“She did,” Dante said with a nod. “I think we can consider ourselves lucky. If he’d continued to follow Kari, she might not have had a chance to grow closer to Eryk.”
“That is quite enough,” Valence said with more force than usual. “I was only doing what any father would.”
“So he says, but I don’t know many fathers who stalk their daughters,” Dante said with a grin like he’d just won the grand prize at a lottery stall. Valence’s cheeks were now bright red along with his ears.
Hilda could have stopped her two husbands from teasing Valence, but she chose not to. Her first husband was very upright and proper. Too upright and proper. Rainer and especially Dante, were good for Valence because they kept him from becoming too stiff.
Besides, Valence was cute when he blushed.
Hilda’s first task after breakfast was to sit in her receiving room and accept patrons—commoners and nobles alike—who came to her with complaints, reports, or requests. It was her duty as empress to hear everyone out and decide on a course of action that would benefit the most people. Of course, this sometimes meant not everyone was satisfied with her decisions, but that was the price one paid for being a ruler.
There was simply no way to please every person.
“The Eieran Family has recently been encroaching into mercantile territory belonging to my Viker Family. For many generations, my family has been in charge of the distribution and sales of fabrics like wool and silk, but the Eieran Family has recently opened several shops selling the same products. It’s stealing all my customers. I believe something must be done to curb the Eieran Family’s influence.”
An older-looking gentleman stood before Hilda as she sat on her throne. His blond hair streaked with gray caused it to look like ash. He had eyes that were light blue to the point where they looked like steel, a distinguished face, and a trim beard that lent him the atmosphere of an experienced politician. Alexia Viker was the current head of the Viker Family. They were an older noble family, but they had never risen to power and only managed to maintain power due to the hold they had on the wool and silk industry.
“So you are saying the Eieran Family has somehow managed to acquire enough wool and silk to sell, and they have lowered the price of it, which is driving more customers to them instead of you?” Hilda asked for clarification.
“That is correct,” Alexia said.
“Can you not lower the price to match or beat theirs?”
“If we did that, we would not even make a profit. We would lose money. I suspect the Eieran Family is currently taking a loss, but they believe if they hold out long enough, my Viker Family will eventually lose its place within the industry. Once that happens, they can raise the price.”
Alexia’s explanation made sense, and unfortunately, the Eieran Family had the money necessary to outlast the Viker Family. As a family that focused more on business ventures and turning a profit than martial prowess, they were easily the wealthiest among the Three Heavenly Families. They could easily outlast a middle-class noble family like the Vikers.
“I will speak with Alexander Eieran,” Empress Hilda said at last. “I believe healthy competition is good, but if he’s doing this out of malicious intent or to corner a new market, then his ambition will need to be curtailed.”
Hilda understood that competition was necessary for growth. One could not grow if they did not have someone or something to compete against, to push them to improve themselves, but there was a difference between competing and curb-stomping. The Eieran Family had more power than most families because of their wealth. If Alexander Eieran was trying to take control over a market he didn’t have his hands in, then it was Hilda’s job to curtail his ambitions so he wouldn’t disrupt the peace in Nevaria.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Alexia bowed his head.
It was a bit odd to have Alexia bow before her even now. Despite the appearance to the contrary, the two of them were actually peers. Hilda and Alexia were of similar age and competed during the Spiritualist Grand Tournament many decades ago. Alexia had lost horribly because Hilda had already reached the Third State of Spiritualism by then.
Hilda’s young appearance was, in fact, due to her prowess as a Spiritualist. Those who reached the Third State of Spiritualism had their life extended and remained younger longer. She looked more like Kari’s older sister than her mother for that very reason. Hilda had reached the Third State of Spiritualism when she was just twenty years old, which meant even now she only looked like a woman in her early twenties as opposed to a woman pushing on fifty.
Alexia left, and Hilda allowed herself a moment to relax as she waited for the next person to appear before her.
“Now announcing Lord Hagen Leucht here to see Her Majesty, Empress Hilda!” one of the guards at the door called.
Hilda was instantly put on guard. Behind her, the sound of metal clicking together echoed as Valence shifted. She couldn’t see him, but she could imagine how he’d placed a hand on the hilt of his sword.
A man who looked to be in his early forties strode into the room, dressed in resplendent but understated clothes. The doublet and jacket he wore were a dark color that made his appearance seem muted. Hilda was not fooled by his appearance, however. Hagen Leucht was the same age as her grandfather.
His youthful appearance did not bode well for her.
“Lord Leucht,” Hilda stated in a voice that was imperious and appeared unconcerned. “You have never been one to visit me without reason. What manner of trouble ails you that you have come to see me this day?”
“Empress Hilda.” Hagen stopped just before the stairs leading to her throne, took a knee, and bowed his head like a proper subject. “I come bearing concerning news. It seems my son has gone missing. I’ve searched for him all across Nevaria and not found a single trace as to where he might be.”
“So I see.” Hilda narrowed her eyes. “This is indeed troubling. Grant Leucht is a strong Spiritualist. His disappearance is concerning.” She paused. “I am guessing he has not traveled into the Demon Beast Mountain Range recently?”
Hagen shook his head. “Not since before the Spiritualist Grand Tournament.”
“Hmmm.” Hilda pretended to think, idly stroking the soft upholstery of her armrest. “I understand. I shall request the Nevarian Spiritualists to help search for your missing son.”
“Please do not trouble yourself so, Your Majesty,” Hagen said, raising his head to look her in the eyes. “I actually plan on searching for him with my family’s resources. However, I know that mobilizing my own forces could cause alarm, so I wished to inform you before doing so.”
So that was his game. Hilda understood that he was not mobilizing his forces to search for his son but likely to get revenge on Eryk for his son’s death. There was no way a man like Hagen Leucht wouldn’t know about what happened.
Unfortunately, Hilda’s hands were tied. She could not tell him not to mobilize his forces without reason. What’s more, if she were to oppose him on this, it would bring suspicion upon her family, which could disrupt the peace of Nevaria. The Leucht Family did not have the Eieran Family’s wealth or the Kriger Family’s martial prowess, but they did have many connections to Nevaria’s underworld. Many of the mercenary companies were under their employ.
That was another reason she wanted Eryk to head a sect. He would be able to curtail the Leucht Family’s influence to some degree.
“I understand. You may do as you wish,” Hilda said at last.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Hagen’s mask remained carefully in place as he stood, offered one more bow, and strode out of the room. Hilda watched him, resisting the urge to bite her lip. She hoped Eryk would be careful from now on.
Hilda kept her eyes closed as she sat in her large bath. The imperial bath was a massive and majestic thing. It looked more like a swimming pool than a bath. Columns lined the interior near the bath’s edge, stairs led down into it, and water sprouted from fountains in
the wall. The water was recycled through a series of small aqueducts.
Heat rose from the bath-water all around her, causing steam to drift through the air, stick to her skin, and form droplets that trailed down her flesh. She did not know how long she’d been in there; it could have been minutes or even hours. Now that her tasks for the day were all finished, Hilda felt an incredible urge to just relax.
Today had been trying.
When Hilda took the position of empress by beating the emperor in single combat, she had not imagined what kind of troubles such a position held. She’d been nothing but a naive young girl pushing herself forward with nothing but ideals. However, ideals could not rule a nation, a fact that she had learned very quickly.
While Hilda might not look a day past twenty-five, she often felt far older. Most days it felt like she was constantly fighting against the noble families to grant more concessions to commoners. Creating a school system for commoners to learn writing, mathematics, and history had taken nearly ten years to accomplish. It had only been within the last five years that public schools became a common sight. Similarly, allowing commoners who showed an aptitude for Spiritualism to enter the Nevarian Spiritualist Academy had taken twelve years of fighting.
While she had managed to push some of her most important reforms through, there were just as many or even more that she’d been forced to give up on. Hilda had learned that being empress did not give her full authority to do what she wanted as she had first assumed. It had been naive of her to think becoming the empress would let her accomplish all her goals.
“Mmm… but perhaps Eryk can do what I cannot,” she murmured.
Eryk Veiger was an anomaly. His strength was ridiculous. Even Hilda had not been that strong when she was his age.
Strength was cherished in Nevaria. Those who had strength possessed the right to do what they pleased. The reason noble families were able to do whatever they wanted was that they had more than just individual strength, but the strength of an entire family behind them, and that was also why Hilda could not always interfere in ways she wanted. She could not go up against an entire family, never mind a family that had formed alliances with other powerful families.
“Hey, dear. You still in there?” asked a familiar voice.
“I am here,” Hilda said.
“Oh, good. We’re coming in.”
She opened her eyes as three men walked into the bath clad in nothing but towels. Hilda might have been an empress and kept a cold, unfeeling personality when dealing with people, but she was still a woman with all the feelings and desires of one. Seeing her three husbands nearly naked caused heat to permeate her chest and crotch.
Among her husbands, Valence was both the oldest and the fittest. His chest was thick, the skin stretched taut across his muscles like it could barely contain them. He had a powerful V-cut that made him seem indomitable. His thighs and calves were likewise thick and bulging with well-defined muscles. His chest, arms, and legs were all covered in a fine layer of hair.
Rainer and Dante had similar figures. Both were relatively lithe, but that did not mean they lacked power. The chiseled muscles of their stomachs were drool-worthy. Hilda had spent many hours licking those stomachs both in and out of the bed.
“I heard you had a trying day today,” Rainer said as he climbed into the bath and sat on her right. Valence took her left. On the other hand, Dante began swimming. The imperial bath was quite deep in the center, so it was perfectly possible for someone to swim around.
Hilda sighed. “No more trying than usual, though I did have a rather unpleasant meeting with Hagen Leucht.”
Rainer nodded, a serious expression on her face. “Dealing with him can indeed be unpleasant.”
They did not mention anything more about Hagen or politics. There was a certain etiquette to bathing. The bath was meant to be a place not only where people cleaned themselves, but also where they relaxed. Politics were to be left at the door.
“It sounds to me like our dear wife could do with a massage,” Dante said as he swam over to them, a boyish smile on his face.
Rainer also smiled. “I do believe you are right.”
“Move forward, please,” Valence added.
Hilda scooted forward as Valence shifted until he was sitting behind her, and she between his legs. He placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, applying a gentle pressure that hurt a little at first before, like magic, the tension in her shoulders eased.
“Ooooh.”
Hilda did not bother stopping her moan as the tension in her shoulders began disappearing, as the knots from today’s accumulated stress were undone by Valence’s masculine hands.
Valence soon left her shoulders and moved to her shoulder blades, using his thumbs to apply pressure against the muscles there, slowly working the knots out like an expert masseuse. She imagined most people would be surprised by how gentle and precise he was. Valence did not look like a man who knew how to be delicate. His masculine appearance contrasted greatly with his sensitivities.
It was not just Valence who began massaging her. Dante grabbed her legs as he knelt in the shallow part of the bath, set them on his thighs, and grabbed her foot. Hilda nearly squealed when he applied pressure to the soles of her left foot. Her toes spasmed from the sensations surging through her. She not only spent a lot of time sitting, but she also spent a lot of time on her feet for the second half of her day, which meant they were always sore and sensitive.
“You have such cute toes, dear. They’re so small and dainty,” Dante said with a grin.
“Hmmm! Haaaa!” Hilda did not say anything, could not say anything.
The last among them, Rainer, had taken one of her arms and was slowly working into the muscles of her bicep. She could practically feel her body melting. Her arm was being turned into jelly by his technique.
“Hyk! Dante… you… ahhh!”
Hilda could not hold back her loud moan when Dante stuck her big toe into his mouth and sucked on it. Her toes were not super sensitive. It was more that the act of a strong man like him taking her toe into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, and drenching it in his saliva turned her on. Were she not in the bath, her leaking juices would have stained her legs.
“Ha… hyrk… hrnnnn!”
If Dante was the only one pleasuring her, she might have been able to still hold some basic conversation, but Valence had finished massaging her lower back. His hands had slipped around to her front and down between her thighs. She felt his fingers brush against the soft blonde hair of her snatch, then dip lower. Her breathing picked up when he spread her pussy apart. It became downright chaotic when his skilled fingers found her clit and pinched it.
Hilda had no defense against his actions. Her body shook as her first orgasm of the day washed over her. Pleasure filled every fiber of her body. It felt like her mind had blanked out, and when she came to, she was leaning against Valence as he slowly slid his cock along her pussy lips from behind. She looked down and saw his thick shaft covered in veins wedged between her lips.
The sight filled her with desire.
“My Empress,” Valence whispered in her ear, and unlike his normal cold voice, this whisper was filled with warmth and desire. “May I have the honor of shoving my thick cock into your needy pussy?”
“Yes...” Hilda breathed. “Yes. Fill my wanton pussy with your hard dick.”
“Awww. Looks like Valence got to her first,” Dante complained, though he was still grinning.
“It’s my duty as her first husband to please her before you,” Valence said with a straight face even as he ground himself against her.
“So says you,” Dante shot back.
“So says me,” Valence agreed.
Hilda would have told them to stop fooling around and just fuck her, but then, Valence pushed his head against her entrance and slid inside of her. She let out a low moan as he filled her up. He was the thickest among her husbands, the one with the most girth if not length. It
felt like her walls were being stretched to their limits to contain him.
“Fuck me,” Hilda commanded.
“As you command,” Valence said.
Valence did not start slow. She had not asked him to make love to her but to fuck her. Right now, what Hilda felt she needed the most was stress relief from a trying day. He pounded her pussy from behind, using the strength of his thighs to hit her in all the right ways. It wasn’t long before Hilda felt her second orgasm of the day. It was just as powerful as the first one.
“Hmm. It seems our wife is getting tired,” Dante said with a shit-eating grin.
“I propose we take this to our bedroom,” Rainer added.
Valence said nothing, but he slipped from Hilda’s passage, which would have caused her to whine in complaint had he not taken her into his arms and stood up.
“Guess Valence is down with the idea,” Dante said with a snicker.
“Let’s move quickly,” Rainer said. “We don’t want to be caught by the servants.”
The four of them slipped out of the bathroom, not even bothering to put on clothes as they crept down the halls. Had any servant seen them, Hilda was sure they would have been appalled. The empress and her husbands were wandering naked and wet down the hallway. The very thought of how, at any second, a servant could come by and see them made Hilda aroused.
Dante was in the lead. He peered around corners like an assassin on a mission, though that impression was ruined by his mischievous grin. He would gesture to them with his hand to either follow him or wait. She could tell he was having a lot of fun.
Finally, they made it to their bedroom.
Valence gently set Hilda on the bed, and Dante eagerly crawled between her legs, leaned down, and kissed her. She returned his passionate kiss with one of her own. Her desire and need skyrocketed. Dante was not the most skilled at sex—that honor belonged to Rainer, who could drive her wild with his technique—but he was the best kisser among them.
“How shall we do this, dear?” he asked.
“Slow. Gentle,” Hilda moaned as Dante rubbed and pinched her hardened nipples.
Wiedergeburt Page 13
