Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

“[Awaken].”

The column collapsed inward. The pale fire condensed into a shape, a silhouette, a woman. Ophira’s ghost stood beside the bed with her feet a hand’s width above the stone floor, translucent and still, her neck straight again in death in a way it would never be in the body on the mattress.

“Gh!” Alastair made a sound that was not a word.

Eveliana had been watching her husband since the moment the spell left his mouth. The gasp at [Eternal Damnation] had shifted into quiet fascination as the sequence unfolded, and by the time the ghost of her stepmother stood hollow-eyed beside the bed, her expression had settled into a warmth that neither parent in this room had ever earned from her.

He had spent his reserves on a useless minion who would never swing a sword or hold a line like a proper soldier would. He had done it because of his wife, and the cost had not entered his calculation.

Eveliana smiled, small and private, and the love in it was so genuine it hurt to look at from the outside.

Then she turned to the ghost.

“Tell us. Explain how my mother died exactly. Be thorough, objective, and don’t give me an attitude.”

Per instructions, Ophira’s ghost spoke without inflection, without pause, without the smallest tremor of the personality that had lived inside.

“I was jealous of the main wife. She was loved by the Duke and by the household. Her daughter was the heir. My position as second consort would never rise above hers. I arranged for my men to enter the garden during the midday hour when Mirabelle walked alone with her maids and only a handful of guards. They killed Mirabelle but the girl escaped through the servants’ gate far quicker than I thought she would. I had them stage the scene with wolfkin claws and hair. The blood of Eveliana was real, drained from her slowly and carefully over the years by her guards and stored to be used when the time was right.”

A pause. The ghost continued at the same dead register.

“My men searched the city and its surroundings for weeks afterward. I concluded that the girl had been taken by someone in the lower quarters. Most likely raped, then killed and buried where no one would look. I did not pursue further, fearing to draw too much attention.”

The ghost fell silent.

Eveliana shook her head once, slow and measured.

“I didn’t want to ask my husband for this.” Her voice was soft, aimed at her father. “But there you have it.”

A beat passed, then her mouth curved mockingly.

“Wait, let me guess. Since she’s a minion now, you don’t believe her words.”

Alastair did not answer. The man on the bed had aged twenty years in two minutes, and the face that had entered this night as a Duke who believed his war was nearly won was hollowed out.

The silence stretched.

“The first night you came to Greenvale,” he said, his voice thin and old. “What did you say to me when the servants left the room?”

“That I had never seen so many stars,” the ghost answered without hesitation. “And that I would learn to love you, even if it took me the rest of my life.”

“The name.” His jaw worked behind the blood on his lips. “What did you call me when no one else was in the room?”

“Thal. After your middle name. You told me no one had called you that since your mother died, and I promised I would never use it in front of others.”

Alastair’s lids fell shut. When he opened them, they were wet.

“The night before Mirabelle’s and Eveliana’s funeral.” His voice was barely audible. “What did I confess to you?”

“That you had not cried yet and were afraid you never would. I held your head against my chest until morning. You wept before dawn. You never spoke of it again.”

A tear ran down the Duke’s cheek and into the blood-soaked pillow beneath his head.

“Eveliana… I’m sorry…”

The words came out wrecked. Twenty years of grief, and every year of it had been a leash held by the woman sleeping beside him.

His daughter looked down at him. The cruelty had drained from her face. Eveliana had made her peace with this moment a long time ago, and upon its arrival, it gave her exactly as little as she had expected.

“I’m not Eveliana,” she said. “That girl died twenty years ago, when her father let his wife murder his other wife and chase his own daughter into the streets.” Her voice did not waver. “My name is Lucille Elysiar, wife of Quinlan Elysiar, and I want nothing to do with you.”

Alastair lay still on the blood-soaked bed and absorbed the name his daughter had chosen to replace the one he had given her, and each syllable landed in him like a stone dropped into a well that had no bottom.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then a sigh left him, weak and resigned.

“The twins…” He turned his head on the pillow, searching the room for his girls. “What… has happened to them? What did you do?”

Lucille glanced toward the corner where Amara and Vivienne were tangled on the stone floor, arms locked around each other, faces buried in each other’s necks, their sobs bright and relieved and utterly unconcerned with the carnage they had helped create.

“They were always vile little bitches, ‘Papa~’ Just like their mother. You didn’t see it, the same way you didn’t see anything about their mother.”

A breath.

“My husband enslaved them a few months ago and sentenced them to rather cruel punishments for their crimes. They’ve been working for us ever since.”

Alastair winced as if he had been stabbed again, and the wound the words opened was worse than anything the enchanted dagger had done to his body. His gaze found the twins on the floor, and the image split in his head. Vivienne’s grin as she drove the blade into his chest with a cheerful grunt, the bright little noises she made with each thrust, the way she had wrinkled her nose and called him a stinky pig. The girl on the floor now was sobbing into her sister’s neck with the abandon of a child who had been told she would not be punished, and neither version of her matched the daughter he had raised.

His eyes closed.

“Kill me.”

The words came out flat and final.

“End this mockery of my life. I have nothing left.”

Lucille laughed.

A full, genuine laugh rang off the stone walls of the chamber, bright and wrong against the smell of blood and piss and death.

“So you want to run from responsibility even now, like you did all your life? You boast like a drunk when things go your way, but you bitch and moan when things don’t?” She crossed her arms. “That’s the great Duke of Greenvale?”

Alastair’s wet stare found the ceiling. His mouth moved without conviction.

“What can I do…?”

Lucille smiled, and the smile was the devil’s own.

“Your incompetence as a parent and a husband might have ruined my life,” she said, her voice carrying a warmth that had nothing kind about it, “but I built it back up. So how about you atone for what you’ve done by helping my dream come true?”

Alastair blinked. “Which is…?”