Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

Chapter 408: Chapter-408

But as Elara’s eyes scanned the elegant, sweeping script of the main brief, her eyes narrowed slightly.

The delegations weren’t coming for Samuel. They were coming for her.

Inside the portfolio were five distinct, highly detailed marriage proposals. Each one was backed by a powerful foreign kingdom, and each one came with a strong, unified endorsement from the domestic imperial nobility.

Elara leaned back in her chair, the leather creaking softly in the quiet office. *What nonsense is this?* she thought, though the thought was entirely clinical, devoid of actual heat.

She turned the pages, examining the attached portfolios of the suitors. Visually, the men were exceptional. The portraits showed sharp jawlines, poised postures, and clear eyes. Their backgrounds were immaculate—they were highly educated, trained in military tactics, fluent in multiple languages, and possessed significant personal wealth. They were, by all objective human standards, incredibly good-looking and immensely talented.

Normally, a retired emperor who had explicitly stated her lack of interest in marriage would have been left alone. But the portfolio made the reality of the situation glaringly clear: the nobles were forcing her hand. They were putting immense, coordinated pressure on the imperial house to ensure Elara accepted one of these offers.

If you asked a sentimental person why the nobles were doing this, they might say it was out of concern for the princess’s future, or a desire to see her happy. Elara knew better. The nobles were forcing this because they were terrified of her.

When Elara had been the emperor, she had worked ninety percent of the day, leaving herself absolutely zero time for a personal life. Any marriage proposal that came across her desk back then was summarily rejected before the ink could even dry. She had been too busy hunting down corrupt factions, balancing the treasury, and rewriting the legal codes to care about alliances of the heart.

But right now, the landscape had shifted. Everyone within the empire—and every neighboring kingdom outside of it—knew the truth: Samuel wore the crown, but Elara held the true weight of the empire. She was the one who had cleared the bloodline. She was the one who still signed the critical ten percent of administrative documents that kept the kingdom from fracturing. She was, without question, more powerful than the emperor himself.

To the domestic nobility, a woman like Elara—unmarried, unbound by an alliance, immensely powerful, and holding the pure imperial bloodline—was a massive, unpredictable wildcard. As long as she remained single, she was a threat. She could choose to take the throne back tomorrow, or she could marry a rogue faction leader and completely upend the balance of power. By forcing her into a foreign marriage alliance, the nobles hoped to either anchor her with domestic responsibilities or, ideally, export her immense influence to another kingdom entirely, leaving Samuel easier to manipulate.

Elara didn’t find it strange that they were trying this. It was a logical political countermove.

What made her pause, however, was the actual quality of the prospects. She laid the five portfolios out across her dark wooden desk, studying them side by side. For the first time in her life, she didn’t immediately reach for the rejection stamp.

She genuinely looked at them, evaluating their worth not as husbands, but as assets.

Every single one of these men shared a specific, crucial trait that Elara found highly favorable: they were not the eldest sons of their respective royal houses. They were second or third princes.

To a traditional romantic, being a younger prince meant less status. To Elara, it was a flawless administrative advantage. Because they were not the direct heirs to their own foreign thrones, their marriage to her would not create a messy, convoluted conflict over succession. They wouldn’t be distracted by the need to return home and inherit their fathers’ kingdoms, nor would they bring a foreign court’s direct sovereign baggage into her home territory. They were free agents of royal blood.

Elara picked up her teacup, taking a slow sip as her analytical mind began to calculate the sheer volume of benefits this "nonsense" could provide.

If she agreed to marry one of these men, the immediate political leverage would be staggering. She wouldn’t just be accepting a husband; she would be acquiring a massive, multi-layered trade empire. Looking at the second prince of the Western Kingdom, his portfolio came with an implicit guarantee of exclusive maritime trade routes that the empire had been trying to negotiate for over a decade. The third prince of the Northern Coalition offered a permanent non-aggression pact and shared access to the rich iron mines along the border.

By playing along with the nobles’ forced hand, she could extract an unprecedented number of high-value deals for the kingdom. She could secure the borders, stabilize the economy for the next fifty years, and give Samuel the ultimate safety net—all with a single signature on a marriage contract.

The emotional aspect of marriage—the concept of sharing a life, a bed, and intimacy with a stranger—didn’t factor into her calculations at all. She was already sharing her bed with Ken and Mahir, an arrangement that perfectly suited her physical needs and provided the sensory distraction her quiet mind required. A political husband would simply be a desk-bound colleague who happened to wear a matching ring. They would have separate quarters, separate duties, and a shared interest in imperial efficiency.

Demerti walked into the office a few moments later, his arms laden with the daily reports. The moment his eyes fell on the five foreign portfolios laid out across her desk, his expression instantly shifted from professional focus to pure, unadulterated dread. He recognized the seals immediately.

"Master..." Demerti started, his voice tight as he carefully set the reports down. "The foreign ministry told me the dispatches had arrived. The nobles... they have been organizing this behind the scenes for three months. They are planning to bring it up in the imperial court tomorrow morning to corner His Majesty, Samuel."

He looked at Elara, searching her face for the familiar cold anger or the flat dismissiveness she usually displayed toward the nobility’s schemes.

Instead, Elara looked back at him, her expression entirely serene, almost thoughtful.

"The nobles have executed a highly coordinated logistical maneuver, Demerti," Elara said, her voice dropping into its usual even, flat cadence. "The timing is optimal, and the selection of candidates shows a rare flash of intelligence from the council."

Demerti blinked, completely thrown off balance by her lack of irritation. "Master? You... you aren’t going to execute the ministers who signed off on this pressure?"

"Why would I execute them?" Elara asked, tapping the portfolio of the Northern prince. "Look at the tariff exemptions offered in Appendix B. If I marry this man, our agricultural sectors will see a fourteen percent increase in profit margins by the next harvest cycle. It is a quite good prospect for the kingdom."

Demerti stared at her, his jaw slightly slack as he realized that while the entire court was holding its breath waiting for the princess’s wrath, Elara was sitting calmly in her chair, treating her own forced marriage proposals like a highly lucrative business ledger.