"That was horrible…" Hana mumbles, then walks up to the stunned Roxanne and holds her hand to comfort her.

"It could've gone worse," Yunia points out.

"There's still a chance to salvage your relationship," Ciel tries to reassure her.

And the rest of the girls share a perplexed look.

I kiss Roxanne's hand lovingly, and she seems to regain her senses as she blinks repeatedly, then she gently pushes us away, freeing her hands, and adjusts her glasses.

"I'll be fine," she quietly replies, then walks forward and pulls her father into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Dad."

"Oh… don't be," Behrouz blurts out, then both of their faces warp in pain and they start to cry silent tears. "I missed you, my little Rox. I missed you so much."

"I'm sorry for running away…" Roxanne apologizes, then her voice fails as sobs take over her.

Taveez stares at them in confusion, not understanding why they're crying, but then she hugs them both at once to not be left out.

We stay silent for an awkward moment while their emotions subside, then Roxanne pulls him away to give Taveez another hug. "Thank you for the hug, Tavi," she cheekily whispers while drying her tears.

"[My name is Taveez!]" The girl complains in [Southern Maokai Language].

"[But Tavi is cuter]," Roxanne teases with a smirk.

And the little succubus looks away, deep in thought as she considers the pros and cons, then she nods in approval. "[Okay, but only you can.]"

Roxanne grins wide, gushing in happiness, then hugs Tavi again. "You're so cute!"

"Heey~…!" Tavi whines as she's already had enough hugs for today, then Roxanne releases her and stands up again.

"She's exactly how I imagined Roxanne would be as a child, minus the glasses," I remark and flash a smile to little Tavi.

"She is, but I think we've spoiled her a lot more than Roxanne," Behrouz admits and laughs softly.

"Me? Not spoiled!" Tavi exclaims and angrily crosses her arms.

"Just a bit," he teases her further.

"Not!"

"Yes."

"Ashlan!" She garbles her Maokai "no."

He laughs out loud and pats her head. "Okay, you aren't, but you have to keep being a good girl if you don't want to become spoiled."

She nods energetically. "Yes."

Then he turns to us, his tone now very gentle and courteous, "I apologize for what you've seen from us. Sanaz, my love, she… didn't take it well when Roxanne left home."

"Her anger is understandable, but her behavior isn't excusable," Yunia asserts, and Behrouz cringes subtly. "We wish for a friendly relationship with your family, so we won't press this issue."

Both his head and the tip of his dagger-tail nod slowly. "Thank you."

Roxanne sends him a sympathetic smile, and she has to hold herself back from hugging him again.

Behrouz clears his throat and completely recomposes himself, trading his gentle air for one that's more formal and butler-like. "The Housekeeper isn't here, so I'll guide you to the guest area where your men can rest," he politely announces.

Enomosa, who's been standing at the doorway, chimes in, "I advise to always keep a few escorts with you, your Highnesses. The men are all in fellowships, so we'll be able to know where you are through the bond."

I nod in agreement and ask out loud, "Will we be staying here all day? Perhaps we could allow half of them to visit a brothel nearby, and then they can switch with the other half once they're satisfied." I turn to Behrouz and give him a suggestive smirk. "Do you have any recommendations?"

He nods gently. "I do. If you're looking for something you'd only find in Xane, then I know the perfect place."

 

After a few minutes of getting things sorted out, we cross the estate towards the guest area with half of our men in tow.

The halls we cross through are rather chilly and solemn. Aside from the exterior having a thinly-veiled symbology, the rest of the estate seems to favor minimalism, though there are still quite a few sexually explicit statues here and there.

"Is Khadima still living in Mashoor?" Roxanne suddenly asks, the echo of her voice easily drowning out the heavy steps of our men, which were already muffled by the elven padding of their armor.

Behrouz stops and gives her a sad, sympathetic look that tears at Roxanne's heart as she immediately understands the meaning of it.

"I'm sorry, Roxxy, but Khadima passed away a year ago," he whispers softly.

Roxanne sighs and nods in understanding. The maid was already old and likely eager to join her late husband in Paradise.

After a moment of silence, Roxanne moves on and asks, "What about our home in Mashoor?"

"Sold. It's still there, but we rarely ever went back there, so it was only a drain on our funds."

"And our old house here in Xane?"

He shakes his head. "Also sold. That one, we had even less reason to hold on to."

Nearly everything she held dear when she was a child is now gone.

"It might be for the best," she soberly admits through [Bind]. "The only things I miss from that time are Shervin and Khadima."

The mention of Shervin jabs a pang of jealousy into me since he was her bodyguard, and also the one who took her first time, but Roxanne is so emotionally drained right now that she doesn't even try to tease me about it.

"His dick was bigger…" The usual Roxanne surfaces for a brief moment, and I just pat the bundle of blankets inside my soul space that represents her mind.

 

The servants prepare a long table full of snacks and refreshments (non-alcoholic only) for our men, and we leave them in the main hall of the guest area while we continue on to the backyard, and we're pleasantly surprised that it isn't populated with eldritch horrors (except for Ciel, though she won't admit to it).

Tavi immediately runs to the grass garden while Ciel gets interested in the small pedestal that holds a wide variety of marble balls.

Alissa convinces Aoi to join her, and the two of them each transform into the child-sized version of their bestial form, then they run to join Tavi.

Behrouz notices Ciel's interest and explains, "Taveez was obsessed with marbles a while ago, so we put this here for her to play with her friends when they come over."

"I don't remember bringing friends home," Roxanne suddenly blurts out, then blushes at the embarrassing revelation.

"You did. I remember," Behrouz softly replies, then his voice becomes a bit wistful as he adds, "Until we moved into the mansion."

"Ah, yeah, that's right…" She mumbles back and sighs.

Roxanne was born a poor commoner, but then everything changed when they found a treasure full of gold that let them buy one of Mashoor's fishing companies.

Ciel and Lina start playing with the marbles while we sit down at a covered glass table, then a servant comes out to serve us some cold tea. It seems that they rarely drink anything hot here, aside from the copious volumes of semen.

After delicately taking a sip of his tea, the awfully young-looking father breaks the brief silence, "Can you tell me about what you've been doing since you left?"

Hana smirks and glances at Roxanne, who subtly smiles. Now, this is something they're happy to talk about.

 

The mood slowly lightens up as Roxanne relaxes and returns to being the cheeky and cheerful woman I fell in love with.

Behrouz is quite a good listener, always reacting well to the tales, even when they get a bit dark, like when she got hurt by the Symbol of Hate or the mercenaries of Dawn of Fire.

He uses a momentary break in our tales to give his daughter some praise, "I never saw you as weak." -He smiles wryly- "Physically, yes, but the things you went through only confirm what I felt. You have a strong spirit."

"Though she's a bit crazy, too," Hana teases.

"A bit," Yunia emphasizes.

Roxanne chuckles like an evil lady. "Ohohoh, I love being a crazy bitch. I get all the excitement with none of the shame, unlike a certain person." And she shoots a not-so-subtle glare at the only haughty elf with a humiliation fetish at the table.

"If you're implying that Yunia feels shame, I respectfully disagree," I calmly interject.

"It's because you haven't pushed her hard enough," Hana remarks, and Yunia actually sweats cold, for once.

"It's this 'intense' love that I like so much about us," Roxanne suddenly confesses and blushes softly as we turn heated stares towards her.

"I'm very happy for you, little Rox," Behrouz kindly whispers with a smile, then pats Roxanne's hand with his dagger-tail, and his tone grows more sure as he states, "We're very proud of you, Roxanne. I'm sure that your mother will come around and tell you the same, she's just-…"

"Obsessed with creating a 'lineage,'" Yunia smoothly interrupts.

His smile loses some of its brightness, and he slowly nods. "It's because of her grandparents. We've been estranged from them since before you were even born, and it's that… hate for each other that made her become like this."

Something about everyone's reactions to this is starting to irritate me. "I understand her reasons, but it doesn't excuse her behavior," I begin by paraphrasing what Yunia said about it, but I'm just starting to lay down what I really think about this. "She wanted to use Roxanne as a tool to get back at her grandparents."

Behrouz's eyebrows knit together, and his thin tail hides behind his chair. "As a Lord, you should understand the drive for a parent to guide their children to inherit their legacy," he retorts tactfully.

I shake my head and narrow my eyes subtly. "I was born a commoner, I don't have anywhere near the same obsession with a 'legacy' as she does."

"But you'll still guide your children towards this path, right?" He tentatively insists, looking a bit concerned.

And I reply with a slow, deliberate tone for emphasis, "Yes, guide, not force or use." 

His frown deepens in irritation, and he becomes quiet.

"I've seen Roxanne's memories about her mother through Gify," I continue with a half-lie. "Did she ever ask what Roxanne wanted?"

"Gih," Gify backs me up.

And I see his delicate jaw clench as he swallows deeply.

"I was never asked about if I wanted to be a Lord," Yunia interjects as she stares at me intensely, her face so stoic that it's almost like she's using [Mask].

And the girls all start paying a lot of attention to our conversation.

"But your father should have," I affirm as kindly as I can.

But now, she starts to look rather upset. "What if I had said no? What if our children say no?"

And now, even Alissa stops to wait for my answer.

These questions evoke complicated feelings within all of us. We've all made sacrifices, made peace with the duties that we're each expected to fulfill, and bet our lives on that my "destiny" will take us somewhere… good. The matter of children and what we'll leave behind is very delicate to us, and not something that I can talk about without employing a lot of tact.

I send her a head pat through [Bind] as I gently reply, "That's a very difficult question to answer, Yunia, my love. But think of a Lord who didn't want the responsibility, would they really be a good Lord?"

"The more tempered rulers are those who didn't ask for it," Ciel's voice reaches our ears from far away, and this time, she doesn't use a teaching, but her own (and Lina's) perspective on history.

And I disagree with them, "Only if the focus of their rule is internal, with the intent to keep the nation stable. Add in an external threat, like an invasion, and they'd quickly get deposed, if their nation didn't fall already from their ruler's lack of decisiveness."

"Are you a historian?" Behrouz questions rather bemusedly.

"No," I answer flatly.

Lina comes over to us and decides to speak for herself, "For thousands of years, the 'focus' of rulers has always been 'internal' due to the empire dealing with any 'outside threat.'"

Behrouz raises an eyebrow, perhaps a bit confused about how they were both listening to our rather quiet conversation so well while playing marbles.

I nod at her, and she goes back to Ciel. "My point is that everything is relative, but there's a difference between the sacrifice someone makes for the responsibility of Lordship and the sacrifice Roxanne was forced into just for her mother to get back at her grandparents. To assume her answer just because that's how things were done doesn't make it right or fair."

Alissa snorts and continues playing, but before anyone can get a word in, Roxanne suddenly confesses, "I'd have said yes…" She gives her father and me a gloomy look, the cheerfulness from before now gone again. "I'd have said that I wanted to help Mom."

"Until you didn't," I continue for her. "Your parents should've both paid more attention to the signs of your depression."

"That's…!" Behrouz suddenly exclaims as he glares at me, looking quite offended. "She was grieving for her late lover! That's what we assumed it was!"

I hold the glare without yielding an inch. "Yet you let her mother berate her for ignoring the marriage partners that were arranged for her while she was still grieving."

Behrouz's unnaturally pale face flushes red as he struggles to contain his anger. "This is too much! Even if you saw through a nature spirit, who are you to say that to me?!"

My tail tenses up in anger and almost pushes the chair out from under my ass. "I-…!"

"Wolfy…" Roxanne softly calls me, her mood darkening even further to the point that I feel guilty for escalating this fight, though I refuse to apologize. I had a very similar conversation with Lily because of how her parents made her become an overachiever, and I just narrowly avoided becoming one due to mine.

An awkward silence befalls our table since it takes some time for all of us to process our emotions.

Roxanne stares at Tavi, a growing sense of dread holding her back from being happy about the fact that she now has a sister.

"I want to leave that in the past," she breathes tiredly.

"Even I know that you have to clean wounds before you can let them heal," Hana imparts a rare piece of wisdom, then threatens her with "snu snu" alongside this thought.

Roxanne sighs softly, a faint, wry smile gracing her thin, pretty lips, then she straightens her back as she starts to gather up her motivation. She's the last one of us that needs to get her shit together, and she seems to be ready to do it even if it's barehanded.

"I ran away, and now I'm tied to Wolfy and the Western High Forest, so I can't be used for Mother's lineage anymore…" She starts with a confession.

"Roxxy…" Behrouz whispers achingly.

She turns to her dear father and looks him right in the eye, a new determination blooming within her. "But I can help. We can help. The Ryder family is already standing shoulder to shoulder with the Holy Daemonic Council. The old cocks may have high 'Piety' or a few Blessings from the Humanoid Gods, but none of their families hold three Blessings, and that's not even including the fact that we had two Interventions in our favor!"

But he becomes confused. "But help, how…? They only care about the Old Gods."

And her tone grows steadier, emboldened by our instant approval of what she's thinking of. "Wolfy started the Ryder Royal Research Institute, but we have plans to expand it and add a school, one for all classes of society, so once Taveez is old enough to learn magic, she will come to live with us to study at the Institute."

"Roxxy, your Mother wants a Holy-…"

"If the Daemonic Council doesn't recognize the Holiness of our family, of our clan, then they aren't worthy of their Titles!" She declares, her horns glinting with unnatural sharpness as they harden along with her resolve.

Behrouz stares at her with a frown as worry and uncertainty tear at him.

Roxanne's decision, for she won't take "no" as an answer, has obvious potential to work, but it's an untested path.

Sanaz wants a lineage, and she'll only get it if one of her children becomes a "Holy Person," which is only possible in daemonic society if one gains enough political, magical, martial, or religious power. While Roxanne's path was straightforward due to her magical talent, Taveez's future is still uncertain.

"I won't let Tavi turn out like I did, even if it means that Mother will never have her lineage," Roxanne asserts, but that only makes Behrouz even more hesitant.

He turns his eyes away and observes his daughter as she plays hide-and-seek with Aoi and Alissa. The child seems quite clever, but my apex predator and my Misty Fox have to hold themselves back to make things fair.

Once found, the little succubus girl summons her bat wings and actually flies away quite fast, forcing Aoi to put some effort into catching up with her, only to let her go at the last moment.

"Sakli!" Tavi exclaims as she touches the statue, then she laughs and points at Aoi. "You're the vnebi again!"

Roxanne recognizes the sounds of northerner slang, and though she doesn't know their translation, it's easy to guess their meaning.

"Muuuh~…" Aoi groans inside my soul space. "I won't let her go next time."

"When did you learn Andraste?" Roxanne softly asks.

"Shortly after you left. It's the language of merchants, so we were forced to," He dryly replies.

Taveez is just as carefree and cheerful as Roxanne, though the latter didn't usually show it for most of her life due to how much pressure was put on her. This is what Roxanne wants to protect.

The little girl runs off to hide, but then stops in front of a hedge. Her wings leave a strong trail of mana, so she deliberates about whether or not it's feasible for her to climb it without getting her cute frilly dress torn.

Fox-Alissa peeks at her from behind an obscene hedge sculpture. "Hey, I'll show you my hiding spot," the cheeky fox stealthily calls for her attention.

Tavi's eyes open wide in wonder. "Really?" She whispers, but then Alissa runs away. "Ah!" And Tavi goes after her.

The trail that the little girl left behind is so strong that even we catch a whiff of her mana.

"She's already showing the signs of strong magic, and I bet she was born with [Summon Wings]," Roxanne remarks as we all observe them while they play.

That pushes Behrouz to make a decision, and the emotions roiling within his heart seem to settle, so he finally relents. "I'll help you convince Sanaz," he tiredly announces, his spiral horns now looking rather floppy.

The tension in Roxanne's body evaporates, and she finally smiles again. "Thank you, Dad," she whispers warmly.

"I advise that we make a plan," Yunia interjects, and Behrouz agrees with a sigh.

I suggest getting her drunk, but Behrouz shoots that down instantly because she knows very well how to be manipulative herself, and she'd rescind anything she said while drunk if we don't properly convince her. Even Behrouz trying to mollify her would likely backfire on us if she caught even a whiff of it.

We have to be upfront about it, so we discuss the precise words that need to be said.