I fell in love with a villainess

The Vossaire estate had always been a creature of contradictions—opulent and rotting, a gilded cage with venomous bars. But now, as Jack stood in its shadow, the manor felt like a carcass picked clean. Ivy strangled the eastern tower, roses bloomed from cracks in the mortar, and the air hummed with the drone of wasps nesting in the eaves. Even the gargoyles seemed to leer differently, their stone eyes tracking him as he climbed the steps.

Evangeline walked ahead, her posture rigid, her boots clicking like a death march on the marble. She hadn't spoken since the shore, her silence a blade between them. Oren limped behind, his face ashen but alive, clutching a satchel of Maeve's algae vials like a holy relic.

"The staff," Jack said, breaking the quiet. "Are they…?"

"Gone or thralled," Evangeline replied without turning. "The roses don't leave witnesses."

The grand doors swung open on rusted hinges. The foyer was a graveyard of finery—shattered chandeliers littered the floor, their crystals ground to dust underfoot. Portraits of dead Vossaires hung slashed, canvas peeling like flayed skin. But it was the roses that dominated: Rosa Noctis coiled up banisters, their thorns glistening with a viscous, ink-like sap.

Jack's scar twitched. "Welcome home," Seraphine whispered.

Evangeline's chambers were less a sanctuary than a war room. Maps of the estate and the Capitol sprawled across her bed, annotated with blood-red ink. She tossed her coat onto a chair, revealing a bandaged gash along her ribs.

"You're hurt," Jack said.

She didn't look up. "And you're leaking."

He glanced down. Golden sap oozed from his scar, staining his shirt. He pressed a hand to it, the thorns beneath his skin writhing in response.

Oren sank into a moth-eaten armchair, unpacking Maeve's vials. "The algae slows the rot, but it won't stop it. We need the source."

"The garden," Evangeline said. "Where Seraphine's rose first took root."

Jack's head snapped up. "The crypt? We burned it."

"The crypt was a symptom. The garden is the heart." She stabbed a dagger into the map, pinning the estate's eastern quadrant. "And it's been waiting for you."

They found the first thrall in the conservatory.

Lady Isolde, once Evangeline's sharpest rival in court, stood motionless among the dead orchids. Roses burst from her eye sockets, petals black as a starless night, roots braided through her veins. Her mouth hung open, a bloom lodged in her throat.

Evangeline's dagger hovered. "She was at the Capitol ball. Veyra's ally."

"Is she… aware?" Jack asked.

Lady Isolde's head turned, petals rustling. "He… is… here…"

The conservatory erupted.

Thorns speared from the floor, roots cracking terracotta pots. Jack shoved Evangeline aside as a vine lashed her former place. Oren hurled an algae vial, the liquid hissing as it melted through the thrall's roots.

"Jack, down!" Evangeline yelled.

He dropped as her dagger sailed past, embedding in Lady Isolde's skull. The thrall crumpled, roses wilting to ash.

Evangeline yanked her blade free. "The garden knows we're here."

They moved through the estate like ghosts, cutting down thralls—servants, guards, even a stableboy Jack recognized from his first days as Riven. Each kill hollowed him further. The thorns in his chest pulsed, Seraphine's voice a venomous lullaby:

"You're one of them now. Why fight it?"

By dusk, they reached the eastern gardens.

It was not a garden.

It was an abomination.

The hedges had grown teeth, the fountains bubbled with black sap, and the statues wept blood from hollow eyes. At its center stood Seraphine's rose—no longer a plant, but a colossus. Its stem was a twisted amalgam of bone and iron, its petals vast as sails, its thorns dripping venom that hissed where it struck the earth.

Evangeline gripped Jack's arm, her first voluntary touch in days. "That's the source. Destroy it, and the thralls fall."

"And me?"

Her silence was answer enough.

The garden fought like a living thing.

Roots erupted, thrashing with feral intelligence. Evangeline carved a path, her daggers a silver blur, while Oren hurled algae bombs that ate through the rot. Jack followed, the scar on his chest blazing, thorns erupting from his hands in jagged spires.

"You'll kill her," Seraphine taunted. "You'll kill them all."

He gritted his teeth. "Not today."

The central rose loomed, its stench a miasma of decay and cloying sweetness. Jack plunged his thorned hands into the stem.

Agony.

The garden's memories flooded him—Seraphine's first breath as the thorns claimed her, centuries of Vossaires feeding the bloom with blood and sorrow, Evangeline as a child planting a white rose on her brother's grave. Liran's grave.

"You see?" Seraphine whispered. "She made me too."

Jack roared, tearing the roots from his soul. The rose shuddered, petals curling inward, and exploded.

The collapse was apocalyptic.

The estate folded in on itself, walls crumbling, thralls disintegrating mid-scream. Evangeline dragged Jack from the wreckage, his scar now a gaping chasm, roots retracting into his flesh. Oren limped behind, clutching a salvaged vial.

"Did we… win?" Jack rasped.

Evangeline pressed her forehead to his, her breath ragged. "For now."

But the garden's death rattle was a summons.

That night, as Jack lay in the ruins of the solarium, the scar began to sing. Not Seraphine's voice—his own.

"You are the root. You are the storm."

He stumbled to a cracked mirror. The scar had spread, its petals etched in gold and black, but the roots beneath his skin were… calmer. Controllable.

He willed a thorn to his palm. It obeyed, painless.

"What am I?"

Evangeline found him there, her reflection fractured in the glass. "You're bleeding."

Golden sap dripped from his nose. "It doesn't hurt."

She cupped his face, her gloves gone, her touch calloused and warm. "That's what scares me."

The survivors arrived at dawn—nobles, servants, a handful of guards who'd evaded the thralling. They gathered in the scorched remains of the ballroom, their eyes wide with terror and hope.

Evangeline stood atop a rubble pile, every inch the Viper. "The garden is ash. The cult scatters. But this isn't victory. It's a respite."

A lord sneered. "You expect us to follow you? The woman who burned her own lands?"

Jack stepped forward, thorns curling at his wrists. "You'll follow her because she's the only one who's ever survived the thorns. Or you'll die whining."

The crowd stilled.

Evangeline's lips quirked—almost a smile. "Prepare the carriages. We reclaim the Capitol at dusk."

In the silence that followed, she pulled Jack aside. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yes, I did." He hesitated. "The garden showed me things. About you. About Liran."

Her mask slipped. "And?"

"You were a girl who loved her brother. That's not a weakness."

She turned away, but not before he saw the tear. "It is when the world uses it against you."

As the camp stirred, Jack retreated to the crypt—or what remained of it. The ashes of Seraphine's rose still smoldered, but something glinted in the debris.

A locket, identical to the one he'd destroyed. Inside, a portrait of Evangeline, her eyes aflame.

"A gift," Seraphine's voice sighed, not from his mind but the air itself.

He crushed it in his fist. "Show yourself."

The shadows pooled, forming a figure—not Seraphine, but a man.

Liran.

"Hello, vessel," he said, smiling Evangeline's smile. "Let's play."

Chapter 14 End.