The Assembly had not gone the way Cornelia would have liked.
She sat behind her desk in the suite the Lust Domain had assigned her and turned the trial over in her mind like a loose tooth she couldn't stop pressing on.
She had walked into that chamber with Edward and two strategies. Neither had fully worked.
The title had passed. Fine. But the land… that was where she had been played like a fiddle. She knew it the moment the sharp-featured councilman started his "remarkably generous" speech, and she'd still had no answer for him.
'Bunch of vultures with lawyer tongues,' she thought grimly. 'Burning them would've been cleaner.'
Unfortunately, clean wasn't an option today.
She rolled a large map open and traced the line of the Ashbastion wall with one finger.
"This isn't entirely hopeless." she muttered.
…Because while those councilmen sent him to the ends of the earth with a smile, they'd forgotten one thing.
The Wrath Domain's warden was also stationed at the ends of the earth.
A knock at the door.
"It's open."
Ashen came in first, suit still immaculate from the Assembly. Lucia followed a step behind him, and Cornelia's eyes moved between them once out of reflex.
She noticed it immediately.
The distance was different. No… they stood at the same arm's length as always, but something in the atmosphere had changed.
'These guys were probably fucking like rabbits, huh?'
Cornelia had no comment on it.
A man of his capacity taking more than one woman was neither scandalous nor sinful by any law she recognized, the Eternal's commandments included. Whatever he had going on with the pinkette recruiter, the adopted sister inventor, or the Saintess was his business. She'd seen far stranger arrangements among the noble families in her own domain.
What concerned her was whether he was alive and intact enough to have any arrangements at all.
"You looked calmer than anyone had a right to during that trial," she said by way of greeting.
"I had the trust element." Ashen glanced at the maps covering the desk and raised an eyebrow. "What is all this?"
Cornelia gestured at the chair across from her. He sat. Lucia positioned herself to his side without being asked, her eyes already scanning the spread of parchment.
"Maps of the territory beyond the walls." Cornelia leaned back, arms crossing. "Choose where you want to build."
A beat of silence.
"...Wasn't that supposed to be determined by the council?" Ashen asked, bewildered.
Cornelia's smile turned sharp.
"In the Wrath Domain, I am king." She let that sit for a moment. "Those councilmen can flail around all they like back in Parliament, but here? Their paper authority ends at the gate. Mine doesn't."
She straightened and pushed the largest map toward him.
"You should understand the arrangement better, so let me explain. On paper, the Sin Lords hold the rank of archdukes. The domains aren't officially called countries. It maintains the fiction of a unified human entity." She tapped the map. "In reality, each domain is a country. The Sin Lord's authority within their territory rivals any king in his own kingdom."
Ashen studied the maps carefully, saying nothing.
"The only reason we maintain this facade of unity is fear." Cornelia's voice turned flat. "Any further fragmentation and the Narkals don't need to breach our walls. We'll have done their work for them. That's the sword hanging over every political maneuver you'll ever witness here."
"It's also why a noble title carries nominal authority in other domains," Lucia said quietly. "They need the illusion of a single front."
Cornelia glanced at her. "Exactly. Illusion being the operative word. The Demi-human Empire is far better at actual unity than we are." A pause. "But that isn't what I brought you here to discuss."
She tapped the map again.
"This is. The territory is yours to stake. I know it isn't much; lands without walls or settlements are worth less than what they look on parchment. But I'll tell you now: if you position yourself close to the Ashbastion, I won't object." She met his eyes directly. "I won't make you pretend to be braver than the situation warrants."
Ashen looked at the grey expanse beyond the wall markings for a long moment, his expression thoughtful.
"Any material aid, commander?" he asked.
Cornelia's expression turned rueful. "The last war stripped the Wrath Domain's treasury bare. I have nothing to give you in terms of supplies. What I have, though… is something better."
"...Much… much, better."
She turned her head slightly.
"Sabrina."
The maid materialized from the room's shadows as if she had always been standing there. Because, functionally, she had been. She stood with perfect posture, hands clasped, expression composed and expectant.
Cornelia looked at her with the particular expression of someone who had been waiting to say something they found very funny.
"Since you seem to like being a maid so much," she announced cheerfully to Sabrina, "you can go be his personal maid for the next three years."
"..."
"..."
Ashen stared at Cornelia.
Beside him, even Lucia's mouth had formed a small, perfect O.
He opened his mouth… closed it… opened it again. Where was his input in any of this? And wasn't Sabrina her right-hand woman? Would she actually manage without her? Was this—
His retorts died entirely when Sabrina bowed.
"As you wish, my Lord."
She said it the way one might accept an assignment to fetch tea.
Ashen blinked once. When his eyes refocused, Sabrina was standing at his shoulder with the permanence of someone who had always stood there. She turned to meet his stare with two slow, blinking eyes that asked, with perfect innocence, what the matter was.
Cornelia watched his expression cycle through confusion, protest, and defeat with obvious satisfaction.
"Little Heartstealer," she said, using the title with unexpected warmth, "did you forget that you saved my life?"
He said nothing, not knowing if he should take the credit for that. 'Well… It's technically still me, so I won't argue.' In the end, he shamelessly decided so.
"I am a woman who hates being indebted." Cornelia said it without apology, as a simple fact. "So in return for what you did, I'm lending you my most precious little sister for three years."
She laced her fingers together on the desk.
"Besides… are you truly in a position to refuse? Or are you underestimating what it means to live beyond the Great Wall?"
She leaned forward, her gaze turning slightly oppressive.
"You are not going out there as a soldier this time. You're going as a lord. And let me tell you, from one lord to another, the difference between the two is the distance between heaven and earth… Immeasurable."
Ashen held her gaze. He didn't retort, especially when it was a veteran of two centuries who was the one doing the talking.
"... Sabrina's most valuable trait isn't her strength," Cornelia didn't continue with the lecture, going back to the matter at hand. "It's her loyalty. So I'll tell you plainly what that means: even if your orders contradict her morals, she will obey. Even if your orders violate her being, she will obey. Even if her life is on the line..."
"She will obey," he finished quietly.
Her voice turned even. "Normally, I wouldn't hand her over to anyone. Not even to my savior." A rare look of softness crossed her face. "But after watching you two fight together against that cultist, I could see she had developed quite the fondness for you. Real rapport is hard to fake, and she doesn't fake anything."
The amusement returned.
"Isn't that right, Sabby?"
Sabrina's lips pressed together. It was the look of suffering of someone enduring a familiar torment. She lowered her head and said nothing, refusing to take the bait.
Cornelia didn't mind at all.
"For the next three years, she is your responsibility." She fixed Ashen with a look that was as serious as it was threatening. "If anything happens to her during that time, I will hold you personally accountable."
She sat back.
"Use her well. And survive." A pause, then… she muttered. "I don't want my savior ending up as a Narkal's midday snack."
⁂
The hotel suite was quieter than it should have been.
Lucia had left an hour ago with Sabrina to gather preliminary information on the resources twenty thousand men would need immediately, namely, food and shelter. The logistics alone were going to be a nightmare, and she hadn't wasted time starting on it.
He'd watched them leave and then sat alone with the maps Cornelia had given him.
The territory spread beyond the Ashbastion wall in a grey, largely featureless expanse. Various stretches were marked with different threat indicators, such as Narkal density, proximity to known monster territories, and estimated settlement viability.
Most of the viable land is clustered near the wall; inversely, the farther out, the less viable.
Ashen's pen hovered over the map, undecided.
He was still staring at it when the silence changed quality.
{Choose that northwestern stretch.}
He didn't startle. The Twin Soul's voice was always recognizable; It was familiar in a slightly uncanny way, like hearing a recording of his own voice played back slightly wrong.
Ashen's pen moved without thinking to the section his other self indicated, then stopped.
The northwest.
He looked at it properly for the first time. It sat at the far edge of what the map even bothered to chart… a significant distance from the Ashbastion, far past where the Bloodwall's outriders regularly patrolled. The resource transportation lines alone would be an ongoing logistical crisis.
And that wasn't even the main problem.
"This sits right on the Demi-human border," he said aloud, keeping his voice low out of habit. "And the Narkal density indicators here—"
{I know.}
"—are some of the highest on the map." He set the pen down. "We'd be flanked on two sides by potential enemies. No reliable support from Bloodwall camps. Supply lines that are practically theoretical at this distance." He leaned back. "Give me one good reason."
A beat of quietness ensured… then—
{Aren't you tired of being poor?}
Ashen's left eye twitched.
{Being financially supported by your women all the time,} the old voice continued, carrying a note of amusement that Ashen found extremely annoying, {is frankly embarrassing.}
"You—" He pressed his lips together. "So going to that forsaken stretch of wasteland is supposed to make me rich, is it?"
{Guess.}
Ashen stared at the map.
He opened his mouth to argue further, then closed it.
He'd asked a stupid question. He knew it even as he was asking it.
The person on the other end of that voice was, after all, a regressor.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
Seravelle Map ~ Prototype draft (I may make some adjustments later.)