The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 412: The Emperor’s work
The imperial study had become a fortress of paper and ink, a silent battlefield where the weapons were not swords of ice but testimonies and legal precedents. For days, the hearth had burned low, casting long, flickering shadows over the stacks of vellum that threatened to consume Soren’s mahogany desk. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment and the cold, metallic tang of Soren’s focused magic.
Soren sat at the center of this chaos, his obsidian crown resting on a side table, his hair disheveled, and his eyes rimmed with the red fatigue of a man who had forgotten the concept of sleep.
His mission was singular and absolute: he had to build an ironclad case. Vetra Nivarre was not merely a noble; she was the Regent Empress, a woman whose roots were intertwined with the very foundation of Nevareth’s power structure. If he struck her down with mere force, he would be branded a tyrant, a son turning on the woman who raised him. The court would whisper of a personal vendetta. They would say he was a puppet of his fire-blooded wife, clearing the path for Eris’s vengeance.
To destroy Vetra, he had to use the one thing she had always manipulated: the Law. It had to be legal. It had to be formal. It had to be just.
"Aldric," Soren said, his voice sandpaper-rough. He didn’t look up from the document he was annotating. "Where is the report from the mages?"
Aldric stepped forward from the shadows of the bookshelves, placing a heavy folder on the desk. "Here, Your Majesty. They have finished the analysis of the silver ring. The residue is unmistakable....it wasn’t just dark magic; it was a tethering curse designed to siphon life-force from the host to fuel a secondary anchor. It matches the signature found in the Solmire archives regarding forbidden soul-binding."
Soren took the report, his jaw tightening. This was the cornerstone. Caelen’s testimony had been recorded the previous afternoon... He had detailed the moment Vetra handed him the silver band, the way she had whispered promises of reclaiming his lost love, and the tempting, seductive pull of the curse as it took hold. It was the testimony of a victim, and it was devastating.
But the ring was only the beginning. Soren’s eyes drifted to the list of charges he had been refining.
The demon summoning in the outer district was the most public of her crimes. The aftermath... the scorched earth, the lingering stench of sulfur, and the tragic death of citizens... had left a trail of witnesses. Soren had mobilized his most trusted investigators to gather statements from the survivors.
But the most gruesome evidence sat in a sealed ledger at the corner of his desk: the prisoners.
To power the ritual for the demon summon, Vetra had authorized the "transfer" of a number of low-born prisoners from the high-security block. They hadn’t been moved.
They had been taken to her private laboratory and frozen to death, their life-essences harvested while they were still conscious. The recovery of their bodies... blue-lipped, eyes wide with terror... had been a sight that even Ryse had found difficult to stomach.
Finally, there was the Grimoire. Eris had retrieved it that morning, and though Soren had forbidden her from active involvement, the book itself was a smoking gun. A stolen artifact from the Solmire crown, found in the possession of the Regent Empress of Nevareth. It proved a long-standing conspiracy that predated the current conflict.
"It’s a mountain of blood," Soren whispered, his fingers tracing the edge of the ledger.
"It is enough to hang her ten times over," Aldric agreed quietly. "But the Nivarre loyalists are already beginning to stir. They are calling it a betrayal of blood. They say you are doing this to appease the Fire Queen."
Soren looked up then, his sapphire eyes flashing with a cold, predatory light. "Let them cry foul. They’re free to claim I am a traitor to the woman who raised me. Vetra didn’t raise me; she sculpted a weapon and expected it never to turn its edge toward her. She thinks she can hide behind the guise of ’motherhood’ and ’regency.’ She is wrong."
He leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight. "That is why the process must be flawless. We will not have an execution in the courtyard by nightfall. We will have a trial. We will present the ring. We will call the witnesses. We will show the bodies of those ten men. When I am done, there won’t be a person in this empire who can look at her without Revulsion."
He spent the next several days in a state of hyper-fixation. He barely left the study, his meals brought to him on trays and often left untouched. He reviewed every document three times, looking for any loophole Vetra’s supporters might exploit. He strategized with his legal advisors, simulating their defense and crushing it with physical proof.
He was busy. He was exhausted. And, if he were honest with himself, he was hiding.
Being in the study, surrounded by the objective reality of crimes and laws, was easier than being in their bedchambers. It was easier than looking at Eris and wondering if the love she had confessed for Caelen in her sleep was the only "real" thing in their marriage. Here, he was the Emperor. Here, he was a judge. Here, he didn’t have to feel like the man who had settled for the fragments of a broken heart.
Every time he thought of returning to her, the echo of her voice calling Caelen’s name in the dreamscape clawed at his heart. He couldn’t face her, not yet. Not while he was still feeling like a second choice, a man whose love was a consolation prize.
The work was a distraction, a way to drown out the echo of her whispers. He threw himself into the legal minutiae with a desperation that bordered on manic. He would secure his empire. He would secure justice for citizens and the frozen prisoners. And perhaps, if he worked hard enough, he could convince himself that the hollow ache in his own chest was just fatigue.
Late into the fourth night, Soren picked up the quill again. He began to draft the opening statement for the High Council. The ink was dark, the words were sharp, and the man who wrote them was as cold as the ice that frosted the windows of the room.
He signed the final witness summons, the imperial seal hitting the wax with a sound like a hammer on a nail. He was ready. The trial of the century was no longer a possibility; it was an inevitability. And Soren would make sure it was a masterpiece of ruin.
