Herald of Steel

As the morning rays filtered into Alexander's room, his very first memory after waking up was that of an intense splitting headache and an extremely painful throat.

His entire body felt very heavy and when Alexander tried to speak, he found it very difficult even just to swallow a gulp.

In fact, simply opening his eyelids hurt.

Alexander instantly understood what was happening to him, i.e.- his previous worries had really come true and yesterday's dip in the freezing cold water had come to bite him back.

He was running an extremely high fever.

This made the man groan in his heart because he had a lot to do today- the most pressing of which was discussing what to do regarding Anoon and Achillas with Lady Miranda.

And Alexander was quite eager to do that because the sooner he could get that done, the sooner he would be able to come up with his next strategy. Alexander even thought he could reinforce his forces with these new deserters once they were processed, something he was in absolute dire need of.

So initially he tried to force his way through the pain.

*Cough*, *Cough*, *Cough*,

His efforts were rewarded with this cracking cough as try as he might, his willpower proved too weak in front of his grave, debilitating condition.

This croaking noise was enough to quickly rouse the lady sleeping next to him out of her slumber and even from a distance she could feel the heat coming out of Alexander's body.

Touching him caused Lady Nanazin to let out a whispered shout,

"By the gods! Alexander!"

Alexander was burning up!

And judging by his temperature, he was burning up quite badly.

It felt almost painfully scalding to touch him, while to Alexander, the same, normal temperature soft, supple hands suddenly felt unnaturally cold and chilly, almost like ice cubes that were being dragged over him.

"I'm…. ahhhh mmmm!"

Towards the alarmed shout, Alexander tried to first reassure her that he was fine.

However due to his sore throat, he found it too difficult to simply produce any coherent words, and when he tried to look at her, just the dim wintery sunlight caused his eyes to sting the moment he tried to open them.

Alexander was foolish to even try such a thing and could only let out pained moans while cursing his current state.

"Rest. You don't need to do anything today,"

Spotting Alexander's intense condition, Lady Nanazin naturally ignored all his attempts and quickly made sure that he got comfortable.

She canceled all his appointments for the day and then had him all wrapped up in layers upon layers of blankets, thus making sure he did not have any way of getting up today.

So for the next two days, Alexander found himself mostly lying and sleeping in his room, with a wet cloth on his forehead and no one to disturb him with anything.

The only thing Alexander needed to do back then was to periodically wake up and eat a kind of porridge like traditional soup that had various local herbs and remedies mixed in it, as prescribed by his personal physician, and then go back to sleep.

Almost everything else was taken care of by the large number of maids assigned to him by Lady Miranda, or the large entourage of men who were his bodyguards. The only thing he really needed to do by himself was to go to the bathroom.

And amongst all of these 'servants', the person who chose to stay closest to him at all times was unsurprisingly Lady Nanazin.

This queen had stuck to him like glue all day and all night, twenty four seven, despite the fact that there were so many others, and even forbade anyone from approaching Alexander.

She would personally wipe his body down, hand feed him the soup at every meal, and of course sleep beside him at night.

Towards all these actions, many of the maids and men gave the regal lady subtle looks, especially those who knew of her true identity.

These actions certainly did not befit a woman who was married to another man. And given the strict monogamous nature of Sybarian society, many thus found this open display of affection by the adulterous couple extremely distasteful.

However, at the end of the day, none of them dared to slight either of the pair in any way, knowing they were simply too small and insignificant to judge these bigshots, especially when these bigshots were from other, distant lands.

Most of them chalked it up to cultural differences.

As for people who could comment, well, Lady Miranda turned a blind eye to all this because frankly, it did not concern her one bit, Lady Parthia internally wrinkled her brows at the immorality of the act but quickly found she had no moral high ground to stand on, so quickly started to pretend this was all normal, while the one at the center of it all, Alexander faced the whole situation with a very complicated heart.

On one hand, he could see the other side's feeling for him to be truly genuine, as there were many wives who did not take care of their husbands as well as Lady Nanazin was doing.

But this also made him frown at how he was going to reciprocate it.

Should he pretend to not notice and try and keep the status quo as was?

This would be the ideal case for Alexander as it would let him enjoy all the benefits and enjoyment of being with a married queen without any of the drawbacks.

They could enjoy each other's company when the mood suited them and go their separate ways when it changed, letting Alexander be very flexible with his approach.

However, he also knew it was the least likely to succeed.

And it was surprisingly not just because such a relationship was bound to get exposed sooner or later.

Ptolomy had clearly shown how little he cared for his wife, so even if she threatened to leak their affair to the king, given his apathy Alexander was confident he would at best have to pay a certain fine to smooth this over.

This was because as far as he knew Ptolomy was currently in quite a bit of debt as he tried to buy the various nobles' loyalty as well as restore his lands following the intense drought and the subsequent war.

There had already been letters sent to Alexander regarding this, subtly asking him for a 'loan'.

They were of course flat out rejected at the time since Alexander knew these were not actually loans in Ptolomy's eye but more like taxes, ones that would never need to be repaid.

So he used the excuse that he had just had a war with Tibias that required hundreds of millions of ropals in men and material, and whatever he had left would be needed to restore the war torn lands to deny the request.

However, if push came to shove, Alexander could easily offer these few tens of millions of ropals for the man to forgive and forget this

And so, in reality, Alexander's greatest opposition surprisingly came from the lady herself.

Lady Nanazin had clearly indicated that she wanted to break away from Ptolomy completely, not simply wanting to settle for a status quo. And the way she wanted to do so seemed to be by having a child with Alexander.

Because she knew this was the absolute sure fire way to do it.

If the lady was to get pregnant, the equation for Alexander to appease Ptolomy would completely change If

Not only because that would break the tacit understanding between the two parties had in this gross tradition, i.e.- enjoying another's spouse but never producing bastards, but much more than that, if it was to be a boy, it would also pose too a grave challenge to Ptolomy's succession.

No sane man would allow this.

It was knowing this that the queen would not only wildly swing her hips and beg Alexander to 'breed her' or 'impregnate her' during their many session, but also would always try to make Alexander finish inside her, such as by locking her legs around him and pulling him closer towards her.

Alexander lost count of how many times he had filled her baby room with his gift till now, making the still very tight snatch overflow with his creamy goodness for he found the sensation exquisite.

And although that had not been a problem till now because they were still using the herbal contraceptives, there were days Alexander could instinctively feel the fertile lady's womb was ovulating and he feared one of these days, she was going to ask to do it 'raw', and he could be unable to say 'no'.

Of course, given Alexander's huge position and Lady Nanazin's absolute powerlessness, he could forcefully deny her request and make her obey regardless.

But given how much this innocent lady had suffered throughout her life, he felt too much of a scum to use her and then heartlessly discard her just like that.

That's why even though Alexander knew this would likely bring disaster to him, he found it too hard to reject her.

'I will have to find a comprise. Maybe make her disappear or give her a new identity.' He thought to himself.

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