The Villainess is the Villainess [Otome Isekai LitRPG]

Book 3: Chapter 25 - Revelations [Part 2]

“Yes. Lady Anaselena.” Seraphina’s mouth tilted in a shape too sharp to be a smile. “With her Sight, she has a habit of sticking her fingers in where they do not belong. A push here, a whisper there… enough to set a boulder rolling or turn a trickle into a river. Into a flood. She plays with the strings of fate as a bard does his Chordrelle.”

Eloise worried her lip between her teeth. “Is her power truly so fearsome? I thought them only stories and tall tales.”

Miriam nodded quickly, fervent. “I have heard—”

Seraphina’s gaze slid to Eloise and held. “What most people call stories are simply the minutes of a meeting they were not invited to. My mother prefers people to think she is only clever. Insightful. It keeps them unguarded until the axe falls. She can glimpse, yes. But worse, she can… incline.” Seraphina’s voice cooled a degree. “Influence and destroy, as a weaver will pull one thread and ruin a whole tapestry. My mother is perhaps one of the most dangerous women on the continent. Even King Elidion and Emperor Erdian tread lightly when her fingers are on the skeins.”

The fire gave a soft sigh. Seraphina lifted her eyes to Miriam again. “Where is Hughes? Our great victor of a duel against royalty itself?”

“Hughes, I can’t say—” Miriam began, and flinched.

“Then find out.” Seraphina’s tone sharpened; the room seemed to come into focus around her words. “He started all of this mess… and for some reason has grown annoyingly popular in certain quarters. Popular men fall prey to accidents.” She fixed her green eyes squarely on Miriam. “Have him secured. Quietly. Move him somewhere that is discreet and secure.”

“Yes, milady,” Miriam said, already backing toward the door, notes forgotten, relieved at being given something to do.

“And Milly,” Seraphina added, almost lazily, “put watchers on the Bishop de Francey and on any courier riding with de Montan, or for that matter, de Lehman. If my father is playing to the gallery, I would like to own the front row. We must see if we can head my father’s foolishness off.”

Miriam bobbed. “I will see to it at once.”

“Excellent,” Seraphina lifted the cooling teacup, then set it down untouched once more. “Eloise, would you be so kind as to pay a visit and offer respects to the Crown Prince. We must confirm his condition, after all. The future of the realm is at stake.”

Eloise’s smile came back slow and feline. “At once, my lady.”

“Lastly,” Seraphina said, and let her gaze rest for a heartbeat on a place in the middle-distance, “have our friends in the servants’ halls begin a different rumor. Whisper that I wept over the prince when he fell. Young love is a complex thing… it will add some drama and spice to the story.”

Eloise blinked. “You did not.”

“Of course I did not,” Seraphina replied, lids lowering like shutters. “But rumor, as Milly says, seldom keeps to the road. Let it wander somewhere useful.”

Miriam curtsied and fled; Eloise glided after, the click of her heels small and sharp as punctuation. Alone again, Seraphina drew the ledger back to her and opened it to a fresh page.

She needed to draft a plan. Favors owed, and favors that needed collecting. The young noblewoman felt in her bones that war was coming, or at the very least, some great change.

Seraphina lifted the teacup and tipped its cold contents into the ash pail by the hearth. The girl poured herself a fresh cup of tea, the liquid from the Empire, breathed up a dark, honeyed perfume. She cupped the warmth with both hands, inhaled once, and felt the tightness behind her eyes loosen by a thread.

Soft scales moved over the carpet. Cornelia uncoiled herself and flowed to her mistress’s slipper. Three white heads lifted in turn: the left head blinked slow and solemn, the right head tasted the air with a prim little flicker of forked tongue, and the middle rested its chin on Seraphina’s instep like a cat asking to be worshiped.

“You want something, don’t you?” Seraphina murmured, setting her fresh cup aside to run knuckles along smooth scales. The noblewoman fed it a small biscuit, which she happily gobbled up. “No going outside today, there is much too much excitement outside these walls.”

Cornelia’s right head huffed, affronted; the left pretended not to hear; the middle melted into the touch and made the contented, thrumming sound that was not quite a purr. The fire threw points of gold into the serpent’s scales as Seraphina stroked her. It steadied the mind to touch something that belonged only to her.

She let herself think.

Father on the warpath. The movements of the Great Houses. Then there was the condition of the prince. Everyone was hungry for spectacle. Most of all, her mother was no doubt behind all of this. And then there was Hughes...

She took a small mouthful of tea and let it roll over her tongue. It was good, excellent even. “Hughes,” she whispered into the steam without meaning to, as if the cup were a scrying bowl.

There was a chiming trill. “I like Hughes,” said a voice the size of a bell’s last echo.

The fairy dropped through the candlelight, wings leathery like a bat. She hovered at the level of Seraphina’s eyes and turned lazy somersaults in the heated air above the teacup.

Seraphina lifted one brow. “Why?”

“Because he is like me,” the little creature sang, as if that explained everything. Cornelia’s right head hissed at her; Tia made a face back and blew a raspberry at her.

“How do you mean ‘like you’?” Seraphina asked, mild as milk.

Tia shrugged and began to drift toward the curtained balcony, as if the conversation, like most mortal concerns, bored her within three heartbeats.

Seraphina’s hand moved without hurry and with perfect certainty. She caught the fairy around the waist between forefinger and thumb. Wings beat furiously; indignation rang like a little knife-edge in the air. “No dissembling, no evasion, when I ask a question, I will be answered,” Seraphina insisted, bringing Tia close until the tiny face filled half her vision. “Words. Now.”

“I do not like being held like this,” the Fae squeaked, struggling. “Tia will—”

“Do nothing, if you wish for more cake,” Seraphina finished for her, cool as an autumn morning’s breeze, “and then you will tell me what you meant.”

Threatened, the winged creature simply blurted out all of her thoughts. “He can make things not seem as they are!” she explained in a rush. “But not strong like me. He doesn’t even know he is doing it. Like—like a newborn Fae who has not learned the corners of their own shine. He hums wrong, and the world hums with him. It slips a little, see? Only a little.”

The fairy’s words were an epiphany. Seraphina’s sharp mind moved to fit the pieces together. He was too plain, he was too forgettable, he was… something else.

“Not strong,” Tia went on, smiling weakly as Seraphina’s grip eased. “Not trained. A wild place in him where the edges unbutton.”

“I see. You are beautiful,” Seraphina murmured, petting the fairy’s head before releasing her to hover sulkily above her before she settled on Seraphina’s shoulder.

Seraphina hid a smile behind her cup and sipped the tea while she measured the truth. “Glamor,” she said at last, and the word felt right, a stone clicking into its niche.

Tia clapped once, delighted. “Yes! Glamor. Your no-see. A little one. He tucks it around himself without thinking, silly thing, and it makes people see sideways. The world misplaces him.”

It would be the perfect skill for an assassin. Maybe there was indeed some truth to the rumors after all.