Subjugating the Female General (5)
The hours they spent in the bath only stoked the fire between them higher.
Dong-hyun had already spent himself three times in that bathroom, yet he found himself staring down at his own cock in genuine bewilderment. It still refused to die.
What the hell is going on with this body? It just won't go down.
If anything, it was Yuria whose stamina had given out. It was not as though Dong-hyun had always been a man of such prodigious virility. The cause, he suspected, was one of the traits Ailes possessed — Inexhaustible Virility (A). Ailes Krantz's abilities were stacked with an almost insulting number of broken gifts. He found himself thinking that this man had not become Emperor of the Krantz Empire for nothing.
They left the bath and returned to Yuria's bedchamber. While the two of them had been losing themselves in the water, the maids had evidently slipped in and set the room back in order. There they nuzzled and murmured to each other until sleep finally claimed them, sweet and complete.
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the Great Hall of the Kairan Kingdom. Ministers great and small had gathered in force.
This was the council that had convened the moment the envoy from the Krantz Empire arrived.
The Empire's terms had been simple. Deliver Adrian Wendelin into imperial custody, and every grievance would be wiped clean — treated as though none of it had ever happened.
And the man they had sent as envoy was no ordinary messenger. He was Count Borchio Hudin of the Krantz Empire, a close confidant of Duke Valentinus, and a warrior whose martial prowess was said to rival even that of Duke Balanos. His reputation thundered ahead of him like a drawn blade. It was all anyone needed to know about how seriously Duke Valentinus was taking this affair.
"What are we to do?"
King Payrente Kairan of the Kairan Kingdom forced the words out with visible difficulty.
Every gaze in the hall swung toward a single point. A woman knight stood there.
She was Adrian Wendelin, Duchess of the Kairan Kingdom — the one person who had kept this nation alive in the jaws of the great powers that surrounded it. Blessed with both martial might and a brilliant strategic mind, Adrian had never once lost a war or a battle in her life. Her beauty was no less legendary. Royal houses across the continent had sent marriage proposals, and she had refused every last one of them, fighting solely for the Kairan Kingdom.
That was why her following ran so deep, and why her prestige within the kingdom actually surpassed that of King Payrente himself.
"Your Majesty asks a question with an obvious answer. They are the ones at fault. Why should we be the ones to bow?"
Adrian squared her shoulders and spoke without a trace of hesitation.
"And yet the Krantz Empire made it perfectly clear they will not hesitate to go to war if you refuse to go. Do you intend to take no responsibility for what follows?!"
Duke Silvestri Crops, another of the kingdom's dukes, fired back at her.
"If we all surrender over something like this, the Empire will have the entire continent unified before long."
She laughed the duke's words off with open scorn. Duke Crops flushed with anger, but he could find no words to continue.
"The Krantz Empire is in no position to wage war against us. They are already fighting two kingdoms in the north, and another war in the east. Opening a third front against our Kairan Kingdom in the south would be a reckless overreach even for them. That is precisely why they sent an envoy — to coax us into compliance."
Heads nodded throughout the hall.
"Then you are saying the Krantz Empire will not declare war upon us?"
As the assembled ministers murmured their agreement with Adrian, King Payrente pressed on.
"I am not saying that. But should the Krantz Empire dare to invade the Kairan Kingdom, I — the sword of this kingdom — will drive them back without fail. Your Majesty need not trouble yourself."
The sheer, unflinching confidence of it could easily have been taken as disloyalty toward King Payrente, yet not a soul in the hall dared to rebuke her.
You arrogant bitch... Don't you realize it's our people who will die because of you...
King Payrente seethed inwardly, but he could not give the feeling a voice.
"Do the rest of you share Duchess Wendelin's view?"
The king swept his gaze across the other ministers. Not a single one sided with him. Even Duke Crops, Adrian's political rival, held his tongue. There was nothing King Payrente could do.
"Very well... Summon Count Hudin. We must convey our decision."
At the king's word, a count departed and returned with the Krantz Empire's diplomatic party. Count Hudin, head of the imperial envoy, entered the Great Hall.
"I await your answer."
Hudin spoke with the easy confidence of a man who had never once imagined the Kairan Kingdom might refuse him. As he waited, his eyes slid over Adrian's figure. The journey from the Kairan Kingdom to the imperial capital of Krantz would take at least twenty days. Humiliating her along the way was well within his authority as escort — and he felt a slow, greedy heat gathering in his groin at the thought.
Adrian caught his lingering stare and snorted.
"Regrettably, the Kairan Kingdom opposes the extradition of Duchess Adrian Wendelin."
"How dare you! You would stand against the Krantz Empire?!"
Count Hudin roared at King Payrente's words. He unleashed the full weight of his presence, and the king and his ministers shrank back as one. For a mere count to shout down the king of a sovereign nation was unthinkable — and yet the gulf in power between the Krantz Empire and the Kairan Kingdom was precisely that vast.
"Dare? Did you just say 'dare'?"
Adrian stepped forward to the front of the hall and met Hudin's aura head-on. It was not merely a contest of presence. She swallowed his aura whole and crushed it.
"You insolent— How dare you stand before me and—"
He felt his own presence evaporating. He stumbled backward, his hand flying instinctively to the sword at his hip. But he had surrendered his blade upon entering as an envoy, and his fingers closed on nothing. He was so thoroughly overwhelmed he had not even registered the fact.
"A man of so little consequence, puffing himself up as a count of the Krantz Empire. The sight of you is frankly unsightly."
"Y-you—"
Before he knew it, Adrian was standing directly in front of him. Hudin clenched his teeth. He had always believed his swordsmanship and raw power were second to none — that he could stand comparison with Duke Balanos, said to be the strongest man in the Krantz Empire. He had never imagined a woman would make him taste this kind of humiliation.
Hudin could not manage a single word in reply. He turned on his heel and fled the Great Hall in a hurry.
A storm of applause erupted from the Kairan ministers. They had, in truth, been cowed by the Empire's reputation — and watching the unflinching Adrian scatter the entire envoy with nothing but her presence was deeply, viscerally satisfying.
Not everyone shared the celebration, of course. King Payrente and Duke Crops alone watched Adrian with sour, uneasy eyes. For all her overwhelming strength and brilliant mind, to them she was an awl that had already torn its way out of the pocket — a threat they could no longer contain.
From the night of their first coupling onward, Ailes and Yuria could not keep their hands off each other. Whether in Yuria's chambers or the Emperor's own rooms, they were the picture of newlyweds — sweet, tangled, inseparable.
The love written across both their faces whenever they looked at each other put smiles on every maid and guardsman who saw them. A pink, honeyed atmosphere drifted through the imperial palace of the Krantz Empire.
Yuria had once worried over the old rumor that Ailes never took a woman more than three times. They had already blown well past that number without so much as a pause.
No one was more delighted by this turn of events than Duke Idebert Balanos. He had given his only daughter, Yuria, in marriage to the Emperor. He had not wanted to send her. Yuria had insisted so fiercely that he had been left with no choice.
And after he had given her away, word reached him that the Emperor would not even look at Yuria — that he had simply left her to rot. The rage he had felt then was something he still could not fully describe. Only his loyalty to the Empire had kept him from giving that rage a voice.
Contrary to Ailes's fears, Duke Balanos's loyalty as one of the pillars holding up the Empire ran deep and genuine. Even after Ailes had taken other maids to bed, even after the incident in which he had groped at Adrian and been slapped for it, Balanos was still the kind of man who would raise his voice in defense of the Krantz Empire's honor. His insides may have been boiling, but his loyalty had never once wavered.
So when word reached him that this same Emperor had, at some point, transformed completely and was now spending happy days with Yuria — how could he not be pleased?
The Krantz Empire convened a council of nobles to coincide with the return of Count Hudin's envoy. Duke Balanos had come back to the imperial capital for that very meeting.
Before the council convened, he requested an audience with the Empress. He wanted to see his beloved daughter's face, even if only once. Father or not, she was Empress now, and he could not simply walk in unannounced. He had submitted a formal request in advance.
Yuria, of course, granted her father's petition at once.