The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 339: RISING SCANDAL

(Narrated by your most diligent shadow, the one who lingered behind the tapestries and heard the secrets the stone walls were too polite to repeat.)

Dearest, most inquisitive reader, if you had ventured near the Imperial Wing of the Winter Palace this morning, you would have found the air itself vibrating with a most scandalous energy.

The great bells of Nevareth usually signaled the start of a cold, disciplined day of governance, but today? Today, they seemed to toll with a certain... exhausted embarrassment. For while the sun had risen over the jagged white peaks, the Emperor and his new Empress had most decidedly not.

If one were to believe the whispers of the silver-tongued pages, the Imperial bedchamber had become a fortress from which no one... save for the most harried of laundry maids... was permitted to return.

The atmosphere in the palace had split into two distinct, delicious factions.

In the Great Hall, the high-ranking ministers paced like caged wolves. They clutched their scrolls and their schedules, staring at the empty high table with expressions of mounting horror.

They spoke of "emergency sessions" and "unavoidable delays," but we knew the truth, didn’t we? The empire was currently being run by a man who had discovered that his wife’s skin was far more interesting than the price of wool in the provinces.

But it was at the threshold of the Imperial doors where the real drama unfolded.

There, two guards stood. They had been at their posts since the moon was high last night, and dear reader, their faces told a story that would have made a priestess of Aenithra faint.

"Should we... check if she’s still alive?" the younger guard whispered... a lad barely twenty with ears that had turned a shade of pink usually reserved for sunset over the glaciers.

The older guard, a man whose mustache had seen three wars and twice as many weddings, didn’t even blink. He simply stared straight ahead with the stoic resolve of a man who had heard the foundations of the palace tremble. "The Emperor would kill us for interrupting. And frankly, lad, I think she’s very much alive. Energetically so."

Just then, a sound drifted through the heavy silver-carved wood. A gasp, followed by the Empress’s voice... usually so cool, so regal... moaning the Emperor’s name with a jagged, desperate kind of worship.

Both guards went as red as the Solmire banners.

"That’s the... fourth time? Fifth?" the boy stammered, his spear wobbling.

"I lost count after seven," the veteran replied, his voice a strangled rasp.

"It’s barely noon!"

"The Emperor," the older man said, his eyes glazing over with professional trauma, "is a man very dedicated to his... domestic duties."

"That’s ONE way to put it," the boy choked out, staring at the floor as if it might swallow him whole.

But oh, the truly juicy details, the ones that fueled the fires of every kitchen in the city, came from the maids’ preparation room just outside the wing.

Several maids were gathered there, surrounded by a mountain of laundry that would have made a giant weep. The youngest was wide-eyed, clutching a silk pillowcase as if it were a holy relic.

"Look at the STATE of this!" one maid cried, holding up a sheet of midnight silk that looked as though a whirlwind had decided to take up residence in the Imperial bed. It was twisted, tangled, and bore the unmistakable marks of a very, very long night.

"That’s the third set today," another maid whispered, her voice a mix of awe and pity. "Three. My arms are going to fall off from the scrubbing."

"How are they still...?" the youngest squeaked, her face flaming.

"The Emperor has stamina, clearly," the first maid snickered, tossing the ruined silk into the bin. "Clearly he has been waiting a long while for this. He’s making up for lost time, and the Empress is paying the price."

"Did you hear her?" the second leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. "The entire East Wing heard her. I haven’t heard a woman scream like that since... Well... since never."

"And the things she was saying," the youngest added, her voice trembling. "His name. Over and over. Like a prayer. I thought she was the Fire Queen, but she sounds more like a woman being burnt alive... and loving every second of it."

"Lucky woman," the first maid sighed.

"Lucky? She can barely move! I saw her try to stand earlier when the breakfast tray was left. She made it two steps and her knees just... folded. He had to catch her."

"He’s going to kill her at this rate," the second maid joked.

"What a way to go," the first replied with a wicked smirk.

Inside the sanctuary of the chambers, the scene was far less coordinated and far more... humid.

The Imperial bed was a disaster zone of discarded furs and tangled silks. Eris lay amidst the wreckage, her hair a wild, white halo against the pillows. Soren, looking entirely too smug and remarkably un-exhausted, was currently engaged in the task of "tending" to her.

"Do you need more water?" Soren asked, his voice a low, honeyed rumble. "More food? Should I call for the healers? Or perhaps a very small, very soft cushion for your... "

"I am not dying, Soren," Eris snapped, though her voice lacked its usual frost, sounding instead like something that had been thoroughly smoothed over by heat.

She tried to glare at him, but her eyelids were heavy, and her body felt like it had been unmade and put back together by an amateur. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"You nearly did," Soren countered, his fingers tracing the curve of her jaw with an annoying, obsessive gentleness.

"And whose fault is that?" she grumbled, trying to pull a sheet over her exposed shoulder.

Soren caught her hand, kissing her knuckles. "Yours. For being utterly, maddeningly irresistible."

Eris groaned, closing her eyes. Her internal state was a chaotic mess of contradictions. Her legs felt like jelly, her skin was sensitive to even the lightest brush of the air, and she was sore in places she hadn’t known she possessed the ability to be sore. She was, quite frankly, destroyed. And yet... she was satisfied.

She hated it. She was the Flameborne Monarch, a woman of iron and ash, and here she was, being coddled by a man who looked like he wanted to spend the next forty years hand-feeding her grapes.

"Attendants!" Soren suddenly boomed toward the door.

Eris bolted upright... or tried to, before a sharp twinge in her lower back sent her yelping back into the pillows. "Soren, NO! You can’t let them in here while I look like... like this!"

Soren ignored her, with the practiced ease of a man who knew he had already won. He grabbed a heavy fur throw and wrapped it around her with a possessive, territorial tug. "They won’t see a thing. I’m not sharing the view. I just want my wife fed."

A servant entered, their eyes fixed so firmly on the floorboards they might as well have been counting the grains in the wood.

"Bring more food," Soren commanded, his arm draped over Eris’s shoulder. "Wine. The cold kind from the glacier cellars. And fruit. Lots of fruit. She needs her strength."

"Yes, Your Majesty," the servant murmured, their voice trembling with suppressed amusement.

"And draw another bath. In an hour. With the lavender oils."

"Of course, Your Majesty."