The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 460: Complicated
The evening feast in the Great Dining Hall was an exercise in strained endurance, a theatrical performance of domesticity held under the watchful, judgmental eyes of the Nevarethian elite.
Despite the storm howling outside, the hall was stiflingly warm, lit by massive chandeliers that dripped wax like slow, golden tears.
Bjorn was currently the primary source of disruption. Restless from the day’s confinement, he had taken to prowling the perimeter of the table, his predatory presence scaring the younger servants into near-dropsy.
At one point, he lunged with lightning speed, snatching a whole roasted pheasant off a minor duke’s plate before retreating under the table to crunch bone with a sound that made several noblewomen lose their appetites.
Aldric, the perpetually exhausted imperial secretary, watched the chaos with a raised eyebrow and a silver goblet of wine that remained untouched.
His job was to manage the Emperor’s schedule, but his hobby was the meticulous observation of the people who inhabited it.
He was a man who lived in the subtext. He noticed the way Caelen’s fork never actually touched his lips, his eyes fixed on Rael with a look of affection.
He saw Ophelia’s spine, which was as rigid as a frozen pike, and the way she studiously avoided looking at Eris.
Most of all, he worried about Soren and Eris.
There was a frantic quality to the way they touched, a hand on a shoulder, a brush of fingers that suggested they were holding onto each other in the middle of a gale.
The table was a minefield of complicated family dynamics. Caelen, Eris, and Rael sat together, forced by the narrow geography of the high table into a proximity that felt like an open wound.
Ophelia sat to Caelen’s left, a silent, chilling ghost at the banquet. The conversation was civil, forced, and hollow.
"Rael, eat your greens," Caelen said, his voice soft, reaching out to adjust the boy’s napkin.
Rael looked from Caelen to Eris, his brow furrowed in the innocent confusion of a child who feels the electricity in the air but cannot find the lightning.
"Why doesn’t Mama sit next to you anymore, Papa?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Eris cleared her throat, her heart breaking for the boy’s simplicity. "Everyone is tired from the day, Rael. Eat your dinner so we can read your stories."
After the ordeal of dinner concluded, Eris retreated to the nursery wing, desperate for the quiet sanctuary of motherhood.
She sat in a velvet-lined chair with Rael curled into her lap, the weight of him a grounding comfort against the existential dread Vetra had planted in her mind.
She read stories of the Great Migration, her voice a gentle lilt that smoothed the boy’s restless energy.
Between Chapters, Rael would ask a thousand questions, why the stars didn’t fall, why the ice melted, and she answered each with a patient, practiced tenderness.
Then came the teaching moment. Rael, inspired by the day’s events, held out his small hand.
A spark of orange flame, brighter and more stable than the one in the study, danced across his palm. It flickered dangerously close to the hem of his nightshirt.
"Like this, see?" Eris whispered, her own hand hovering just above his. She didn’t extinguish the fire; she guided it. She showed him how to breathe with the flame, how to draw the heat back into his core rather than letting it spill out into the world.
"Fire is a guest, Rael. You must be a kind host, but you must never let the guest own the house. Control the breath, and you control the burn."
When the boy’s eyes finally began to droop, she tucked him into the heavy furs of his bed. She sang a low, Solmiran lullaby while stroking his white hair away from his forehead. "I love you," she whispered, the words heavy with the knowledge that her time to say them might be running short.
While the nursery was filled with the scent of lavender and sleep, the shadows in the palace’s abandoned Sun Chapel were deepening.
Ophelia had snunk out again, her cloak a dark blotch against the white-washed stone. Bianca was waiting for her, leaning against a shattered altar with a look of bored malice.
"You’re late," Bianca said, her voice echoing in the hollow space. "So, let’s get to the point. What do you want? How can I repay you for the ’favor’ you’ve provided?"
Ophelia didn’t hesitate. She stepped into the center of the chapel, her face a mask of cold, strategic intent.
"It’s simple... I want to know her weakness. I want to know exactly how to break Eris. Not her heart... I want the source. Find it for me. Whatever it is that makes her so untouchable, find the crack in the armor. I’m sure it’s not a strange request for you."
Bianca went still. Her mind raced back to the conversation she had overheard between Vetra and Soren.
She didn’t fully understand the technicalities, the dragon, the core, the celestial mechanics of it all but she had the one piece of information that mattered. A cruel, jagged theory formed in her mind.
"Eris might actually have very limited time," Bianca said, the words falling like a bombshell in the quiet chapel.
Ophelia’s brow furrowed. "What? What are you talking about? She’s the picture of health. She’s stronger than me."
"It’s not about her strength," Bianca clarified, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial hiss. "Based on what I heard... Eris is going to die. Soon. It’s a death sentence, Ophelia. Whatever is happening inside her, it’s consuming her. She isn’t a rival you need to defeat. She’s a ghost that hasn’t realized she’s dead yet."
Ophelia stood frozen, the confusion clear on her face. "Why would she die? Why would Soren allow it? I don’t understand."
She knew nothing of the dragon, nothing of the Pyronox seal, or the astronomical cost of the fire queen’s power. She was ignorant of the cosmic stakes, seeing only a woman who had stolen her life.
The revelation that Eris was dying didn’t bring her joy; it brought a terrifying, hollow vertigo. If Eris died, would Caelen return to her? Or would he simply follow the flame into the dark?
"The ’why’ doesn’t matter," Bianca said, her eyes gleaming with a sick satisfaction. "The ’when’ is what we should focus on. She’s falling apart, Ophelia. And we can be the ones to give her a little... push."
The evening ended with the palace suspended in a state of fragile, deceptive peace.
Soren sat in his study, staring at the empty seat across from him; Eris sat in the nursery, mourning a life she hadn’t yet lost; and in the dark chapel, two women plotted the end of a queen who was already being burned from within. The Long Dark had never felt so heavy.
