The Villainess Wants To Retire Chapter 6: The sky that isn’t real

ERIS:

I walked the halls barefoot.

No one stopped .

No one dared.

The hem of my gown trailed behind , crimson whispering over the marble like a ghost that hadn’t yet decided to leave. I said nothing to the guards I passed. Gave no orders to the maids that scurried out of my path like I was so terrible on. They whispered. They stared.

And I let them.

I wasn’t walking to be seen.

I was walking to feel real.

My bare feet pressed into each stone tile like it mattered. I traced every turn of the palace, corridors I knew by heart, walls that had once felt like they held , corner after corner that had tasted blood or betrayal or power. I walked past the grand stairwell where I once struck a nobleman for insulting my mother. Past the columns where I’d kissed Caelen for the first ti while drunk. Past the balcony where I had scread at the world after I’d given birth.

All of it... still here.

As if nothing had changed.

And yet, everything had.

Orrian’s voice still echoed in the back of my skull like a riddle.

A story. That’s all it ever was.

So what now?

What does one do when they learn they were created?

When they learn that nothing they did, no sin, no choice, no cruelty, was ever truly their own, only the flick of a pen in soone’s hand?

And worse, that they were never ant to survive?

That their ruin had been written from the beginning?

I should’ve been angry.

But I wasn’t.

I wasn’t anything.

Not broken. Not vengeful. Just... calm.

Which, in itself, was unsettling.

Because the Eris I rembered, the woman I had been, she never had stillness in her. She burned hot and quick. Always. There was always sothing to hate. Sothing to fight. Soone to crush.

And now... there was only quiet. Like the calm after an angry storm.

Eventually, I found myself standing at the highest point of the palace, the Celestium.

A forgotten observatory, long abandoned after the last star-watcher died of plague. The glass do above had cracked in places, but it still gave the clearest view of the sky in all of Solmire. It was the only place where no one ca. Too many stairs. Too much silence. Too many mories.

Perfect.

I stepped into the center of the round chamber. The sunset was folding into the sky like ink poured into wine. Streaks of violet and gold stretched across the heavens, bathing the floor in soft light. I stood beneath it and tilted my head back.

The sky. So wide. So endless.

So imagined.

How cruel, to give a world this beautiful and still declare it a fiction.

I breathed in.

The last ti I had worn this particular gown was the day my body betrayed . When the fire inside , the cursed dragon’s seal, first cracked. I’d collapsed in my garden, choking on heat. My skin blistered for seconds. Mira had scread. The others ran.

And now I was wearing it again.

Right where the story twisted.

Just like Orrian said.

The middle.

Which ant... eighteen months.

That was all I had.

Give or take.

Eighteen months before the curse inside consud what little humanity—if I had any—left. Before my veins lted from the inside. Before my hands stopped being hands and beca weapons. Before my lungs turned to fla.

I should’ve felt sothing.

But I didn’t. Not fear. Not sorrow. Only one quiet ache.

Rael.

My son.

He had just turned five a few days ago.

Which ant I’d only started to lose him. Just barely.

My hands curled at my sides.

I missed him. Gods help , I missed my little boy.

But I couldn’t go to him. He didn’t like to be touched by . And even when we had the sa eyes, he didn’t like to look at too long.

And why would he?

I was the mother who made nurses cry. The woman whose temper could scorch the floorboards. The Queen who used her voice like a whip and her silence like a noose.

I had always tried to be gentle with him.

But trying had never been enough.

The dragon’s fire hadn’t even taken yet... and I’d already lost him.

I sank down slowly to the stone floor beneath the do, pulled my knees to my chest, and stared at the sky.

I had co back.

But I didn’t know who I was now.

A puppet with her strings cut?

Or sothing worse?

The sun finally disappeared, swallowed by the horizon with no ceremony.

And the stars ca out.

False ones, I supposed.

Tiny white dots soone had painted across a canvas sky to make us feel smaller. To make us wonder. To make us believe there was sothing bigger than us watching.

But I wasn’t so easily impressed anymore.

I leaned back on my hands, the warm of the marble seeping into my palms. The dress I wore had begun to trap the heat that poured out my skin. A breeze drifted in through the fractured do above, catching the hem of my sleeve.

Still, I didn’t move.

I just... thought.

Not like before. Not like the kind of thoughts I had when plotting soone’s downfall, or selecting which court to poison first. No, these were the kinds of thoughts that burrowed deeper. Older. Unspoken.

If everything in this world had been written, the seasons, the people, the rise and fall of kings, then what about ?

What about the part of that always thirsted for pain?

Was that part of the story, too?

Was every scream I dragged out of soone just ink on a page? Were my violent delights never really mine to begin with?

And if that were true... then was my cruelty even real?

I thought of all the things I’d done.

The punishnts. The threats. The exquisite silences. The gas.

I thought of the blood.

Of how I watched it pool beneath a kneeling noble’s knees and felt... nothing. Or worse, satisfaction.

I could almost hear Orrian’s voice again, light and teasing: "Imaginations. Fictions. Fantasies. The dreams your kind scrawl into parchnt and call novels."

And I was questioning it.

Because if I had no say in my evil... if it was only what I’d been told to beco... then what was I now?

An empty husk?

A villain with no spine?

I wouldn’t accept that.

No.

I sat up straighter. Eyes locked on the stars above. Let them blink back. Let them watch.

If soone had written cruel, then fine.

But I chose to stay cruel.

They didn’t make twist the knife the way I did.

They didn’t make smile when the pleading began.

They didn’t make love the silence after a scream.

That was all .

Every choice. Every punishnt. Every inch of Solmire that had bled because of , I had claid it. Worn it like perfu.

And if I was damned, then I would rule my damnation.

Let them call villainess.

Let them whisper witch.

Let them pray to gods that never once looked down at them.

I didn’t care if this world was fake.

Because I wasn’t.

My cruelty was not a writer’s invention.

It was mine.

And no one else wore it the way I did.