Chapter 231

Albedo refused to cut off the mirror of remote viewing. A tiny part of her was annoyed with the human that was on top of, underneath, and alongside the Supreme Being. Their limbs entwined in a state of steady lust slaking hunger.

The human, she sneered at, appraising her as a woman appraised competition, and tilted her chin up in arrogance the Queen could not see as Albedo found the woman wanting. 'Perhaps not bad as humans go, but nothing compared to my divinely given perfection. And I require no makeup or artifice.' Albedo chuckled while the woman cried out as the Allfather found his rhythm.

That… that was what caught Albedo's eye more than anything else, what pleased her Lord, what he desired, what he wanted, what were his habits. At first glance, he seemed so uncertain, his touch went out toward her as if he was a child afraid of touching fire. As if it might hurt him, his eyes wide as if he had never seen naked femininity before. 'I would think he was a virgin… but that's impossible. For our Lord to have never had such bliss… it's unthinkable.' She shook her head hard enough to make her ink dark hair dance, her wings trembled, her hands drifted unthinkingly over her own body as she imagined her own hands as his.

The beings of Nazarick were not bound by the petty human concerns of monogamy or fidelity, the Supreme Being was Supreme, and could do as he liked. This woman as Albedo saw her, was no threat. 'I will be perfect forever… her life will end in the span of a breath compared to my immortality.' So it was nothing to the demoness that embodied the word 'lust'.

Only an object lesson in what her Lord liked, but it did provoke the question that still haunted Albedo's mind. 'How to get him to see me as more than the child of Lord Tabula Smaragdina?'

She moaned, her mind at once on her lustful self explorations while she watched her Lord claim a kingdom in the bedchamber of the embodiment of it, but also on the dilemma that lay beyond.

Albedo's hips undulated and her pheromones increased, it was only her desire that this all be private to her that kept her from screaming when the woman did. 'If My Lord was innocent… he is a quick study…' She teased her mind as she teased her body until at last her Lord finished claiming the Roble Holy Kingdom, for so she saw the act, the Queen of that country lay limp and satiated.

But Albedo was only beginning. And there was only one place she wanted to be when she finished, she whirled on her heels and hastened to the bed of the Allfather of Nazarick, the only place in the world she wanted to be, except in the arms of her lord.

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Queen Calca lay in the arms of the man she prepared to call her King, her arms trailed over his chest, his heart was still racing there, she tilted her head to look up at him. For all her prior innocence, she knew a look of guilt when she saw one.

"My Lord?" She asked with a whisper, her other hand pushed against the soft bear fur so that she sat up on her side, sweat ran down her bosom to fall on his skin when she leaned over him just a little. "Is something troubling you?"

"Many things." Ainz said, only for his eyes to widen a little when she laughed.

"You're not feeling… like you took advantage of me, are you? Or that you were taken advantage of…?" She raised a brow as if to say, 'I know you enjoyed it if that was the case…'

Ainz only looked at her while he tried to frame words for something he could not fully explain even in his own mind.

His left hand came over and pressed her wandering fingers down so that her palm was flat on his slick chest. "Ainz… I trust you don't mind if I call you that now…" She smirked a little, fairly daring him to mind.

He shook his head.

"Ainz, if that is the problem… I am a Queen, you are a King, this is how such things are settled, we each gain something for our people. This is a bloodless victory for us both. Maybe I dreamed of a life with my Kelart but-" his eyes flicked away from her face, and she cut herself off.

"Oh… ohhhhh… that isn't it, is it, Ainz?" Queen Calca asked, her little rosy smirk became a tiny frown, her hand pressed a little harder over his heart. "You are like me, aren't you… not that other way… I mean in that there is someone else you love?"

Ainz turned his eyes back to her face, their lustrous hue as bright as a cat in the dark. "H-" he started to say and then said nothing.

"Call it a woman's intuition. Tell me about her… is she some peasant in your Kingdom… or the illegitimate daughter of a noble…" She chuckled a little, "Or is she not even human?"

Ainz shifted a little under her touch.

It was Calca's turn for her eyes to widen. "Not human… This explains a great deal…" The human Queen looked away from him and then sat up, she faced the distant door and set her bedmate at her back. "This is a political matter. I don't expect you to love me. I-I doubt I will even see you often after you have done what you came here for." Calca said and slumped forward a little, her hands in her lap.

"But still… This is a surprise. So… will you at least tell me something about her… I shared my secret, will you let me wonder about what kind of woman has captured the heart of my King?" Calca asked, but still did not face him.

Ainz's heart raced faster and faster as she riddled out his private thoughts, and at least a large part of his sense of guilt. His hand came out, he rolled to his side, hesitant at first, she didn't look back at the noise of his rustling, not even when his hand pressed against her upper back and began to rub up and down.

"She is-" Ainz snapped his mouth shut.

"Go on… if she is not something to be ashamed of… at least we can confide in each other." Calca encouraged him, and turned to the side, sliding her legs against the edge of the bed and taking the hand that was caressing her back.

"She's the child of one of my dearest friends." Ainz replied in haste, throwing the words out faster than he could stop himself.

"He does not approve? Or would not if he knew?" Calca pressed, a sympathetic voice matched by finally looking down at where he lay.

"If I am being honest… I don't know. He is gone… long gone… I hoped I would see him again after he left, but it's been too long… I just can't believe he's returning now. She was left in my care, like all the others. My comrades, they left their children behind, and their children became mine, and now?" Ainz snorted as he vented for the first time.

Calca lay back down on the bed then, inching close to him, so that their faces were close enough that she could feel his breathing caress her cheek.

"Now she is an adult… beautiful, and in love with you… and she's from noble stock, I assume, but you see only the child?" Calca guessed, and the truth lanced through him like sunlight piercing night.

"Yes… but there is more…" He said, the weight of his action pressed on his chest and forced the words to flow off of his tongue. "I did… something terrible to her…"

Calca frowned, "You didn't molest her, did you…?"

Ainz violently shook his head, so much so that his loose dark hair whipped audibly against the sheets. "No!" He insisted, then closed his eyes, "Worse."

"Worse?" Calca frowned a little and kissed his forehead. "Go on, if I'm to be your wife… I'm to be a more intimate confessor than a priest."

"Magic… I am capable of magic of the sort you can't even begin to fathom… magic beyond even what your gods could use…" Ainz admitted, and Calca only held her tongue. The story of the battle on the Katze Plains had long since reached her ears, and all investigations of just what spell or even tier of spell he used, had come up empty. 'What did they say…? Even the most wild stories about the gods had nothing like this…'

"You don't believe me?" He asked.

She put an arm over his body, he was so warm,she inched herself closer and pressed her lips to his, the kiss she gave to him was long, deep, passionate, and she rolled him on his back and herself over top of him, pressing her breasts to his chest, and only then did she break it.

"You are the most powerful magic caster in the world," Calca said with confidence as she arched her back over him and then straddled him at the waist, "but I just pinned you." She gave him a playful wink and let out her little gilded laugh at his surprised expression. She then put a hand on his cheek and said, "Magic comes in many forms, and this is one of them. We researched your spell, the one you used at the Katze Plains against Baharuth, and we found nothing like it in even the wildest of our stories that even the priests consider mere myths. If you tell me it is greater than the gods… I am prepared to believe it."

Ainz's body relaxed under the Queen, she lay herself down on top of him, pressing her ear over his heart to listen to its beating. "So… what has this to do with what you think you've done?"

Ainz went on, "In a… particular place at a particular time, some kinds of magic could be done, and just as easily 'undone'. She was with me, and I… no words exist for this, but I used one of those magics on her. It was a mere whim, something I thought would never matter because I could immediately undo it. But then… the magic, I guess I could say it died, it was sealed away, perhaps that's the better way to say it. But either way, it is gone and even the gods couldn't unlock it again."

"You made her love you… didn't you." Calca's words were not said as a question, more like an accusation, and Ainz accepted it as such.

"Yes. I took who she was, and made her something she wasn't, and I can't fix it. I was entrusted with her care, and I destroyed her." Ainz put the back of his hand over his eyes, "I did a terrible thing, and compounded it by putting distance between us that tortured and tormented her, I was a selfish fool… and I don't know how to make it right, I don't think it even can be made right…"

Calca took that in, and listened to the rapid, jagged heartbeat. If she had any doubts about the truthfulness of her future husband, they died with what she heard inside his chest. 'The power of a god… and the foolishness of man… what a combination…' Calca thought and began to kiss the place where his heart lay, pressing the warmth of her lips there again and again.

She was fairly sure his hand was covering up quiet tears, she wanted to see, wanted to know, her eyes looked up his length from where she kissed the flesh over his heart, more than once her hands inched forward along his side, ready to take his wrist and pull it away. Part of her was sure, 'He wouldn't stop me, even though he can.' But pride was prickly, and her own heart felt near to bursting in her breast.

"I killed my first horse." Calca said out of the blue.

"What?" Ainz asked, "I… I don't understand?"

Calca rushed her words, pushing herself up against his body so that she hovered over him. "My horse… when I was little… Father gave me a beautiful horse, I loved it very much. I would spend hours brushing her mane, feeding her, she had a pure white coat, and bright, big eyes… most horses are actually stupid, did you know that? This one though, it was smart, I could see it thinking, if you know what I mean… I did everything with her, I wouldn't even let our servants wash her or rub her down, she was my greatest treasure. I took her out a lot, I practically grew up in her saddle." Calca laughed at the pleasant memory, then fell quiet.

"I… I took her out one day though, I was riding with one of my father's retainers. We went far, far out of the usual range. I think I was mad at my father about something… something inconsequential now, or it must have been, since I don't even remember it. But because we rode so far, and it was to an area I didn't know well… we ran into trouble. My father's retainer warned me it could be dangerous but I was so mad I didn't listen. A rain came on, really hard, fast, we tried to find shelter… and then near a river, part of the channel broke, and my horse fell in. My retainer, he grabbed me off of the saddle and saved my life. But my horse?"

Calca shook her head, "I saw her screaming whinny while she was swept away in the current. I struggled in the retainer's arms, but he held me tight and put me in front of him on his horse and got us away from the river."

"That was an accident." Ainz pointed out. "You did nothing wrong."

"If it was just me not listening to my retainer, maybe I would agree." Calca said with a quiet, childlike voice. "But after the rains stopped, I demanded that we go look for her, and now that I was out of danger, he was obedient. He raced down the river, and we found her an hour later, she was battered, bruised, broken, bleeding… broken tree limbs ran through her body like wooden spears… she was just flailing in the now damp riverbed. Just screaming the way dying animals do, kicking around like mad, trying to get up, but she couldn't." Calca said and paused to wipe her eyes, she let out a loud sniffle and swallowed with a deep gulp before going on.

"She was suffering… hurting so badly, I wanted to get a healer, a caster… I tried to tell the retainer," Calca clenched her fists and turned her knuckles into a deeper shade of white, "but he asked me, 'for her, or for you?' and at first I wanted to scream at him. But then I knew what he meant. She was dying… She was suffering… I could send for a healer, but there was no way one would make it in time. We didn't have any potions, I didn't know any herbalism and neither did he… so… I held out my hand, he gave me his sword." Calca held up her left hand, "It was big, compared to me. A knight's longsword doesn't weigh a lot, but they're big, and I'm sure I looked ridiculous, tramping through the mud holding a sword, I went around behind my horse, put the tip to her chest where I was sure I could hit the heart between her ribs… and pushed."

Calca swallowed, "I loved her, and I destroyed her."

"My… she… isn't a horse." Ainz pointed out and let his hand come away from his face to come up and brush Calca's tears away from the corners of her eyes.

"No, My Lord. But while you did do something bad… you're not taking responsibility for it either… you said it yourself, you put her at a distance and all it did was torment her… if there is no cure, nothing you can do to change it back… isn't it kinder to embrace it? You can't kill her like I did my horse… but you can make it right by accepting what's in her now." Calca pointed out, and patted his cheek.

"You may be the most powerful man in the world, but when it comes to the heart, you're a fool." She said, but she said it with a forgiving smile as if she expected as much.

Ainz took all that in, "I thought-" he finally began, but she again cut him off.

"I think I like you, Ainz." Calca said, and tittered a little, "That is a relief, I admit I was worried I wouldn't. But you thought wrong. There's no need to finish that sentence. Now… that we like each other… Can you manage a few more times before we sleep? I keep feeling like we're being watched… and it feels naughty… I kind of like it. Silly though, isn't it?" She laughed a little and took his manhood in hand to slip into her folds again.

Ainz sighed as he felt the tight embrace of her body again, and shared in her amusement and then in their mutual enjoyment… until just after she drifted off to sleep when the thought came to mind, 'The mirror?!'

'But what are the odds,' he wondered, 'that Albedo was really watching?'

Low, he was sure, and thus reassured by lying to himself, he drifted off to sleep, and in his slumber, he felt black wings and arms as soft as silk and stronger than steel, embrace him, and Albedo's voice was in his ear, "Make love to me…" She urged, and his night began again through dreams.