I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 152: The Distance That Burned

Zarius Valtrane, the man whose name made grown soldiers tremble, currently had a single, stubborn clump of face powder stuck in his left eyebrow. He could feel it. It felt like a tiny, humiliating weight, a reminder that he had allowed his fiancé and his sister to treat his face like a canvas for a tragic opera.

After breakfast, they went their separate ways. Cherion left with Philia for a walk, while Zarius withdrew to his study.

Inside, the atmosphere shifted instantly. The air, once thick with that suffocating, sugar-sweet tension, finally felt breathable again. Mostly. Zarius didn’t even wait for the latch to fully click before he broke character. The hunched shoulders straightened, the rattling breath vanished, and the "Dying Duke" was replaced by a man who looked like he wanted to set the entire castle on fire just to see it glow.

He moved toward the sideboard like a caged animal, all tight steps and barely contained irritation. Grabbing a damp silk towel, he began to aggressively scrub at his face.

"Gods above," Zarius growled, his voice no longer a weak rasp but a deep, dangerous rumble. "I feel like I’ve been dipped in a flour bin. If I have to breathe in one more puff of this chalk, I might actually fulfill their wish and drop dead on the rug."

He looked, quite frankly, like a disgruntled baker who had lost a fight with his own dough. But before he could do any real damage to the makeup, Marielle swooped in and stopped him.

"No!" Marielle barked, swooping in like a hawk and snatching the towel right out of his massive hand.

Zarius glared at her, but Marielle didn’t flinch. She never did. "Don’t you dare ruin our hard work," she scolded.

"It’s itchy," Zarius countered, though it sounded more like a sulk than a royal decree.

"It’s necessary," she shot back, waving the towel at him like a weapon. "The performance isn’t over until that Philia is back across the border and we’re staring at his dust. Until then, you are a walking corpse. Now, sit down and look miserable."

Grumbling something under his breath about the indignity of face powder, the Duke finally gave in. He slumped back into his heavy chair, looking entirely wretched with his face half-scrubbed and half-ghostly, a mess of smudged white and dark, brooding shadow.

The room fell into a heavy sort of silence, save for the scratching of a quill. Zarius pulled a stack of thick, cream-colored parchment toward him. It was time for the official report to the King. Every word had to be measured, every sentence weighed for hidden traps. He wrote of the monsters, the blood, and the victory, but when it came to the Hearth Stone, his hand paused.

He didn’t write about the tampering. Not a word.

He knew how letters had a funny way of being "intercepted" by "bandits" or simply getting "lost" in the transition between messengers. If the King, or whoever was pulling the strings behind the King, found out they knew about the corruption before Zarius could present the evidence in person, the North would be silenced before the spring thaw. No, that was a truth that needed to be spoken in the lion’s den, not sent on the back of a bird.

As the ink began to dry, Marielle sank into her own seat across from him. She let out a sigh so long and dramatic it seemed to deflate her entire frame.

"I’m never leaving this place again," she declared, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "I don’t care if the Capital burns or if the Southern seas rise up to swallow the coast. I am staying right here in the frost and the dirt. Oh, how I’ve missed this cold, beautiful home."

"Well," Elios muttered from the corner, his voice just loud enough to bypass the "internal thought" filter. "I suppose the wine cellar, and the rest of the castle, were much safer while you were away, my Lady."

The silence that followed was deafening.

She turned to him slowly, every movement controlled in a way that felt far more dangerous than a snap. Her violet eyes narrowed into slits that promised a very slow and painful demise. "What," she whispered, "was that, Elios?"

Elios’s face went from its usual frantic pink to a shade of white that rivaled Zarius’s face powder. He scrambled backward, nearly tripping over a footstool. "Nothing! My Lady! I...I was merely commenting on the... the stellar weather! Yes! Marvelous for the grapes! Truly a vintage year for the... the mountain berries!"

Flio, standing stoically by the window, didn’t even look over. He just glanced up, his lips moving faintly, maybe a silent prayer, or maybe counting down Elios’s remaining seconds.

Zarius, however, wasn’t looking at the comedy. His gaze was fixed on the door. "Cherion," he whispered, the name sounding like a prayer and a curse.

Cherion was currently out there. With Philia. The thought of it was like a slow-acting poison in Zarius’s veins.

"I don’t like it," Zarius said. "There’s something wrong with the Crown Prince’s fiancé. The way he looks at Cherion... it’s not right."

Flio broke his silence, voice quiet but firm as he stepped away from the window. His expression had turned uncharacteristically serious. "I agree, Your Grace. No matter how many times Philia calls them ’friends’ or ’old acquaintances,’ I don’t buy it. I’ve watched them. There’s history there. Not the friendly kind."

"Of course it wasn’t the friendly kind," Elios chimed in, still trembling but unable to stop himself from being helpful, "Lord Cherion’s man is now Lord Philia’s man. It’s quite a scandal, really. The nobles are probably buzzing with..."

He stopped abruptly as Zarius leveled a glare at him that could have frozen a volcano. The Duke did not like the phrasing. Cherion’s man? That was in the past. There was no need to bring it up again.

"Reiner and Ezek are with him," Flio reminded them. "And you know Reiner. Philia would need a literal miracle from his gods just to sneeze in Lord Cherion’s general direction without losing a limb. And Ezek... well, the boy seems desperate to prove he’s worth more than the dirt he walks on. They won’t let a hair on his head be touched."

The quiet of the study was suddenly, violently shattered.

It wasn’t a knock, it was frantic pounding, like someone was trying to break the door down with their bare hands. A muffled, panicked shout came from the other side.

Elios crossed the room in two quick strides and yanked the door open.

A guard stood there, a young recruit, his face drained of all color, his chest heaving as if he’d just run from the border and back. He looked like he was on the verge of a cardiac arrest.

"Your Grace!" the boy gasped, his eyes wide and trembling. He pointed a shaking hand back toward the hallway, his voice cracking with fear. "Please! You must come quickly!"

Zarius was already on his feet. "What is it?"

"My lord, Lord Cherion..."

He didn’t hear the rest.

Zarius was already moving.