The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 477: Villain vs Villain

Vetra’s voice was a silk thread winding through a labyrinth of secrets, each word designed to snag on Eris’s composure.

"Soren visited me much much earlier," she repeated, her head tilting with a predatory curiosity. "He seemed... preoccupied. Tell me, dear, does he share everything with you? Or are there parts of his soul he keeps under lock and key, even from his beloved Fire Queen?"

The Implication was a clumsy blade, and Eris felt it glance off her without drawing blood.

She understood the tactic immediately; Vetra was attempting to plant seeds of doubt, to make Eris wonder what the Emperor was hiding in the dark corners of the palace.

Internally, Eris noted the omission. Soren hadn’t mentioned a private visit to the dungeons. He didn’t mention it. That’s fine. I’ll ask him later, she thought, her pulse steady.

Externally, her face remained a mask of marble, cold and expressionless. She gave Vetra nothing... no flinch, no narrowing of the eyes, no defensive posture.

Vetra’s gaze dropped from Eris’s face to her hands, landing on the dark, pebbled leather of the grimoire.

Her smile grew, transforming from a smirk into something genuinely amused. "I see," Vetra purred. "You’ve brought a friend along. A little light reading for the eve of my execution?"

"I was going through this book of mine," Eris began, her voice measured and clinical. She held the grimoire up slightly, the ancient leather absorbing the blue light of the barrier. "And I found something quite distressing. Two pages are missing you see."

She paused, letting the silence of the dungeon amplify the accusation.

"Unfortunately, I don’t quite remember which spells were on them. My memory for my own wickedness is, at times, selective." She offered a slight, razor-thin smile.

"So I thought I’d ask someone who seems... rather fond of my work. Someone who seems to have spent decades admiring the way I break things."

The Implication was blunt. It was a hammer blow to the center of the room: You took them.

Vetra raised an elegant eyebrow, feigning a look of wide-eyed shock. "And so you came to me? Based on a whim and a missing scrap of parchment?"

"Yes," Eris said, her voice dropping into a register of absolute confidence. "I know a suspect when I see one. You have the motive, the knowledge, and... despite these bars... evidently the means."

Vetra let out a sharp, dramatic sigh, pressing a hand to her chest in a display of mock offense.

"You wound me, Eris. Truly. To think that I, a prisoner in rags, could reach into the sanctum of the Empress and snatch a page from her diary."

She tilted her head, her voice lowering into a conspiratorial whisper. "Are you certain you checked properly? Perhaps you simply misplaced them in your... distracted state."

She leaned closer to the bars, the blue light of the barrier dancing in her pupils like trapped lightning.

"Or perhaps," Vetra continued, her voice turning into a slow-acting poison, "it was someone you don’t expect. Someone who is always by your side. After all, you can never truly know who is on your side in a palace built on shadows."

It was a classic play... paranoia 101. Vetra was trying to unsettle her, to make Eris look at Soren or Aldric or the guards with eyes full of suspicion.

Nice try, Eris thought, dismissive and cold. It won’t work. I know the shape of your lies.

Then, the energy in the corridor shifted. The air grew heavy, the temperature rising by several degrees as Eris took a slow, deliberate step forward.

She pressed her face close to the shimmering blue barrier, ignoring the hum of the magic against her skin.

The softness In her expression evaporated.

The "New Empress"... the supportive wife, the redeemed daughter... was gone. In her place, something far older and more terrifying emerged.

The heat around her began to crackle, a low-frequency vibration that made the stones of the dungeon weep moisture.

Eris leaned in, her face inches from Vetra’s, separated only by Soren’s ice-magic and a row of iron bars. She smiled. It wasn’t a smile of warmth or triumph; it was a wicked, bone-chilling expression that hadn’t been seen since the first Chapters of the story. Her eyes went flat and empty, reflecting the dark joy of a predator who had finally cornered its prey.

This was the Queen of Fire. This was the Villainess in her rawest form.

Vetra froze. For the second time, the Regent saw not a girl playing at power, but the monster who had burned her kingdom and laughed at the screams of the dying.

"I don’t know what spells you stole," Eris whispered, her voice a deadly, velvet calm. "I don’t know what tricks you think you can pull with two pages of my old scribbles."

Her smile widened, showing a flash of white teeth. "But know this, Mother in-law. Whatever card you think you’re hiding, whatever desperate gambit you’ve planned for tomorrow... I will be there to stop it."

She leaned even closer, the heat from her body beginning to hiss against the ice-barrier. "You’ve reached the end of your reign. As Regent. As Empress. As a living being. It’s time to accept that you’ve lost. Stop trying so hard to cling to a power you no longer possess. It looks... very pathetic on you."

The contempt in Eris’s voice was a physical weight. She was reveling in it, savoring the way Vetra’s jaw tightened. This was villain versus villain... pure, unadulterated wickedness meeting its match. Eris wasn’t acting out of justice; she was acting out of a superior, crushing malice.

Vetra’s internal composure began to fray. Fury burned in her chest, a white-hot coal of resentment, but she forced herself to remain still.

This bitch is crazy, she realized. Eris wasn’t scared. She wasn’t begging for answers. She was different... unhinged in a way that Vetra hadn’t anticipated.

But then...

Vetra began to chuckle. The sound started low in her throat, a dry rasp that built into a full, theatrical laugh.