Chapter 173: Cute, Cursed, and Carried Away

Vexena groans with unrestrained delight as the massage chair vibrates beneath her. She and her generals ride together in one of the Dwarven caravans, plush and absurdly overengineered, brass fittings, velvet cushions, some kind of self-refilling decanter bolted to the wall. They hum along the road toward the capital with a smoothness no demon-forged carriage has ever managed.

"Whoever engineered this deserves a medal," Vexena mutters, sinking another inch. Her eyes crack open just enough to fix Bilorial with an accusing glare. "Bilorial. Why did nobody tell me dwarven massage chairs were this good?"

Bilorial groans an apology from across the carriage, still nursing his own healing shoulder. "Apologies, Your Grace, I wasn’t aware—"

"Excuses." Vexena waves a lazy hand. "I want it on record that I have been personally deprived of joy for centuries because nobody thought to mention vibrating furniture."

Eris and Xenara click wine glasses together across the carriage, grinning. "We really should get kicked out of the Demon Lands more often," Eris says.

"I’ll drink to that," Xenara agrees.

"I am far too relaxed right now," Vexena informs them, eyes still shut, "to even care how insubordinate that sounded."

"Noted for future insubordination, Your Grace," Eris chuckles.

In the corner, Mysa and Raenly sit pressed together, doing their absolute best to look small, innocent, and entirely beneath the Demon Queen’s notice. Mysa mutters under her breath about why exactly they had to be crammed into this particular carriage, of all the carriages available.

Raenly, meanwhile, stares at Vexena with the open, helpless adoration of an infatuated kitten. Vexena’s eyes drift toward him once. He beams. She looks away fast, nose wrinkling, then can’t seem to help sneaking a second glance, squinting at him like he’s a puzzle she hasn’t solved yet.

"What," Vexena finally asks, gesturing vaguely at him, "is that?"

Raenly sticks out a hand eagerly. "Raenly Myst—"

Bilorial slaps it back down without looking up from his own drink. "He’s a pet I picked up on my travels. Feel free to ignore him."

Raenly gasps, scandalized, opening his mouth to launch a proper defense of his own dignity, until Mysa smacks the back of his head. "You have been terrified into silence for weeks straight, and now, in a carriage with the actual Demon Queen, is when you want to grow a spine?"

"A man can only suppress his true self for so long."

"You suppressed it just fine right up until she looked at you."

"I can’t help it," Raenly announces, apparently to everyone in earshot. "She’s so cute!"

The whole carriage goes dead silent, breath held, as they all turn from Raenly to Vexena, whose eyes flash pure crimson.

"I-I didn’t mean..." Raenly yelps, already shrinking backward into the cushions. "I didn’t mean it like that!"

"Oh?!" Vexena asks, voice dropping several octaves, layered with something that sounds distressingly close to actual fury. "You do not think I am cute?"

Raenly bursts into tears on the spot. "You’re really, really cute!" he wails, both hands pressed to his own face.

Vexena barks out a genuine laugh, sharp and delighted, and the whole carriage collapses with her, wheezing. "Gods," she manages between breaths, wiping one eye, "I love tormenting mortals. Truly. It never gets old."

Raenly buries his face in Mysa’s chest, whimpering, "My heart! My heart can’t handle this anymore."

Mysa pats his head, snickering without a shred of sympathy. "You brought this on yourself," she reminds him.

"She’s just so—"

"Don’t finish that sentence!"

Several carriages back, Vuvi groans loudly enough to be heard over the wheels.

"We are moving so slow!"

Nobody answers, so she keeps going.

"This is completely unprofessional. Pip could be in the middle of an orgy with the entire Church by now and we’re just... chugging along. Feels like we’re going backwards."

Veena and Sera, sharing a bench with their own massage chairs humming beneath them, sip wine with exaggerated daintiness, playing at nobility. "I can see the appeal of being a princess," Sera admits.

Veena scoffs. "Sure... but sword fights are far more fun."

"Oh, absolutely," Sera agrees, delighted. "No comparison whatsoever."

Vuvi makes a series of increasingly sarcastic little noises at them both, mimicking them mockingly. "Ooh, tea. How lovely. How civilized," she simpers, nose in the air, batting her eyelashes with theatrical grace, before sticking her head out the window entirely. "PENELO! Switch seats with me!"

Penelo, currently hurtling alongside the carriage atop Frostlick, howls with pure joy as they tear across the farmland. She doesn’t hear a word of it, ears streaming behind her in the wind, utterly, blissfully oblivious to Vuvi, the carriage, or the concept of destinations in general.

"She’s not going to hear you over that dog," Veena says, unbothered, taking another sip.

"She’s not a dog, she’s a frosthound, and I will absolutely keep trying." Vuvi cups both hands around her mouth. "PENELO! BUNNYYYYYY!"

Her voice cracks on the second try. Frostlick’s ears flick once, and they keep running anyway.

"You could just... sit here," Sera offers. "There’s an entire empty seat right beside us. With a chair. That vibrates."

"I don’t want a vibrating chair, Sera, I want my construct back where I can see him and personally verify he still has all his parts attached."

"He’s had all his parts attached through worse than this." Veena mutters.

"Not reassuring! I refuse to enjoy anything until I have eyes on Pip," Vuvi announces, flopping back into her own chair with a groan, arms crossed, glaring out the window at absolutely nothing. "We are moving at the speed of a funeral procession while my construct is unsupervised in a church full of Saint Sisters and who knows what else. And everyone around me seems perfectly content to sip wine and pretend that’s fine."

"That sounds exhausting." Sera sighs.

"It is," Vuvi says, "constantly. It’s a full-time occupation, actually, being this worried. I should be getting paid for it."

"You do get paid." Veena snorts. "You own the business."

"Then I should be getting paid more."

Veena raises her glass toward her in a mock toast. "To hazard pay for parenting a divine sex construct."

"I’ll drink to that too," Sera says, clinking her glass against Veena’s.

Vuvi glares at both of them, then snatches Sera’s flask anyway and takes a long, deliberate sip.

Above the whole slow-crawling procession, Raikya and Ka’Lula keep watch from the sky, gliding easy on great, slow beats of Lula’s wings, warm wind rushing past them both, Raikya settled comfortably against her back with both arms loosely wrapped around her, the two of them lost in quiet conversation while the carriages and farmland roll by far beneath them, tiny and toylike from this height.

"So that’s confirmed, then? That you’re part of some divine dragon bloodline?" Raikya asks, still working through it, brow furrowed against the wind.

"Exactly. It just sort of... happened. There was a lich, a cursed mountain, an ancient vault I apparently had a bloodright to open." Lula shrugs, wings dipping slightly with the motion. "You get used to finding out wild things about yourself when you travel with Pip. Keeps life interesting."

"I’ve noticed." Raikya chuckles.

"So yeah," Lula continues. "Turns out I’m not just some overgrown lizard-girl who can breathe fire. Apparently there’s a whole lineage. Divine dragons, ancient and mostly extinct, tied up in old magic nobody remembers anymore. There’s even a book... left behind by my kind, wherever they went. Pages full of a script none of us can even begin to read. We’re hoping to find someone past the Dwarven Kingdom who can actually make sense of it. Zora says he knows a guy."

"That’s amazing." Raikya shakes her head, grinning. "You’re probably some lost dragon royalty or something equally ridiculous."

"Don’t get ahead of yourself."

"I’m serious! Meanwhile I’m just a white-furred mutt who gets turned away from every place that ever mattered to me." Raikya huffs out. "At least your tragic backstory comes with a fancy title attached."

"You’re not a mutt," Lula says, firm, twisting her head back just enough to catch Raikya’s eye. "And you’ve got a place now, whether you asked for it or not. You’re part of our family. You’ve got a home with us."

"That’s a big word. Family."

"Get used to it. We throw it around a lot." Lula smiles. "And hugs. We’re huggers."

Raikya goes quiet a moment, letting that land, ears drooping slightly before flattening back against her skull, like she’s physically bracing against the sincerity of it. Then she chuckles, shaking her head. "You are all, without exception, the strangest group of people I have ever met in my entire life. But I’d be honored to be part of it. I mean that. Back with my old tribe, I spent years just trying to be tolerated. Here, I get tackled into cuddle piles I never asked for and someone hands me a paycheck at the end of the week. It’s insane. Good insane, but insane." She exhales, long and slow. "I never could have imagined meeting someone like Pip. He’s... he’s a life-changer, Lula. In every sense."

"Agreed," Lula replies, snickering. "He’s also excellent at rearranging your guts, don’t forget that part."

Raikya barks out a laugh, loud enough that it echoes off the hills below. Then, quieter, more serious, some of the humor draining out of her voice.

"You think he’s actually okay, though? Really? The women who took him... I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Not from the church, not from anywhere. They looked like actual goddesses wearing borrowed skin."

Lula scoffs, the very picture of confidence. "Pip’s practically a sex-god, Raikya. He can handle a few Saint Sisters just fine, trust me."

"You didn’t see the way they looked at him, though. Like they hadn’t eaten in a thousand years and he was the first meal in sight."

"Good," Lula says, banking gently into a wide, lazy turn, wingtips catching the morning light. "Means they’ll actually appreciate him properly."

Raikya snorts, shaking her head, and for a while neither of them says anything else, content to just watch the world scroll by beneath them in comfortable silence.

Meanwhile, in the Church of the Great Mother, in the heart of the Dwarven capital, Pip proves Ka’Lula exactly right.

In the VIP guest bedchambers, all marble columns, gold leaf, and windows overlooking the sleeping city below, Bela lies in a crumpled heap on the floor beside an enormous, ornate bed carved from pale stone and gilded in gold.

Her limbs quivering, eyes rolled back white, her whole body glowing faintly from within like a lantern left burning too long. Ancient divine chants spill from her lips in a broken, breathless mutter, half-formed words in a language older than the continent itself, magical glyphs popping in and out of existence around her limp form in lazy, drifting spirals.

The mortal fragment of her mind, the part that still remembers propriety, caution, the concept of "minimal involvement", has been entirely, gloriously shattered by bliss, and shows no immediate signs of wanting to reassemble itself any time soon.

Above her, Pip endures, with great and professional restraint, the eager lips of a goddess melting over his manhood, eye-cameras flickering to the rhythm of her throat.