The Villainess Wants To Retire

ERIS:

I walked the halls barefoot.

No one stopped me.

No one dared.

The hem of my gown trailed behind me, 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 some terrible omen. 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 me, 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 time while drunk. Past the balcony where I had screamed 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 someone's hand?

And worse, that they were never meant 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 remembered, the woman I had been, she never had stillness in her. She burned hot and quick. Always. There was always something to hate. Something to fight. Someone 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 dome 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 came. Too many stairs. Too much silence. Too many memories.

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 me a world this beautiful and still declare it a fiction.

I breathed in.

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

And now I was wearing it again.

Right where the story twisted.

Just like Orrian said.

The middle.

Which meant… eighteen months.

That was all I had.

Give or take.

Eighteen months before the curse inside me consumed what little humanity—if I had any—left. Before my veins melted from the inside. Before my hands stopped being hands and became weapons. Before my lungs turned to flame.

I should've felt something.

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 meant I'd only started to lose him. Just barely.

My hands curled at my sides.

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

But I couldn't go to him. He didn't like to be touched by me. And even when we had the same eyes, he didn't like to look at me 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 me yet… and I'd already lost him.

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

I had come back.

But I didn't know who I was now.

A puppet with her strings cut?

Or something worse?

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

And the stars came out.

False ones, I supposed.

Tiny white dots someone had painted across a canvas sky to make us feel smaller. To make us wonder. To make us believe there was something 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 dome 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 someone'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 me?

What about the part of me that always thirsted for pain?

Was that part of the story, too?

Was every scream I dragged out of someone 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 punishments. The threats. The exquisite silences. The games.

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 parchment 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 become… 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 someone had written me cruel, then fine.

But I chose to stay cruel.

They didn't make me twist the knife the way I did.

They didn't make me smile when the pleading began.

They didn't make me love the silence after a scream.

That was all me.

Every choice. Every punishment. Every inch of Solmire that had bled because of me, I had claimed it. Worn it like perfume.

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

Let them call me 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.