The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 300: Two starved beasts

The automatic mask slammed into place.

The one she wore when emotions threatened to consume her and she needed to survive instead of feel.

Cold. Composed. Distant. The Fire Queen who burned kingdoms and felt nothing.

"Welcome to Nevareth," she said flatly, the words empty of warmth. Formal. Meaningless.

Then she continued walking, moving past them, leaving Ophelia’s surprised expression and Rael’s confused face behind.

She didn’t look back.

Couldn’t look back.

Because if she did, if she saw her son’s face one more time, she would break. Would crack open right there in the corridor and spill all the desperate love and aching grief she’d been carrying since the day she’d realized Caelen had won, had successfully turned her own child against her.

Her heart pounded. Raced. Threatened to burst through her ribs.

What the fuck is Caelen doing here?

She couldn’t describe what she was feeling. Couldn’t name it.

It was like beholding a ghost long sworn to the earth... a love she had buried with solemn vows and bitter prayers. She told herself it was over, that time had dulled the blade.

And yet one look at him left her a teenager again, foolish and trembling, undone by a devotion she had never truly slain.

She had once believed herself the poison.

Then she had named him the curse. In truth, they had been both... two starved beasts gnawing at the same wound, feeding on each other’s worst hungers. What they had called marriage was only a slow undoing, a shared ruin dressed up as sacred bond.

It was complicated. It was painful. It was entirely, devastatingly unresolved.

And now he was here.

Eris’s stride was determined, purposeful, as she headed toward where Soren should be. The council chambers. His study. Somewhere she could find him and...

"Lady Eris."

Aldric appeared from a side corridor, his arms full of documents, his expression harried.

"Where is he?" Eris demanded without preamble.

"His Majesty adjourned to his private study." Aldric paused, then added carefully, "With King Caelen."

King Caelen.

The title sounded wrong. Surreal. He’d been King Consort for so long... a title she’d forced on him, a crown he’d never wanted. But she’d abdicated. Had given him everything. Made him sole ruler of Solmire.

And now he was here.

Eris changed direction, heading toward Soren’s study with single-minded focus.

Her mind spun. What was Caelen doing in Nevareth? Why now? What did he want?

And why did the thought of seeing him make her heart race with something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite anticipation but was definitely, absolutely panic?

She stopped outside the study doors.

Just stopped, hand raised to knock, frozen in place by the sudden realization of what she was about to do.

If she went in, she would see him.

Face to face. For the first time since that night. Since the corridor. Since the kiss.

The desperate press of his mouth against hers. The way his hands had shaken as they framed her face. The taste of wine and regret and years of accumulated longing compressed into a single, devastating moment.

She left Solmire the next morning and called it goodbye. Whatever she and Caelen had been, it was finished... spoiled beyond saving. She did not leave as a wronged woman, nor as a virtuous one, but as someone who had finally learned to stop drinking poison and naming it love.

And now he was on the other side of this door.

Her heart pounded harder. Faster. Loud enough she was surprised the guards stationed down the corridor couldn’t hear it.

I can’t do this.

Not now. Not when her emotions were already raw from seeing Rael. Not when she’d just confronted Vetra and was still riding the high of villainous satisfaction. Not when everything felt too close to the surface, too ready to spill over and destroy her careful composure.

She would come back later. After Caelen left. After she’d had time to prepare herself.

Eris turned to leave.

The door opened behind her.

She froze.

Footsteps. Two sets. Familiar voices murmuring something she couldn’t quite hear.

Then silence.

The kind of silence that meant someone had noticed her standing there like a coward, running away from a conversation she wasn’t ready to have.

Eris turned slowly. Unwillingly. Like a woman walking toward execution.

Soren emerged first, his expression shifting from mild surprise to something more complicated as he took in her posture, her face, the way she looked caught.

And then Caelen stepped out behind him.

And saw her.

Time did that thing again where it forgot how to move.

Caelen stopped mid-step, mid-breath, mid-everything. His eyes found hers across the corridor and locked there, unable to look away, unable to do anything except see her for the first time in over a month.

After everything. After the journey. After seven days of brutal travel driven by desperate longing. After dreaming of her every night and waking with her name on his lips.

She was real. Standing right there. Close enough to touch.

And gods, she was beautiful.

More beautiful than his dreams had captured. More real than memory allowed. The sunset caught in her white hair, turned her eyes to molten gold, painted her in shades of flame and shadow.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything except stare at her like a drowning man who’d finally glimpsed shore.

Eris felt the weight of that stare like a physical thing. Felt it pin her in place, strip away her careful composure, expose every raw nerve she’d been trying to protect.

She wanted to run. Wanted to stay. Wanted to scream at him for coming here, for bringing Rael, for existing in a way that made her feel this tangled mess of emotions she couldn’t name.

Soren looked between them. Saw Caelen’s face... desperate, longing, utterly transparent. Saw Eris’s carefully blank expression that was itself a scream of how much she was feeling.

Understood everything in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

The tension pulled taut as a bowstring. Ready to snap. Ready to send arrows flying that would pierce all of them.

No one spoke.

No one moved.

The three of them suspended in that terrible moment, caught between what was, what is, and what could never be.

And somewhere in the palace, a clock struck the hour, marking time that refused to care about the hearts breaking in its passing.