Dragon King's Harem Chapter 593. Empty Thrones I

Dragon King's Harem Chapter 593. Empty Thrones I

The battle was over.

But peace?

Yeah, that stubborn shit apparently missed the invitation.

It didn’t come with the end of the fighting. It didn’t magically descend from the broken ceiling because Elowen was dead and Seranaya had finally stopped moving.

Nothing like that.

Instead, while I stood there with Sela and Marissa still pressed against me, their breathing slowly calming after crying themselves raw, my brain had already started doing the thing I hated most.

Thinking.

About tomorrow.

About next week.

About the next stupid war someone would undoubtedly start because today hadn’t been traumatic enough.

The Dwarven throne was empty.

The Nymph throne was also effectively empty.

Which meant the next battle wouldn’t necessarily involve swords.

Probably worse.

Councils.

Succession claims.

Trade disputes.

Border tension.

Bloodline arguments.

Nobles pretending they were deeply concerned about tradition while secretly calculating which chair they could steal before anyone noticed.

And somehow, somehow, I already knew whose problem half of that would become.

Mine.

Because apparently being the World Protector meant becoming the exhausted father of every kingdom whenever their rulers decided to emotionally combust.

Technically, none of this should have been my battle anymore. Durharn was dead. Elowen was dead. Seranaya was dead. The assassination plot had collapsed. The poison attack failed to kill most of its intended targets.

But responsibility didn’t disappear just because the villains did.

I knew that.

And annoyingly, there was a part of me that kept replaying one particular thought.

I could have stopped Seranaya before she killed Durharn.

Yeah.

I could have.

I knew enough.

I had the evidence.

I saw the trap forming.

If I had moved earlier, restrained Seranaya, exposed Elowen, forced Durharn to listen, maybe the dwarven king would still be alive.

Maybe.

Big fucking maybe.

Because Durharn had already executed a noble for warning him. He had accused my wives. He had ordered his own guards to surround me, threatened their families, and eventually told them to kill me while Seranaya whispered poison into his ear.

If I had stopped everything sooner, what then?

Durharn would have hated me.

Not mildly disliked me.

Hated me.

He would have seen me as the foreign king who humiliated him at his wedding, restrained his beloved bride, accused his new queen, and interfered with dwarven sovereignty.

And Elowen?

She had already proven she was willing to poison an entire city.

If I embarrassed her publicly and let her walk away alive, what stopped her from returning the favor against my people?

Nothing.

Maybe next time it wouldn’t be a banquet.

Maybe she poisoned wells.

Fields.

Markets.

Children.

No.

I wasn’t going to play hero just so I could sleep comfortably with some imaginary moral medal pinned to my chest.

My people came first.

Always.

That was the ugly part of being king.

Sometimes the “right thing” became very wrong once you included everyone who trusted you to come home alive.

Still, knowing that didn’t make the weight disappear.

And now there was another problem growing beneath the ruins.

The dwarves and nymphs.

Not their crowns.

Their people.

That worried me more.

Kings could sign agreements. Queens could apologize. Ministers could exchange documents and put beautiful seals on parchment declaring that everyone was officially friends again.

Civilians?

Different story.

The dwarven people had been poisoned during their king’s wedding by a plot led by the Nymph Queen and Princess.

They would remember that.

Parents would remember watching children collapse.

Shopkeepers would remember customers falling in the streets.

Guards would remember being weakened before foreign soldiers entered their palace.

And nymph civilians who had nothing to do with Elowen’s coup would suddenly become easy targets for that anger.

Then retaliation.

Then revenge for the retaliation.

Then congratulations, everyone, we invented a hundred-year ethnic conflict because two crowns couldn’t behave themselves.

And guess who would probably have to stand between them?

Yeah.

Me again.

Wonderful.

I should start charging kingdoms emotional support fees.

By midday, the palace still looked like a god had stepped on it while drunk.

The main ceremonial hall was completely ruined. Half the ceiling was gone. Several pillars had collapsed. Ice still coated portions of the floor where Glayze had spread, though it was slowly melting into shallow pools mixed with ash and blood. Black flowers from Marissa’s final spell covered the stone around Elowen’s death site, strangely beautiful among the wreckage.

Bodies had been separated by faction.

Dwarven soldiers on one side.

Nymph soldiers on another.

Servants and civilians were being identified carefully before being carried away.

That part was quiet.

No shouting.

Just names.

And cloth.

Evelina spent hours helping the healers.

She moved from victim to victim, golden light flowing from her hands while dwarven’s healers worked beside her. Every time someone’s breathing stabilized, her shoulders relaxed a little. Then she moved to the next.

Sela and Marissa stayed close to me.

Very close.

Neither admitted they needed it.

I didn’t point it out.

Sela kept brushing against my arm whenever we walked, like she wanted to make sure I was physically there. Marissa did the same thing differently, her fingers occasionally catching the edge of my sleeve, holding for a second before letting go. Small things. Quiet things.

Honestly?

They hit harder than kisses.

The poison problem in the city was improving too.

Marissa’s antidote had been distributed by Al last night.

But not everyone got it.

Some had collapsed in locked homes.

Others lived in isolated underground districts where the antidote couldn’t reach them.

So the city was still full of groans, healers shouting directions, carts transporting patients, and frightened families trying to understand what had happened.

Nobody celebrated the wedding anymore.

Obviously.

By afternoon, the dwarven council had already decided Durharn would receive a king’s burial.

Which was slightly complicated because, well…

There wasn’t much Durharn left to bury.

Nobody wanted to say that aloud.

So they prepared an empty royal coffin instead.

His crown would be placed inside.

His ceremonial axe.

His armor fragments.

Several personal belongings.

I didn’t ask which ones.

There were boundaries even I respected.

Sometimes.

Then came the bigger headache.

Elowen and Seranaya.