The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 185: Afterthoughts

Soon after my mind returned to Vetra.

Her frost slowly melted from the windows in rivulets that caught what little moonlight penetrated the clouds.

She was becoming desperate.

That realization settled into my bones with the kind of certainty that came from years of studying her methods, learning to recognize when her careful control was slipping. The Vetra who’d raised me would never have confronted me so directly, would never have shown her hand this clearly.

Which meant she felt cornered. And cornered predators were always the most dangerous.

Taking her out directly would be simplest. One command, a handful of loyal guards, and the problem would be solved permanently. I could win that confrontation... brutally, decisively, with enough force that no one would dare question the outcome.

But it would also make me exactly what I’d sworn never to become.

Soreth.

My father, who’d beheaded nobles for breathing wrong in his presence. Who’d murdered his own children because paranoia had eaten his mind until he saw conspiracy in every shadow. Who’d ruled through such absolute terror that when he finally died, half the empire had celebrated in the streets.

I’d been eleven when I watched him execute a man for tripping near the throne. The memory still burned clear... the casual way he’d made the order, the screams, the blood pooling on marble that servants had scrubbed for hours afterward.

I’d promised myself that night that I would be different. Would find other ways to maintain power. Would prove that strength didn’t require constant displays of brutality.

But Vetra was forcing my hand, pushing toward a confrontation that would require exactly the kind of violence I’d sworn to avoid.

Executing all her supporters indiscriminately would eliminate the threat, yes. But it would also turn the people against me. They wouldn’t see a decisive emperor protecting his authority... they’d see a tyrant eliminating anyone who disagreed with him. They’d see Soreth’s son following his father’s bloody path.

Yet doing nothing wasn’t an option either. She’d made her position clear tonight... the would undermine everything, attack from every angle, make Eris’s life a living hell until either the marriage collapsed or something far worse happened.

That’s where Eris comes in.

The thought emerged with crystalline clarity, and I almost smiled despite the circumstances.

Her reputation as the Fire Queen. Her tactical mind that had governed an entire kingdom. Her absolute willingness to be cruel when necessary, to make the hard choices, to be the villain if that’s what the situation required.

She could do what I couldn’t. Could root out Vetra’s supporters one by one, dismantle the network with surgical precision, be the ruthless force that everyone already expected her to be. And I could maintain the imperial dignity, the careful balance, the illusion that I was above such direct conflict.

Let them fear her. Let them whisper about the foreign queen who brought fire and destruction. As long as they feared me enough to obey and loved the stability I provided, the specifics of who eliminated threats didn’t matter.

And while Eris handled the internal threat, while she played the role of villain that Vetra had spent weeks trying to write for her...

I could focus on the real mystery.

The bigger question that had haunted me since childhood, since that night when I was seven and wandering places I shouldn’t have been in, when I’d stumbled into a realm that shouldn’t have existed and seen something that fundamentally broke my understanding of reality.

A crack. A visible crack in the air itself, like reality was glass that had shattered. And through it, for just a moment, I’d seen... something. Lights that weren’t fire or magic. Shapes that moved with geometric precision. Sounds that felt wrong, mechanical, utterly divorced from anything natural. And worst of all. Time froze.

I’d run. Had nightmares for months. Had never told anyone what I’d seen because even as a child I understood that some knowledge was dangerous.

But I’d never forgotten.

And I’d spent years since then searching for answers, finding hints in ancient texts that suggested our world wasn’t quite what we’d been taught.

That the gods might not be gods at all but something else entirely. Machines, perhaps. Ancient technology so far beyond our understanding that we’d mistaken it for divinity.

Eris’s dragon seal was connected to this somehow. It had to be. Because when Pyronox had manifested that day at the temple, when I’d seen that entity of pure fire threatening to consume her, I’d felt the same wrongness. The same suggestion that what I was seeing wasn’t natural magic but something older, something deliberately constructed.

If our gods were real, if they were actually ancient beings or tools that had shaped this world, what did that mean for everything else? For the magic we wielded? For the boundaries between our realm and... whatever lay beyond?

Her core was stable for now... the river’s seal had reinforced whatever structural integrity the original seal maintained.

I needed answers about whatever happened. Needed to understand what the dragons actually were, how a god was sealed in a human. ..

My thoughts derailed completely as memory intruded with all the subtlety of a lightning strike.

The forest. Eris beneath me, coming apart with such beautiful desperation. Her face when she’d finally let herself fall over that edge I’d held her on for so long.

The sounds she’d made... breathless, broken, absolutely devastating. The way she’d felt, thighs pressed together around me, heat and slickness and friction that had made me lose every shred of control I’d been trying to maintain.

Heat flooded my face. And, rather predictably, other places as well.

I shifted uncomfortably, trying to redirect my thoughts toward literally anything else, but my body had apparently decided that reliving recent activities was significantly more important than strategic planning or existential questions about the nature of reality.

I could still taste her. Still feel the phantom sensation of her wrapped around me. Still hear the way she’d gasped my name when I’d finally...

Stop.

I forced myself to take a slow breath, to cool the temperature in the room until discomfort overrode arousal. Barely.

This was becoming a problem. A wonderfully distracting, thoroughly enjoyable problem, but still a problem. I was supposed to be planning Vetra’s downfall and researching cosmic mysteries, not standing in my chambers getting hard from memory alone.

But Eris made everything else seem insignificant. Made strategic concerns and ancient questions fade into background noise compared to the overwhelming reality of wanting her again. Already. Despite having just...

I knew she was hesitant because of Caelen.

The thought cut through the haze of desire with unwelcome clarity. I’d seen it in her eyes before she’d started trying to draw those lines, set those boundaries. Fear. Not of me, but of what falling for someone again might cost her.

Her ex-husband had broken something in her. Had made her believe she wasn’t worth loving, wasn’t worth choosing, wasn’t worth anything except political convenience and eventual replacement.

And she thought I’d do the same. Thought this was temporary, that I’d discard her the moment someone more suitable came along.

The assumption would have been insulting if it weren’t so obviously born from pain.

But I’d prove her wrong. Would show her through every action, every choice, every moment we spent together that I had no intention of letting her go. That when I said I wanted her, I meant all of her... not just politically useful parts, not just the physical attraction, but everything.

The sharp edges and the vulnerabilities. The strategic brilliance and the wounded heart she tried so hard to hide.

She’d be mine completely. Not just the title of Empress or the political alliance or even the physical intimacy we’d already started exploring.

In every way that mattered.

A smile curved my lips despite the lingering tension from Vetra’s visit, despite the arousal still making itself known, despite everything.

Nine days until the wedding.

Let’s see how much I could unravel her before then.