The Villainess Wants To Retire

Chapter 587: The Empress’s restraint pt 2

It was a tiny thing, a twitch at the corner of his mouth that suggested he knew something the rest of the world didn’t. He wasn’t even managing to suppress it."Stop looking at me," Eris snapped during a particularly dry briefing on trade tariffs.

Soren didn’t look away. "I haven’t said a word, Eris."

"You don’t have to. Your face is doing it. Your face is loud. Stop your face. Stop breathing too while you’re at it."

The corner of his mouth twitched higher.

"I regret telling you," she muttered, reaching for a bunch of grapes. "I should have said nothing until I was too round to walk. I should have fled to the southern provinces and sent a letter."

"You wouldn’t have lasted another week," Soren said, his voice a low hum of satisfaction. "The evidence was already visible to anyone with eyes."

"What evidence?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing.

Soren chose not to answer that, primarily in the interest of his own survival.

From across the room, Aldwin let out a small, dry sound of amusement.

Eris whipped her head toward him. "You are also irritating me, Aldwin."

"I haven’t done anything," the scholar said, raising a hand in defense.

"You were thinking something," Eris countered. "I could tell. It was a very loud thought."

Aldwin wore the expression of a man who was absolutely, 100% thinking something about the irony of a fire dragon being henpecked by an expectant mother, but he remained wisely silent.

By day seven, Eris had reached her breaking point. The morning sun of Nevareth was coming through the windows, the cold, clean, brilliant light that followed the Long Dark. It was a day for air, for movement, for anything that wasn’t the four walls of the imperial wing.

"I am going out," she informed the ceiling as she woke.

She made her preparations with military efficiency. Mira assisted her into a dress of deep velvet, her expression carefully neutral, though her eyes danced with the knowledge of the impending collision. A carriage was arranged. The driver was signaled.

Eris descended the palace steps in full Empress attire, her chin high, her walk the calculated stride of a woman who had made a decision and would execute it with or without the Emperor’s permission.

She reached the carriage at the palace entrance. But as she moved to step inside, a figure appeared at the top of the steps.

It was, of course, Soren.

He was in full imperial regalia, the heavy coat, the signet, the aura of absolute authority.

Aldric was at his side, holding a stack of documents, looking like a man who was very committed to his job and very committed to not noticing the domestic standoff happening ten feet away.

Ryse stood behind them, having mastered the art of becoming part of the stonework.

Soren looked at her, applying the full weight of his imperial composure to the situation. "Where do you think you’re going?"

"Nowhere that concerns you," Eris replied, not slowing down. "Return to your documents, Soren. I am sure there is a tax on grain that requires your immediate scowl."

She stepped into the carriage. "Go," she instructed the driver.

The driver began to snap the reins, but a gloved hand suddenly clamped down on the horse’s bridle. The carriage jolted to a stop.

Eris looked out the window, her eyes flashing with fire. She watched as Soren calmly walked around the carriage, opened the door, and climbed in. He sat opposite her, crossing his arms and his legs, looking for all the world like a man who had arrived exactly where he was meant to be.

"Get out," she said.

"I’m going with you," he replied.

"You are not. You have a meeting with the guild masters."

"I moved it."

"Soren, you have been in my face, on my neck, and in my every waking moment for seven days,"

Eris said, her voice rising. "You are treating me as though I might simply dissolve if left unattended for thirty consecutive minutes. I am pregnant. I am not made of wet paper. I am going to the city square, and I am going alone."

Soren leaned back, his expression softening just a fraction. "It’s my apology."

Eris blinked. "Your apology?"

"For giving you three," he said simply. "When one would have been sufficient. The least I can do is provide the escort."

Eris opened her mouth to deliver a scathing rebuttal, but a laugh, unbidden and traitorous, bubbled up in her throat.

She tried to swallow it, turning her head toward the window to hide her face, but she couldn’t entirely contain the sound.

"You are impossible," she whispered.

"And I missed you too," he said, his voice dropping.

"You saw me thirty minutes ago in the corridor!"

"Yes," he said. "And I missed you."

The silence that followed was different, softer, less jagged. Eris looked at him, seeing the genuine, quiet exhaustion behind his eyes, and the sheer, stubborn love that was driving his overprotectiveness.

"Fine," she sighed, a surrender that wasn’t quite a surrender. "You may come. But if you try to hold my hand while I am looking at the market stalls, I will tell the commoners you are an impostor."

The smirk returned, but it was quieter now. He leaned out the window and gave the signal to the driver.

The carriage moved through the palace gates and into the world.

Outside, the sky was a specific, crystalline blue, the tentative brightness of a sun that had decided to try again after a long winter. It was pale gold against ice blue, a light that made the city look like it had been freshly minted.

The palace behind them looked restored, the scars of the battle with the Syvrak and the damage from Vetra’s treachery finally erased. The scorched stone was clean; the cracked walls were whole. It looked, once again, like the heart of an empire.

As they descended into the city, the sounds of the market square reached them, the shouting of vendors, the clatter of carts, the hum of a thousand ordinary lives.

Eris leaned against the window, watching the people. There was a specific, heart-aching beauty in seeing ordinary things again. People buying bread, children running through the gutters, old men arguing over the price of wool. It was what they had fought for.

Soren didn’t look at the city. He watched her. He watched the way the pale sunlight caught the light in her hair and the way her expression softened as she took in the life of her capital.

His expression was quiet, unperformed for anyone but her. In his eyes was everything he never said in rooms full of people: that she was his world, and that as long as he had breath in his body, no storm, not even one with a purpose, would ever take her from him.