The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 322: Wretch

While the bells of Nevareth sang of unions and gods, the air inside the Virelya guest wing tasted of copper and ozone.

The room was not being dismantled; it was being murdered.

Bianca Virelya, the woman the court praised for her willow-like grace and porcelain composure, was a smudge of wreckage against the silk wallpaper.

She didn’t scream with the calculated pitch of a lady in distress; she howled, a raw, animalistic sound that tore at the back of her throat.

A vase of priceless sky-glass, a gift from the Emperor’s own collection three winters ago, whirled through the air. It hit the far wall with a sound like a dying star, shattering into a thousand jagged diamonds that rained down onto the rug.

Bianca didn’t stop to watch it fall. She lunged for the tapestries, her manicured nails digging into the heavy, silver-threaded weave. With a guttural snarl, she ripped them from the stone, the sound of tearing fabric echoing the frantic rhythm of her heart.

She overturned the mahogany vanity, sending jars of expensive oils and powders crashing to the floor. The scent of crushed winter-lilies and rose-water filled the room, cloying and thick, like the smell of a funeral.

"It should have been me!" she shrieked, her voice cracking, breaking under the weight of a decade of suppressed longing.

She wasn’t crying the delicate, diamond-bright tears of a debutante. These were bitter, ugly sobs that distorted her face into a mask of pure, unadulterated malice.

She grabbed a shard of the shattered sky-glass, her grip so tight the edges sliced into her palm, but she didn’t feel the sting. The pain in her hand was a dull hum compared to the white-hot agony behind her ribs.

"I waited!" she screamed at the empty room, at the ghosts of the promises she had built her life upon. "I was patient! I was everything he needed! Just like Vetra promised!"

She caught her reflection in a standing mirror that had miraculously survived the initial onslaught. She looked like a nightmare.

Her hair, usually a river of polished silk, was a wild, matted halo. Her face, ruined by salt and rage, was blotched with red. Her hands were dripping crimson, the blood staining the white lace of her sleeves.

She hated the woman in the mirror. But she hated the woman at the altar more.

The heavy oak doors burst open, the sound of the latch hitting the stone wall like a gunshot.

Viktor Virelya stood there, his face a thundercloud of repressed fury. He took in the destruction... the glass, the blood, the daughter who looked like she had been dragged through a battlefield.

"Calm yourself!" he roared, his voice vibrating with the authority of a man who had spent his life controlling the tides of the court. "You are acting like a madwoman, Bianca! The servants can hear you!"

Bianca whirled on him. She didn’t cower. She didn’t smooth her skirts. She lunged toward him, the glass shard still clutched in her bloody fist.

"Calm? CALM?!" she spat, the word a spray of venom. "He is getting married to her! He will take that witch’s hand in front of the gods!"

Viktor stepped into the room, his boots crunching over the glass. "Their union will not last," he said, though the words sounded hollow even to his own ears. "We will think of something. Vetra has plans, and the council is not yet won over—"

Bianca let out a jagged, hysterical scoff. "You’re in more denial than I am!" She threw the glass shard; it buried itself in the wooden door frame an inch from Viktor’s shoulder.

"Accept it, Father! Look at the truth! No matter what cunning or wicked plans we have, Eris will ruin them. She doesn’t play by the rules of the court. She doesn’t care for our subtleties."

Her voice dropped, becoming a low, terrifying rasp that made the hair on Viktor’s neck stand up.

"And if we are not careful... she will turn us into something worse than the Ravencrests. Look at what happened to Isolde. Look at her brothers. They aren’t just defeated, Father. They are erased."

Viktor’s face went pale, then a dark, bruised purple. The insult of her weakness... the challenge to his power... snapped the last thread of his restraint.

He didn’t speak. He moved.

His hand caught her across the face in a sharp, stinging arc. The sound of the slap was final, a crack of flesh on flesh that silenced the room more effectively than any shout.

Bianca’s head snapped to the side. She stumbled back against the ruined vanity, her hand flying to her burning cheek. She stayed there, hunched and panting, the silence in the room suddenly deafening.

"You have lost your mind," Viktor said, his voice now a cold, clinical frost. He looked at her not with pity, but with a profound, icy disgust.

"You are no use to me like this. Clean yourself up. Bleed in private, or I will find a convent in the high peaks that will teach you the silence you clearly lack."

He turned on his heel, his cloak billowing behind him. He walked out and slammed the door with such force the remaining glass shards on the floor rattled.

Bianca was left alone in the wreckage.

The adrenaline was gone, leaving only a hollow, echoing exhaustion. She stood there, her breath hitching in her throat, the blood from her palms finally beginning to throb.

She looked down at her hands, at the red staining the floor, mixing with the spilled perfume and the shattered sky-glass.

The truth finally sank in, heavy and cold as a tombstone.

Soren was gone. Her Soren. The man she had mapped her entire future around was now bound to the fire.

Her heart didn’t just ache; it felt physically crushed, as if the silver corset Eris wore had been tightened around Bianca’s own chest. The weight of it was too much. Her knees buckled.

She sank down into the debris, her fine silk skirts soaking up the spilled oils and the blood. She didn’t care about the glass cutting into her skin. She didn’t care about the ruin of her reputation.

"It should have been me," she whispered, her forehead resting against the cold, hard stone of the floor.

Outside, the bells of Nevareth continued to ring, a joyous, relentless melody that celebrated her destruction.