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

Chapter 440: Chapter-439

Ken and Mahir slid into the shadows flanking the doorway, resuming their roles as invisible guards. But the air between them and the Empress Regent had changed. The invisible thread that usually tied them to her body felt frayed, stretched to a dangerous limit.

"The southern tax yield reports, Regent," the Ministry of Commerce head began, bowing deeply as he slid a thick, leather-bound register across the obsidian. "We have adjusted the projections as you requested, though the merchant guilds are still complaining about the winter tariffs."

Elara didn’t pick up the book. Her vacant glass-bead eyes rested on the leather cover.

"The merchant guilds’ complaints contain a twenty-two percent margin of fabricated deficit," Elara stated flatly, her voice cutting through the room like a cold blade. "They will pay the full tariff. If they refuse, suspend their shipping licenses for forty-eight hours. The financial loss will correct their logic."

"Understood, Your Highness," the minister murmured, breaking out into a light sweat as he stepped back.

Usually, this level of absolute, unyielding precision was what made Ken and Mahir feel completely secure in her shadow. She was a fortress. She was an unbreachable wall of logic that no noble could ever manipulate.

But as the meeting progressed into its second hour, the anomalies began again.

Elara was drafting a dispatch regarding the northern border supply lines—the very lines Julian had corrected the calculations for. Her quill moved across the parchment in swift, perfectly straight strokes.

’Knock. Knock.’

The double doors of the war room didn’t just crack open; they were pushed wide with a lazy, careless swing.

Ken’s hand instantly flew to the hilt of his broadsword, his beast-kin instincts screaming to cut down the intruder. Mahir’s golden eyes slit into dangerous pins as his tail snapped rigid against his leg. The three ministers froze, horror clear on their faces. To interrupt the Empress Regent during a military and financial briefing was an offense that usually resulted in immediate imprisonment, if not worse.

Julian stepped over the threshold.

He had a light, woolen cloak thrown carelessly over one shoulder, his silver hair catching the glow of the room’s enchanted chandeliers. In his hand, he held a small, poorly wrapped bundle of dried northern mint leaves.

"I apologize if I am interrupting the downfall of an empire," Julian said, his baritone voice dripping with that smooth, mocking nonchalance. He didn’t bow. He didn’t even look at the ministers who were staring at him like he was a dead man walking. He walked straight up to the obsidian table, ignoring the lethal, radiating heat coming from Ken and Mahir in the shadows. "But the palace herbalist just informed me that the southern tea you drink is terrible for clearing cognitive fog. This is northern mint. You crush it, you boil it, and you don’t stare at it like it’s a tax fraud."

He dropped the bundle right on top of the southern tax register.

The room went so quiet you could hear the ash falling from the fireplace. The ministers held their breath, waiting for Elara to order the guards to drag the northern hostage to the dungeons. Ken stepped forward, his massive frame casting a shadow over Julian’s shoulder, his bared teeth glinting in the firelight.

"Prince Julian," Ken growled, his voice a low, terrifying rumble meant to shake the boy to his core. "You are disrupting an imperial briefing. Step back before—"

"Stand down, Commander."

The words were spoken without a single ounce of anger, but they hit Ken like a physical blow. He froze mid-step.

Elara didn’t look at Ken. She didn’t look at the trembling ministers. She slowly lifted her eyes from the parchment to look at the messily wrapped bundle of mint, and then up to Julian’s face.

"The variable ’cognitive fog’ is not present in my system," Elara said, her voice remaining in that direct, simple tone she kept exclusively for him. "My processing efficiency remains at one hundred percent."

"Right, because you’re a perfect machine," Julian murmured, a faint, bitter trace of his old smile touching his lips as he leaned slightly over the table. "But even machines need oil, Your Highness. Just take the mint. Or don’t. Throw it in the fireplace if you think it’s an inefficient waste of space."

Elara looked at the mint again. She didn’t call the doormat incident to mind. She didn’t say it polluted her workspace.

Slowly, her pale, perfect fingers reached out. She picked up the small, messy bundle and set it carefully on the corner of her desk, right next to her imperial seal.

"The asset will be preserved for evaluation during the next biological refueling cycle," Elara flatly decreed. She picked up her quill again, her eyes returning to the parchment. "You may remain, Julian. There is a chair in the secondary corner. The noise from your breathing is within acceptable auditory parameters."

Julian blinked, completely caught off guard. He looked at the empty velvet chair in the corner of the war room, then back at her cold, unblinking face. A breathless, half-stunned laugh escaped his throat. "You’re letting me stay? In a war council?"

"Your data regarding the northern terrain is relevant to the current dispatch," Elara said, not lifting her gaze from the paper. "Your presence is optimized for this segment."

Julian stood there for a long moment, the bitter, guarded look in his ice-blue eyes melting away into something incredibly raw and bewildered. Slowly, he walked over to the corner chair and sat down, pulling his cloak tighter around himself, his eyes locked onto the woman at the head of the table.

In the shadows by the door, Mahir felt a drop of cold sweat trace down his temple. His claws dug into the palms of his hands until he drew blood.

She hadn’t just tolerated the intrusion. She had rewritten the security protocols of the imperial war room on the spot. She was letting a foreign hostage sit in on state secrets, completely destroying centuries of military law, just because his "breathing noise" was acceptable to her.

Ken’s chest heaved in silent, suffocating fury as he stared at the bundle of mint resting next to the imperial seal. It was a piece of garbage from the north. A piece of garbage brought by a heartbroken boy.

And the Empress Regent of the world had given it a permanent place on her table.

The three ministers didn’t just leave when the council ended; they practically fled, bowing so low their foreheads nearly grazed the obsidian table before they scrambled out the doors. They didn’t dare glance at the Northern Prince sitting lazily in the corner, nor did they look at the two Beast-kin Commanders whose bloodlust was making the very air in the corridor vibrate.

Julian rose slowly from the velvet chair, stretching his arms with a deliberate, slow grace. The bitter tension that usually stiffened his shoulders had eased into something quieter, replaced by a strange, fragile curiosity.

"Well," Julian said, his voice cutting through the heavy silence as he walked back toward the table. He stopped just a foot away from Elara, looking down at her perfect, unbothered posture. "That was thrilling. I particularly liked the part where the Minister of Commerce looked like he was going to vomit from fear. You really know how to throw a party, Elara."