I Became the Villain Chapter 97: A Sister Unwritten

Chapter 97: A Sister Unwritten

The silence that followed the word "Sister" was like a vacuum that sucked the oxygen right out of the dical tent. Cherion stood there, his fingers still clamped around Marielle’s forearm like a particularly clingy barnacle. He could feel the lean, whip-cord muscle beneath her furs, a warrior’s arm, built for the singular purpose of putting a spear through sothing’s heart.

Sister.

The word echoed in the hollow chambers of his skull, bouncing off the walls of his frantic internal monologue. In the original novel, Zarius Valtrane was a man of absolute, crushing solitude. He was the end of his line, a solitary wolf in a land of ice. There was no ntion of a sibling. No "Marielle" tucked away in the footnotes.

I’ve broken the world, Cherion thought, his stomach performing a slow, sickening roll. Either the author skipped a whole character in editing, or I just accidentally unlocked a secret DLC character.

He let go of her arm so fast it was as if her skin had turned into white-hot iron. He stumbled back, his boots catching on a stray roll of linen, and managed a smile that felt less like a greeting and more like a facial cramp. "Sister," he squeaked. "Right. Family. The resemblance is... uncanny. Truly. The eyes. The... nacing aura. It’s a set."

Marielle didn’t smile back. Instead, she looked at the spot on her arm where he’d grabbed her, her lip curling in a way that suggested she was deciding which of his organs she wanted to see first.

"Zarius," she said, her voice dropping that husky rasp and turning into a sharp, icy blade. "He is a bit... fragile, isn’t he? I’ve seen sturdier twigs in a spring thaw."

Zarius looked like a man who was watching his house burn down and had realized he’d left the stove on. "Marielle. Enough. He is my fiancé. He is also the reason I’m currently standing upright."

"Fiancé," she repeated, the word tasting like ash in her mouth.

Suddenly, a frantic cry tore through the air from the edge of the clearing.

"VELKYN! AT THE NORTH PERITER! THREE... NO, FOUR OF THEM!"

The camp erupted into noise, steel clanging, orders flying, and soone screaming sothing that definitely sounded like "don’t die." Cherion scrambled to the tent flap, because watching danger from the doorway felt like the healthiest level of involvent.

Just beyond the supply wagons, three Velkyn, those pale, stuttering nightmares, had erged from the treeline with sickening speed. They flickered through the slush like glitches in reality. The knights were scrambling to form a line, but they were too slow. One Velkyn was already airborne, baring a mouthful of needle teeth at a very unlucky guard.

Cherion didn’t even have ti to blink.

Marielle didn’t wait for an order. She didn’t even reach for the spear on her back. She simply plucked a heavy, iron-tipped pike from a nearby rack as she sprinted toward the treeline. The first Velkyn never even landed as her pike slamd straight through its chest mid-air and pinned it to a pine tree with a wet, unpleasant thud.

She pivoted on one foot, hair whipping like a crow’s wing, and clocked the second Velkyn across the throat with the blunt end of the pike.

Cherion watched, srized and terrified. She moved exactly like Zarius, predatory, efficient, and entirely without rcy. But while Zarius was a mountain of steady, crushing force, Marielle was a gale. She was chaotic. She was laughing as she kicked the third Velkyn back into the darkness.

"Honestly, Brother!" she shouted over her shoulder, voice bouncing back toward the tent. "The security in this camp is appalling! You really do need

here to clean up your sses!"

She hooked her arm back into Zarius’s elbow as if she hadn’t just committed a triple homicide. Dragging him along, she humd cheerfully and complained about the North’s tragic lack of decent tea.

Cherion stood in the settling dust of the tent, his heart performing a triple-backflip into a vat of ice water. He was left all alone. Well, almost alone.

"Well," a voice drawled from the corner. "That was... energetic."

Cherion jumped, nearly knocking over a jar of leeches. Reiner was leaning casually against a crate of bandages with arms crossed, looked like he’d been front-row for a circus performance and wasn’t even impressed..

"She’s his sister," Cherion whispered, sinking onto a stool. "Reiner. She’s his sister."

"Yes, My Lord," Reiner replied, walking over to help Cherion sort through the ss of spilled herbs. "Lady Marielle. the ’Hidden Spear’ of the Valtranes. She hasn’t been ho since the day she graduated from the Academy. She packed her bags that sa evening, saying she wanted to see every corner of the world before she settled down to handle family business with His Grace."

Cherion stared at Reiner, a single dried leaf clutched in his trembling hand. "And no one thought to ntion this?" he hissed, his voice cracking. "Not the Duke? Not the knights? Not even a casual ’Oh, by the way, the Duke has a terrifying sister who enjoys pinning monsters to trees like butterfly specins’?"

Reiner paused, tilting his head as if considering the question. "I suppose we all just... forgot she wasn’t here? When Lady Marielle is gone, the estate is quiet. When she is here, the estate is loud. One tends to focus on the silence while it lasts."

Forgot? Cherion scread internally. You forgot a human hurricane?

He sank further onto his stool. In the original novel, Zarius’s "crushing solitude" was a major plot point, it was what made his eventual fall into villainy so tragic. There was no sister to annoy him, no sibling to pull him out of his dark moods, and certainly no "Hidden Spear" to guard his back.

"She hates ," Cherion groaned, burying his face in his hands. "She looked at

like I was sothing she’d found on the bottom of her boot."

Reiner humd a little tune, unbothered, as he stacked the last of the bandages. "Oh, don’t be so dramatic, My Lord. That’s just Lady Marielle. She’s... protective. Fiercely so. She’s spent her whole life believing she’s the only one who can truly look out for His Grace. She just wants him surrounded by nothing but the best."

Cherion remained silent, his forehead still resting against his knees. The weight of his own "out-of-character" behavior was starting to settle in. He hadn’t just been protective; he had been territorial. It was embarrassing.

"Besides," Reiner continued, his voice dropping into a teasing lilt. "At least you don’t have to be jealous anymore, right? Since she’s just his sister and nothing more."

"Yeah," Cherion muttered into his lap. "Right."

Then, his brain finally processed the words.

Cherion’s eyes practically popped out of his skull. He stared at Reiner, who looked way too pleased with himself. "Hey! Who said I was jealous?!"

Reiner winced, his shoulders hunching up toward his ears as he gave a small, cute shrug. "My Lord, please! My ears are sensitive!"

"I am not jealous!" Cherion scrambled to his feet, his stool clattering backward.

"Right, right," Reiner said, backing toward the tent flap with his hands raised in surrender. "You’re not jealous. Now please, stop screaming before you lose that beautiful voice of yours."

Reiner paused at the exit, his hand on the heavy flap. He looked back at Cherion, his expression softening just a fraction. "But admit it... you’re happy they’re actually siblings, aren’t you?"

Without waiting for an answer, Reiner was gone, and the tent swayed behind him like it was sighing.

Cherion stood alone in the quiet. He opened his mouth to shout one last denial, but the words died in his throat.

He sank back onto the stool, his shoulders losing their tension. The knot that had been tightening in his chest since the mont that "mystery woman" hugged Zarius was gone.

He felt light. Ridiculously, embarrassingly light.

"Siblings," he whispered to the empty tent. A small, traitorous smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it. "They’re just siblings."

But as he peeked out the tent flap, that tiny spark of relief lted into a fresh wave of panic.

Thank the gods, he thought, wiping a hand over his face. The plot is ssy enough without adding a jealous ex-mistress to the mix. It’s just a sister. A terrifying, monster-slaying sister, but a sister nonetheless.

But then, the smile on Cherion’s face slowly faltered.

Sohow, looking at her, he realized that might be much, much worse.