The Villainess Wants To Retire Chapter 67: Vetra

I turned to face him fully. The garden had never felt smaller.

Neither of us spoke. I simply stared, waiting for him to say sothing worth the ss he’d caused.

He stood there in the moon-washed silence, looking terribly out of place in all that finery, like a god who’d forgotten his own divinity.

He fidgeted, actually fidgeted, straightening the collar of his silver-trimd attire, glancing at , then away, then back again. The sa hands that had commanded armies were now uncertain of what to do with themselves.

I raised a brow. "You’re going to speak, or just stand there and suffocate in your own awkwardness?"

He gave a weak, nervous laugh. "I might lt under the heat of your glare if you’re not careful your Majesty."

"Good," I said flatly. "That wouldn’t be too much of a punishnt, considering the stunt you pulled at the ball."

His smile faltered. The humor drained from his face, replaced by sothing softer. Guilt, or maybe sothing close to it.

When he spoke again, his voice had lost all the teasing edges.

"It wasn’t a stunt," he said quietly. "I rely spoke my mind."

Sothing about the way he said it made my breath hitch before I could stop it. I hated that.

He gestured slightly toward the stone bench beside . "May I join you?"

"No."

He blinked, then gave a small, awkward chuckle that sounded like defeat. "Fair." He didn’t push further, only stood there a few paces away, the night wind teasing the white fur trim of his cloak.

I folded my hands in my lap, studying him through the half-light. "Tell , Your Majesty," I said finally, "why would you be bold enough to assu I would accept your marriage proposal?"

He didn’t flinch at the edge in my tone.

Instead, Soren’s gaze lifted to mine, and even in the dim light I could see sothing unreadable flicker through those glacier-blue eyes.

"Maybe," he said, voice low, "because I’ve always known you were escaping."

He took a slow breath, words deliberate. "And I felt like I could offer you the escape you needed."

I let out a small, humorless laugh even though my heart skipped a beat. "You think too highly of yourself."

His mouth twitched, sothing between a smile and self-deprecation.

"Maybe I do," he murmured, almost sheepishly. "But I know I’m not wrong about you."

Before I could gather my breath to reject him again, because surely that was what I intended to do, Soren spoke first.

"I’ve seen the look in your eyes."

My brows rose. "What look?"

"Longing," he said simply.

The word struck like a blade slipped under armor. For a mont, I couldn’t even speak. Longing. What right did he have to na sothing I barely admitted to myself? My expression hardened. "What do you an by that?"

Soren tilted his head, studying with that disarming calm that always made want to set sothing on fire. "I’m not sure yet. But I know perhaps you can find it right by my side."

I exhaled through my nose. "I don’t need help searching for anything. I’m capable on my own."

His smile was patient, almost knowing. "Then what are your plans after you leave Solmire?"

"Travel," I said flatly. "Engage in... hobbies."

"Hobbies," he echoed, amused. "You don’t sound very excited about it. Perhaps you need a companion. I could abandon my empire and volunteer if you so wish your majesty. Just say the word."

"I don’t need you." The words ca out colder than I intended. I looked away. "It’s the sa if I don’t have any sense of purpose. Companion or not."

That made him quiet for a mont. Arms folded, hand to his chin, thinking in that calculating way that promised nothing good ever ca next. Then, light in his eyes, mischief sharpened into decision.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "I can give you a purpose."

I stared at him, incredulous. "What did you just say?"

"Well you see.." He grinned like he’d been waiting for that exact reaction. "I have a little problem back at ho."

"Problem?"

"Yes," he said, almost cheerfully. "It’s my adoptive mother. Who is also the Regent Empress."

I blinked. "The Regent Empress?"

Soren inclined his head, a faint shadow crossing his expression. "Vetra Nivarre. A woman who freezes entire negotiations with a glance. And lately, she’s been getting rather fond of reminding who really holds Nevareth’s throne."

He was quiet for a mont, gaze distant, as if deciding how much to reveal. Then he drew a breath and began.

"Vetra found when I was small enough to be folded into her skirts," he said, voice low. "Invisible enough for a slave to be erased."

I watched him as he spoke, the way his jaw tightened slightly when he ntioned the word slave.

"The court calls her regent and savior. I call her the woman who plucked from the gutter and taught to wear a crown without cracking it on my head." A bitter smile touched his lips.

"Vetra had hands that could sew a kingdom together and fingers that could strangle a rumor before it learned to walk. She taught everything, how to read the winter lines in a man’s face, to bargain with a blade in one palm and a treaty in the other. How to be an emperor." He paused. "And how to make sure the throne could not be taken from ."

His birth mother, he told , was property in the eyes of Soreth, a man who burned with suspicion and fed on the trust of others until there was nothing left. "He murdered his own children because he feared betrayal," Soren said flatly. "My mother hid from him. Vetra found afterward, with the careful eye of a woman who did not tolerate loose ends."

She raised him, armored him with lessons and daggers, and when the hour ca she put him forward to take the na that had been butchered under Soreth’s reign.

"I owe her everything," he said, and sothing flickered across his face, sothing raw and unguarded. Loneliness.

The kind that cos from knowing you were chosen but never truly saved. It was there for only a heartbeat before his expression smoothed over, that imperial mask sliding back into place.

"The throne, my soldiers’ loyalty, the discipline that kept my frost from becoming a brittle thing. But debts have a peculiar habit of turning into roots."

He began to pace now, restless energy breaking through his careful composure.

"Vetra’s roots have sunk deep into every branch of Nevareth. She doesn’t rely advise, she anchors. She whispers in the right ears, places the right people in the right councils, and when she smiles, the ice in the palace listens."

His hands clenched at his sides. "That influence, what should have been my instrunt, has beco a muzzle. I can sign edicts and stand in the sun and hold the empire’s shape in my hands, and yet the courtiers still move at her shadow. The councils bend as if pulled by a tide that is not mine."

He stopped pacing, turned to face fully.

"The Regent Empress has the patience of glaciers and the cruelty of long winters. Removing her with sabers and proclamations would be foolish artistry, blood for blood with no guarantee of true victory and only looks of tyranny. You cannot simply outfreeze a glacier by throwing a handful of snow at it."

I said nothing, still watching him. That flash of loneliness had lodged itself sowhere behind my ribs, unwelco and insistent.

"So I ca to you," he said quietly, "with a truth blunt enough to cut: she made emperor, and now she rules . She made a kingdom that obeys her more than ." He t my eyes. "There are hands that rule by force, and there are hands that rule by letting others think they rule. Vetra has mastered the latter."

Sothing shifted in his gaze then, determination sharpening into offer.

"I need your villainy, Eris," he said, stepping closer, voice low enough that the garden would not feed our words to the night.

"Not the petty cruelties, not the pyrotechnics of terror. I an the patient, unforgiving kind. You know how to break things so they can be rebuilt your way. You know how to make people surrender a throne as if they gave it away for the price of their own comfort."

He was near enough now that I could see the silver threading through his dark cloak, the way his breath misted slightly in the cool air.

"Vetra has woven webs of loyalty that only a cruelty of equal asure and imagination can unravel," he continued. "And I think you understand that language better than anyone I know."

"What exactly are you offering ?" I asked, voice carefully neutral even as my mind raced.

"Sanctuary and choice. Sanctuary as my empress , protection that even Solmire cannot touch. And choice, to shape that role however you see fit, or to walk away from it entirely

He laid it out plainly: if I helped him unmake Vetra’s stranglehold, he would give freedom in a way that could not be revoked. Protection by the might of Nevareth, safe passage from every favor-calling hand, and if I wished it, a new seat, temporary or permanent, crafted under terms we both wrote.

"I’m not couching this in flattery," he said. "I’m not pleading. I’m laying the problem bare and offering you partnership, the kind I don’t offer to Caelen or any courtier."

Then his voice dropped, beca sothing more vulnerable.

"Stay. Stay near , in whatever shape you can tolerate. Help take what is mine without becoming what I despise." He exhaled slowly.

"You owe nothing, Eris. But Vetra’s will not be pried loose by common steel. She will yield to cunning and a cruelty she recognizes. Help do it, help cut her out of Nevareth, and I will give you your life. Freedom without chains and the ans to live it as only you can."

The night inhaled. The jasmine held its scent like a secret.

That look... that brief, unguarded loneliness, rose in my mory again. I recognized it because I’d seen it in my own reflection more tis than I could count. The loneliness of being shaped into a weapon and wondering if that’s all you’d ever be.

It was the first thing that made truly consider his offer.