Scumbag Fantasy Short Stories & Novels

I’m from the Celtic family. The women in our bloodline possess a rare fertility trait, which means we’ve been politically married off to the Dragon Royals for generations. On my twentieth birthday, the Dragon King laid out portraits of his two sons in front of me and told me to pick a husband. Whoever I chose would inherit the crown and the entire treasury. I didn't hesitate. I picked Cael—the eldest son, infamous for his brutal, primal madness. Everyone’s jaws dropped. After all, the whole kingdom thought I was hopelessly obsessed with the younger son, Aaron. But only I knew the truth. In my past life, I actually got my wish and married Aaron, handing him the throne on a silver platter. But right after the wedding, he went behind my back with our family maid, Rose. When the King found out, he flew into a rage and exiled Rose to the Dark Lands. Aaron blamed me for everything and hated my guts. He looked down on my human status, parading a non-stop line of Rose-lookalikes in front of my face just to rub it in. Worse, when I got pregnant, he systematically swapped my prenatal tonics for a slow-acting poison. It killed me and my unborn child. Having a second chance at life, I decided to let him and Rose have each other. But what I didn't expect was that Aaron had reincarnated too.

Althea fought her way back to Argos for Lysandros and helped him reclaim the throne, only to find herself trapped in the enemy kingdom of Thrace, wearing a slave's collar for three full years. Through three years of mortal danger, being dragged behind chariots, and bone-chilling winters, Althea survived on a single conviction: her betrothed, Lysandros, would come to rescue her. But when she finally set foot in the royal city again, what awaited her was not an embrace. It was a heavy golden laurel crown pressed against her brow, the Sacred Flame seal clutched in another woman's hand, and a royal heir growing in that woman's womb. She clung to one last hope: perhaps they had cast her aside only because they believed her dead. Then a chance encounter drove home every word of the truth. The opening that had lured her headlong into the rebel encirclement had been left there deliberately by Lysandros and her foster father. From the very beginning, they had never intended for her to come back alive. Everyone assumed that she, left with nothing, would forgive the king and surrender everything her mother had left behind to the royal court. Althea burned the old covenant and pressed a blood-soaked thunderbolt pattern into a wax tablet. On the night of the Festival of Dionysus, the long-sealed old watergate would open. This time, she would not wait for the king, nor for the gods. She would carve out her own path forward.

In my last life, I fought for power, kept the books, and built alliances for my fiancé from the Fire clan until I had secured his position as heir. On the night of the victory banquet, he killed me with his own hands. He said Sophia was the woman he truly loved. I had taken her place and forced their love into the shadows. They had been conspiring all along, and even the child I had raised so lovingly was their illegitimate son. I died consumed by hatred. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the marriage contract was to be signed. This time I wrote Sophia's name on it.

I was once the Pythia, an oracle of Apollo. After marrying the late king, I became known as the Oracle Priestess. When my husband died in battle, I faked my death and returned to the temple. From then on, I devoted myself to protecting the capital with the gods' blessing. Then one day, they brought my daughter's body into the temple. She was covered in raw, unhealed wounds, and her eyes were still open. The attendants tossed her body, wrapped in nothing but a straw mat, onto the floor. Then they stood nearby whispering. "Poor princess. The king cared more about the Rose of Highcourt than his own sister. He let her suffer until her wounds became infected and she died in agony. "King Theron was the one who sent her to the beastmen for a marriage alliance. Duke Charles was supposed to marry Princess Callista, but he later fell for Naia instead." So that was what had happened. While I was hidden away in this temple protecting Ostan, my son had turned his back on his sister for another woman. He let Naia take Callista's place, then sent his sister to live among savages. Callista survived the beastmen and everything they did to her. When they were finally defeated, she must have thought she could come home and put it all behind her. But Naia still wouldn't leave her alone. She bullied Callista every chance she got. Then she framed Callista for plotting to hurt someone, and Theron had her thrown into the dungeon. As I held my daughter's body, I couldn't bear to imagine what she had gone through in that dark, waterlogged dungeon, where prisoners were interrogated on the upper level and executed below. A corrupt kingdom like this didn't deserve the gods' protection. I begged the gods to forgive me. If this was how they treated my daughter, then I no longer cared what happened to this country.