The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 125: The Regent Empress pt 2

Crimson against porcelain skin. Dripping down her fingers in thin rivulets. The glowing liquid from the vial mixed with it, turning the blood faintly blue where it touched.

She didn’t flinch.

Didn’t even look at her hand.

Too angry to register pain. Too focused on processing what she’d just been told to care about minor injuries that would heal within hours anyway because her body had been enhanced by decades of magic and didn’t scar easily.

He made this decision alone.

Without consulting her. Without asking permission. Without even bothering to send word that he was deviating from the carefully planned route she’d arranged.

Soren had always been untamed. Had always had that wild edge that made him unpredictable, dangerous, difficult to control. But he’d learned... she’d taught him... to keep himself in check. To ask before acting. To remember that he was Emperor but she was the one who’d raised him, who’d protected him, who’d earned the right to be consulted.

What changed?

Her eyes narrowed further.

Her.

That fire witch. That Solmiran whore. That woman who’d somehow convinced Soren to marry her, to bring her here, to let her into Nevareth like she belonged anywhere near their frozen throne.

She was influencing him.

Had to be. Soren wouldn’t make decisions like this on his own. Wouldn’t prioritize some foreign bride over his duty, over protocol, over Vetra unless something... someone... was manipulating him.

Luring him with flames. With heat. With whatever seductive magic fire-blooded people used to cloud judgment and melt the ice Vetra had spent years building around his heart.

"Oh, Soren." The words came out soft. Almost affectionate. "My foolish little lamb. When will you learn?"

She looked at her bloody hand.

Raised it. Examined the damage with clinical detachment. Glass shards still embedded in the palm. Blood still dripping. The blue-glowing liquid spreading through her veins visible beneath translucent skin.

Waved it dismissively.

Like the injury meant nothing. Like pain was irrelevant when there were bigger problems to address.

"Fire-blooded vermin always burn too bright and die too quickly." Her voice had gone venomous now. Ugly in a way her appearance never was. "Their kind are impulsive. Destructive. Incapable of restraint. Just like their pathetic kingdom... all heat and no substance. All flash and fury with nothing underneath to sustain it."

She turned her gaze to the messenger.

He flinched.

"She’ll consume him if I don’t intervene," Vetra continued, speaking to herself more than him. "She’ll burn away everything I built. Everything I made him into. And he’s letting her because he doesn’t understand what she is. What she’ll do to him."

The messenger stayed silent.

Smart.

"Go." Vetra gestured toward the door. "Return when you have something useful. Actual information. Location. Timeline. Something beyond ’the Emperor left and we don’t know where he went.’"

"Yes, Your Majesty." He started to rise.

"And next time," Vetra added, voice dropping to something that made frost form on the black ice beneath her feet, "knock after I’ve finished my spells. Interrupting my work has consequences. Next time those consequences won’t be temporary."

The messenger fled.

Practically ran for the door. Stumbled through it and was gone, footsteps echoing down the corridor in rapid retreat.

Vetra stood alone in her Sanctum.

The prisoner on the floor had passed out from shock or pain or relief. Still alive. Still partially frozen. She’d deal with him later.

Now she had other work.

She walked back to the spell table.

Boots clicking on black ice. Blood still dripping from her clenched fist, leaving a trail of crimson dots that froze the moment they hit the floor.

In the center of the table sat her primary artifact.

The Heartstone.

That’s what she called it, anyway. Its real name... if it had one... had been lost centuries ago when Aenithra disappeared and took most of the ancient knowledge with her.

It was a crystalline orb.

Size of a human heart. Perfectly spherical. Made from ice that was somehow also crystal, that was both transparent and opaque depending on the angle, that glowed from within with pale blue light.

And inside, visible through the translucent shell, was an actual frozen heart.

Not metaphorical. Actual.

Human. Preserved. Stopped mid-beat and crystallized in that exact position, chambers visible, vessels visible, magic woven through every cell to keep it exactly as it had been the moment it was removed from its original owner.

Whose heart it had been was another piece of lost knowledge.

All Vetra knew was it was old. Powerful. Connected to bloodlines that had existed before kingdoms, before nations, before the world had divided itself into fire and ice and decided those two things couldn’t coexist.

And it responded to blood.

Specifically, to Nivarre blood.

To the bloodline that could trace its ancestry back to those who’d been blessed by Aenithra herself, who’d been given power and authority and the divine right to rule winter.

Vetra placed her bleeding hand directly on the Heartstone.

The artifact reacted immediately.

Blood seeped into it. Not flowing across the surface but being absorbed, pulled into microscopic cracks and channels, drawn into the crystalline structure like the orb was drinking.

It glowed brighter.

Pulsed. Like a real heart remembering what beating meant.

Vetra began to chant.

Different words this time. Different magic. Not the experimental frost spell she’d been testing on the prisoner. This was older. Deeper. The kind of magic that came from bloodline rather than study, that was inherited rather than learned.

"Kal’mara isen drae..." Her voice layered again, harmonics multiplying until it sounded like three women speaking in unison. "Veth’kora sul mortayn... bind the child of winter, remind him what he is..."

Blood calls to blood... magic binds what flesh cannot hold... return to me what was always mine...

The Heartstone blazed.

Light poured out of it, blue-white and cold, filling the chamber. The runes on the walls responded, glowing brighter, patterns shifting and reforming like they were being rewritten in real-time.

Magic spiraled outward. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Like frost spreading across glass. Like ice crystallizing on water. Visible threads of power extending from the Heartstone, reaching through space and distance, searching for their target.

Searching for the one person who shared Vetra’s blood.

The one she’d raised. Protected. Shaped into what he was.

The one who was currently somewhere in the wilderness with a fire witch and had apparently forgotten every lesson she’d ever taught him about duty and control and who he belonged to.

The magic found him.

Locked on. Connected. Pulled taut like a leash being tested for strength.

And miles away... days of travel away... in a cave that existed outside normal reality, in a place where divinity still touched the world, sleeping peacefully with his arms around the woman he’d decided mattered more than empires...

Soren’s runes began to glow.