Chapter 721: Text From Valerius [Bonus - ]

Chapter 721: Text From Valerius [Bonus Chapter]

Her fingers curled gently over the cloth and pressed against the firm smooth curve beneath and a soft warm flutter bloomed in her chest.

It wasn’t the cold haughty pride of a fallen divinity... It was something so sweet and giddy and gooey that she couldn’t stop her pointed ears from burning bright pink.

"Hehehe~" She giggled with a tiny shimmy of her shoulders. "Look at me, kneeling here all wise and dignified, when my tummy is literally keeping the greatest secret in the whole territory!"

A goddess of the World Tree wasn’t bound by the quick biological clocks of mortal women.

Her body was carved from her mother’s ether which meant she was essentially eternal and naturally resistant to change.

That stagnation was exactly the problem... She couldn’t simply order her body to conceive. Her inner pathways were too stable and her divinity too stubborn to let foreign life take root.

’I took matters into my own hands though.’

So she’d been relentless.

She had schemed and plotted and pulled Silas into her bedchamber at every single chance.

She’d dragged him into the mossy hollows of the groves and pinned him against the silk bolsters of the Keep, and she’d claimed him three separate times during the Khemet week alone, in frantic breathless quickies stolen between sandstorms and shattered rifts.

She’d matched his Gold Core vitality stroke for stroke, drained him until his breath hitched, and demanded every last drop of his essence to crack the shell of her divine womb.

Every sweet exhausting time he’d collapsed on top of her, panting into her silver-green hair, she’d wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her arms behind his neck and refused to let him roll away.

She remembered tracing his collarbone in the dark while he slept, counting his breaths, whispering silly little prayers to the earth roots that this time, please this time, the divine bark would part and drink in his life-stream.

...And it had worked.

She stayed very still for a moment, savoring it like a warm drink on a cold morning.

Deep in her core, under the ancient bark and the crystalline sap of her divine meridians, a tiny brilliant spark had ignited.

It was so quiet and soft and delicate that not even Silas, with all his sharp elemental senses, could feel it yet.

It sat in the deepest sanctuary of her spiritual womb like a golden seed wrapped in dew-soaked moss.

Every time her divine sap circulated, the little spark gave a miniature rhythmic flutter, drinking in the life-mana and Silas’s golden core power with greedy sweet contentment.

’Hubby has inseminated me,’ Eluned whispered in the silence of her soul, and her heart swelled with an emotion so fierce and warm and possessive that her chest ached with it.

A quiet delighted shudder ran down her spine.

’He really did it... My handsome stubborn hardworking boy finally put his baby inside me...’

It would take time for the seed to show on the outside.

Weeks, before her waist rounded and the glow of motherhood settled into her skin but she didn’t mind the wait.

She was already planning the day she’d tell him.

She would pick the sunniest afternoon in the garden, lead him to the marble bench, put his strong hand right over her belly, and watch his blue-and-gold eyes go wide with panic and awe.

He’d stammer, his jaw would drop and then he’d probably scoop her up and swear to build a whole fortress just for the nursery.

’And I’ll make him rub my feet every single evening,’ She thought, looking thoroughly spoiled and blissful with her cheeks glowing. ’I’ll demand midnight sweets from the city... I’ll make him carry me up the Keep’s stairs whenever I feel a tiny bit lazy! He won’t dare say no to the mother of his child~ And I love him too...’

Eluned wondered whether to tell him now, she wanted to see his face and she also wanted the foot rubs sooner but the face won, as it always did, and she folded the secret back into her chest like a letter she’d read a hundred times.

...She would be a mother soon.

She would bear his firstborn, an heir rooted in the primal earth and crowned with celestial power.

And no matter how many women Silas collected, sisters, battle-maidens, even women outside the territory he hadn’t met yet, she would always be his Number 1.

Her child would always be the eldest branch.

The others would find out eventually... Aeliana would probably need to sit down while Morwenna would be furious and Eluned intended to enjoy every second of it.

Her gaze drifted east, past the mountains, toward the smoky towers of Central City where the pirate was presumably sleeping off her exhaustion.

A wicked amused smirk curved Eluned’s lips.

Morwenna was a novice.

A beginner who’d just taken her very first voyage across the sheets, probably still blushing into her pillows and wondering why her hips felt so stiff and the laws of this world were absolute.

When a warrior reached a rank as terrifyingly high as Morwenna’s, their physical vitality locked down behind dense barriers that turned conception away like armor turned a rusty blade.

For someone of that rank it took months, sometimes decades of deliberate cultivation to conceive.

...There was simply no way in all of the realms that a stubborn pirate could get pregnant from a single night of clumsy desperate passion.

...Right?

...

The silver watery light of the Receiver dissolved without a whisper, folding back into the grain of the dark mahogany wall until not a trace of emerald mana remained.

Kara stepped onto the polished timber floor of the executive office.

The hem of her midnight-blue trousers fell with crisp precision over her black leather shoes.

She held a woven wicker basket steady in her lone right hand, with the golden apples resting against her hip.

Through the broad dock leaves lining the wicker, a soft divine warmth pressed against her knuckles, carrying the restorative scent of Eluned’s orchard into the stale air.

Over by the desk, the Secretary hadn’t moved an inch.

He was frozen in the same rigid posture he’d held since Kara touched the wall with the ledger clamped to his ribs.

His spectacles sat perfectly straight, but fine beads of sweat gathered at his temples and betrayed how hard it was to guard an empty office where a Lord had evaporated into thin air.

"It works," Kara said simply, her smooth feminine voice cutting through the stillness.

The Secretary jumped.

His heels clicked and he bowed until his spine was parallel with the desk.

"A profound success, Lord Vespera... The building’s structural monitors detected not a single fluctuation in mana pressure so the secrecy of the conduit remains absolute."

"Good." Kara adjusted the silver-leaf crest on her left lapel with her empty sleeve pinned flat across her suit. "Safeguard those things with your life. Keep everyone away from that wall... No maintenance crews, no cleaning staff, no curious clerks. If so much as a stray brush touches that mahogany, I’ll hold you personally accountable."

"It shall be guarded with the full authority of the Council’s receivership mandate, my Lord..." He straightened, right hand pressed over his heart. "None shall approach."

"Is that a basket, my Lord?"

"It is."

"Is it... for the wall?"

"It’s for me," Kara said, and lifted a golden apple out of the leaves to inspect it.

It glowed gently in her palm, like a tiny tamed sun. "Have a good day, Secretary."

"A good day, my Lord," he repeated, and wrote "basket" in his ledger, just in case.

She turned to Solenne, who was hovering near the threshold with her ears forward and her tails tucked tight to avoid knocking over the display cases.

"Come along, Solenne... Our business here is finished."

"Y-Yes, my Lord!" Solenne squeaked, bowing so fast that her satchel clattered against her hip.

They left through the heavy mahogany doors and took the private lift down from the executive penthouse.

The brass-and-crystal cage dropped smoothly through the tower’s inner shafts, and the muffled roar of the manufacturing tracks grew louder and shook the metal grille.

Solenne eyed the basket the whole way down. Her nose twitched and her tails swayed but by the sixtieth floor she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

"My Lord... are those apples glowing?"

"They are."

"Are they... for sharing?"

Kara looked at the three golden apples, at the hopeful kitsune, and at the mountain of Eluned’s final instruction in her memory.

’Eat those before anyone else touches them.’

"Not these ones," Kara said gently. "Elu would know."

"Elu would know," Solenne agreed and clasped her hands behind her back to resist temptation. ’Who is this Elu person...? Is she someone very important to my Lord? Like a Hero...?’

"My Lord," She added after a moment "I hugged you in front of a Council Head."

"You did and I liked it, heh."

"Is that against the rules?"

"I’ll check," Kara said. "Though I think the rule is that she has to pretend she didn’t see it."

Solenne’s cheeks went pink.

Her tails wagged once, twice, and then stopped, as if she’d remembered she was in public and a Lord was watching.

Another floor ticked past as the lift hummed.

’Elu seemed awfully smug about something,’ Silas thought, watching the floor numbers fall. ’I couldn’t tell what... She’d been too busy squeezing me.’

When the doors opened on the ground floor, a ripple ran through the lobby.

Clerks stopped mid-stride as a courier dropped his scroll case and by the time Kara crossed the marble floor the whole room was pretending very hard to be busy.

It was clear that they were aware that she was the new owner.

’We should think up a good name for this Guild... Brassbound sounds a bit extra.’

Solenne let out a long breathless laugh with her silver tails fanning into a wide fluffy arc as they walked into the marble-lined lobby.

"Did you see his face, Lord Sil... Lord Vespera?" The kitsune giggled, golden eyes sparkling with pure joy.

A passing clerk glanced over, and Kara gave Solenne a look so mild it was almost a lecture.

Solenne clapped a hand over her mouth, then lowered it again because she couldn’t stop beaming.

She walked right beside Kara, hands clutching the leather straps of her tool bag with her ears twitching in time with her bouncing steps.

"When Lady Council Head slapped that iron ledger on his desk! His eyes went as wide as boiler gauges! And when he saw the ninety-five percent clause.., I thought his mustache would curl off his lip and crawl under the carpet! It was magnificent! It was truly magnificent!"

Kara chuckled.

"He earned every copper of that headache. Don’t worry about the shop anymore, Solenne... The Council Secretary will oversee the retooling, and the foundrymen will follow your original specs down to the millimeter."

"It feels like an impossible dream," Solenne sighed, ears drooping in contented warmth. "My golems, with real Blessed Land seals..."

Bzzzzt!

A sharp double vibration buzzed against Kara’s right trouser pocket.

She stopped in the shadow of the guild’s grand arched exit door.

Silas reached into the pocket and pulled out a sleek black phone as the glass lit up with a series of incoming pings.

’I was keeping it on hand incase Val texted... Okay.’

[Valerius: I just got to Central City]

[Val has shared his location... the Grand Plaza]

[Valerius: Meet us there... I came with Mia]

’Valerius is early,’ Silas thought. ’Well this is good regardless...’

Kara stared at the screen and let out a long theatrical sigh that fluttered her black bangs.

"Well," she murmured, thumbing a reply with her one hand, Give me an hour, and sliding the device back into her pocket.

"He’s arrived so we have to head back and regroup."

Solenne tilted her head, ears swiveling forward. "Who has arrived, my Lord? Is it a trade delegate? Another guildmaster?"

"Well a bit better," Kara said dryly, with a faint smirk. "A loud overdressed friend with too much money and a very troublesome companion."

"Is the companion dangerous?"

"I mean she’d say yes."

"Is she... a monster?"

"It depends, she looks eleven," Kara said, "and she pulls hair but she’s also related to Aeli so I guess that helps."

Solenne’s ears flattened with dread, in precisely the wrong direction. "I don’t understand, my Lord."

"You will. Hold on to your satchel."

"Wait! Lord Vespera, not the height again—!"

Kara didn’t wait.

Silas gathered a dense coil of emerald wind under their boots, hooked his lone right arm firmly around Solenne’s waist, and launched the two of them straight up into the sky.

FWOOOOOSH!

A hundred pigeons exploded off the guild’s copper eaves in a panicked cloud.

Kara’s black hair streamed behind her as the tower shrank to a toy beneath their boots, and somewhere in the wind, a kitsune began to scream.

"Don’t look down!" Kara called.

"I’m LOOKING UP! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"