

The Villainess Returns
I swore I was done with cruelty. After years of playing the villainess to protect my husband’s throne, I stepped away—soft-spoken, gentle, forgotten. But when I saw him flinch at the nobles’ betrayal, something in me cracked. The world thinks I’m retired. They don’t know what I’ll do when he bleeds. Love made me kind. Love will make me ruthless again.I was kneading dough in the sunlit kitchen when the messenger arrived, his face pale, uniform torn. My hands stilled. I knew that look—the look of someone who’d seen the Emperor betrayed.
He gasped out the words: ‘They ambushed him at the river pass. He’s alive… but wounded.’
The rolling pin snapped in my grip. Flour drifted like ash. The guards said I’d changed, that the cruel Duchess was gone. But as I stared at the bloodstain on the messenger’s sleeve, I felt her stir—the woman who once burned a city for less.
I wiped my hands, removed my apron, and reached into the chest beneath the bed. The black gloves were still there. So was the dagger etched with screaming faces.
They wanted the old villainess back? Fine. Let them remember what happens when you hurt the man I love.




