The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 411: Saint

The air in Caelen’s chambers had transitioned from the heavy, metallic scent of ritual magic to the crisp, clean smell of antiseptic herbs and fresh linen. It was a space of recovery, quiet and sun-drenched.

Eris stood outside the door, adjusting the cuffs of her clothes. She shouldn’t have been here. The healers were more than capable, and her own schedule was packed with the logistical nightmare of Vetra’s upcoming trial.

But Rael had looked at her over breakfast with those wide, earnest eyes, eyes so much like the man inside, and asked if "Papa" was still hurting.

She couldn’t refuse the boy. And so, under the guise of a professional follow-up, she entered.

Caelen was sitting up in bed, propped against a mountain of silk pillows. The deathly pallor had been replaced by a faint, healthy flush, and the bruised shadows under his eyes had begun to recede. He was reading a report, but he set it aside the moment she stepped in.

"How are you feeling?" Eris asked. Her tone was measured, neutral, professional, the voice of a consultant checking a ledger.

"Better," Caelen replied. His voice was still slightly raspy, but the jagged edge of pain was gone. He looked at her directly, his gaze steady. "Thanks to you. The healers say the extraction was... unprecedented."

"It was necessary," she said, stepping closer. "I need to check the core. For remnants."

She didn’t wait for permission. She held her hand inches above his chest, closing her eyes to feel the thrum of his mana-circulatory system.

In the past, this proximity would have felt like a battlefield, a tensing of muscles, a preparation for an insult or a plea. Now, it was oddly quiet.

"The core is healing well," she murmured, her magic scanning the delicate architecture of his spirit. "The scarring is minimal. No traces of the curse left. You’ll make a full recovery, Caelen. You might even find your mana capacity slightly increased once the tissue knits back together."

"Good to know," he said. He wasn’t looking at her with the desperate, suffocating longing of the garden. He was just... observing. He watched the way her brow furrowed in concentration, the way she carried herself with a new, grounded authority.

The conversation shifted. For the first time in two lifetimes, they weren’t speaking as enemies or as a bitter, failed couple. They spoke as people. They talked about Rael’s progress with his wooden sword; they discussed the logistics of the transition in Solmire; they touched on the evidence being gathered against Vetra.

It was almost friendly. It was a strange, alien dynamic, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

As the days passed, the visits became a routine. Eris would stop by every twelve to twenty-four hours, ostensibly to monitor the core’s stabilization, but the check-ups grew longer.

They talked about the empire, about politics, and occasionally, shockingly, they laughed. A dry, shared observation about a particularly pompous Duke would lead to a genuine moment of mirth that didn’t feel like a trap.

They were becoming friends. Genuinely. For the first time since they had met as children in a world designed to tear them apart, they were finding a middle ground. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

But there were moments, when Eris turned to leave or reached for a tray, that Caelen’s expression faltered. His eyes would linger on the line of her jaw or the way her hair caught the morning light.

The love was still there. It wasn’t the obsessive, destructive fire that had led him to the ring; it was something quieter, more resigned. It was the love of a man who had accepted he would never possess the sun, but still found himself warmed by its light. It lingered in the pauses of his sentences and the way he said her name, with a softness that acknowledged everything they had lost and everything she now was to someone else.

While the palace celebrated the King’s miraculous recovery, Ophelia lived in the silences.

From the doorway of the adjoining sitting room, or the shadowed corner of the hallway, she watched. She watched Eris Igniva, the woman the world had once called a monster, walk into her husband’s room with the confidence of a savior.

She heard them. She heard the low, easy cadence of their voices. She heard Caelen laugh, a sound he had barely gifted her in the months of their marriage. They were closer now, as friends and former enemies, than they had ever been as a husband and wife.

The realization was a slow-acting poison. Ophelia leaned against the cool stone of the corridor, her hand resting on the swell of her stomach. Eris was different. She wasn’t the screaming, impulsive villainess she grew up with. She was calm. She was kind. She had saved Caelen’s life when Ophelia’s own light magic had proven useless.

And then there was Soren.

Ophelia remembered the way Soren used to look at her. Before the marriage, before the war, she had known the Emperor of the North held a soft spot for her. She had enjoyed that attention; it had been a safety net, a gentle hum of admiration that made her feel special.

Now, when Soren looked at her, he saw a "Lady" and a "Friend." But when he looked at Eris? He looked like a man who had found the beginning and end of the world. He was stupidly, irrevocably in love with the woman who had supposedly been his political rival.

Caelen was the same. Ophelia had married him believing she was the light to his darkness, the "good" woman who had finally won his heart after the nightmare of Eris. But the way he looked at Eris now, with that quiet, soul-deep respect and lingering ache, was something he had never offered Ophelia. Not even in their most intimate moments.

The truth began to crystallize, cold and jagged.

It was never about her in the first place. It had never been. If what they had was written as a book, then she was nothing more than a disposable woman.

She was the distraction. She was the consolation prize. She was the "safe" choice for two powerful men who were both secretly, or not-so-secretly, obsessed with the same woman.

Eris Igniva had the hearts of both the King of the South and the Emperor of the North, and the most infuriating part was that she didn’t even seem to want them.

She was just living her life, being brilliant and redeemed, while Ophelia was left to hold the scraps of a marriage built on a rebound.

Something shifted in Ophelia’s chest. It wasn’t a sudden descent into evil, but a small, dark seed of bitterness taking root in the fertile soil of her resentment.

Why does she get everything? The thought played on a loop. Why do I always lose to her? I followed the rules. I was kind. I was patient. I was the saint. And yet, she is the one they worship.

The resentment grew quietly, like a plant in a cellar, white and reaching for a light that wasn’t there. Ophelia didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. Instead, her smiles became tighter, more calculated. Her hands stayed clenched in the folds of her silk skirts.

When Eris would walk past her in the halls, offering a polite, distracted nod of "How are you feeling, Ophelia?", the younger woman would respond with a perfect, practiced grace.

"I am well, Empress. Thank you for asking."

But her eyes, wide, blue, and previously so innocent, now tracked Eris with a new, active observation. She was no longer just a passive observer of her own life. She was watching. She was measuring. And for the first time, the "Saint" of Solmire was beginning to wonder what it would feel like to see the "Villainess" finally lose.