamed in the stone basin, but paranoia still smoldered in her mind after the days spent trapped in the dark, collapsed gallery.

Suddenly, she caught the faint creak of the door and soft footsteps padding across wet flagstones. Her frayed nerves took over - assuming it was another assassin dispatched by her sister, Seraphine lunged from the water, sprang from the shadows, seized the intruder by the scruff of the neck, and slammed her under the surface with violent force, pinning her head to the bottom.

Only after several seconds, when her fingers registered delicate, silky skin and the thrashing of a curvaceous feminine body, did it dawn on her whom she was actually drowning.

She released her grip immediately. Vivienne breached the steaming surface, gasping greedily for air.

The stark naked noblewoman coughed and choked, her massive, lush breasts heaving violently and glistening with droplets of water. Strawberry-blonde locks clung to her lovely porcelain face, and tears of sheer terror shone in her wide blue eyes.

"What are you doing?!" Vivienne sputtered, shielding her wet breasts with her hands. "Are you trying to drown me?!"

Seraphine herself could scarcely catch her breath. The violent motion caused her cracked rib to flare with excruciating agony. Clutching her side, she hissed through gritted teeth:

"I am sorry... Forgive me, little one... I thought you were an assassin sent by Cordelia..."

Seeing the genuine pain and guilt etched across the woman’s face, Vivienne’s anger vanished in an instant.

She recalled the living hell Seraphine must have endured underground, wounded and trapped in the pitch black. The girl swam closer, wrapping her wet arms around Seraphine’s neck without hesitation and pressing her entire body flush against hers.

Her massive, soft breasts pressed tight against the futa girl’s chest, and her smooth, bare thighs entwined around her hips beneath the surface.

"It is alright... I am here with you, my lady," Vivienne whispered, kissing her tenderly on the neck and grazing the heated skin with her tongue.

The heat of her alluring, naked frame and that shameless, submissive touch worked better on Seraphine than any medicinal draught. Fear and paranoia faded away, replaced by a cold, calculating fury toward her brazen sister.

She could not slay Cordelia openly, lest she be condemned as a kinslayer. Instead, she resolved to methodically dismantle all of her allies, severing her treacherous little sister from influence and coin alike.

To that end, she needed her favorite spy.

"My little Vivienne... I have a new task for you," Seraphine murmured, resting a hand upon her shapely, rounded buttock and giving it a firm squeeze beneath the water.

Sparks lit up in the girl’s eyes. She adored it when her mistress gave her orders.

"I am listening, my lady... I will do anything."

"I want a complete list of names. Every noblewoman, every officer, and every merchant who has aided Cordelia in her bid for the inheritance. Where they dwell, what they favor, their weaknesses, and how much gold they took from her. If anyone so much as contemplated plunging a knife into my back, I want to know of it. Can you manage that, my good girl?"

Vivienne smiled enticingly, grinding her wet, smooth mound against Seraphine’s hip:

"Of course, my lady. I will uncover everything."

Seraphine felt her member harden instantly under the water, pressing against her belly and surging to full mast. After days spent trapped in a freezing tomb, her lust was insatiable.

"And since you saved my life by dispatching aid... it is time for your reward. What do you desire most?"

Vivienne flushed an adorable shade of pink, though her gaze remained intensely sensual and shameless.

Rather than answering with words, she straddled Seraphine’s lap. Her massive breasts swayed right before the heir’s eyes, their hardened nipples grazing her lips.

Vivienne leaned in and captured Seraphine’s mouth in a wild, wet kiss, before slowly, moaning in sheer ecstasy, impaling herself upon her steel-hard cock.

For the rest of the night, the bathhouse and Seraphine’s bedchamber echoed with wanton gasps, the slapping of wet flesh, and cries of boundless pleasure as the elder heir ruthlessly rode her beautiful, submissive slave again and again, rewarding her for her loyalty.

***

At that very same moment, Cordelia sat in her chamber, shivering with dread beneath a heavy duvet. The assassination plot had gone up in smoke. The pit boss might have named her before dying, which meant Seraphine knew everything.

What was more, her strongest ally, Ulrike, lay dead in the dirt, and her host had fled in headlong panic.

Cordelia bit her nails, unable to comprehend how her elder sister could have survived the cave-in and shattered a vassal’s army using petty peasant toys.

She was beginning to believe that some dark, otherworldly force protected Seraphine. She feared that any second the door to her room would be kicked off its hinges, and the enraged heir would stride in to slit her throat in her sleep.

That night, the younger sister did not close her eyes for even a single minute, paralyzed by terror, while her own betrothed moaned in Seraphine’s embrace, surrendering her body and soul.