I fell in love with a villainess

The Vossaire crypt was not a place. It was a throat.

Jack stood at its entrance, a jagged maw of limestone and thorns, and felt the damp breath of the earth coil around him. Torchlight licked the walls, revealing veins of black sap that pulsed like arteries. Evangeline adjusted her gauntlets, the steel etched with rose motifs, her face a mask of ice. But her eyes betrayed her—flickering, uncertain.

"Stay close," she said, her voice swallowed by the dark. "And don't touch the roots."

They descended.

The stairs spiraled deeper, the air thickening with the stench of wet rot and funeral lilies. Jack's boots slipped on moss-slick stone, his burned hand throbbing in time with the hum of the thorns. Seraphine's laughter echoed in his mind, velvet and venom.

"She'll betray you," she crooned. "They all do."

He clenched the locket, its edges biting his palm. Shut up.

The crypt's heart was a cathedral of decay.

Bone chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their candles long melted to stalactites of wax. Tombstones jutted from the floor like broken teeth, each engraved with a Vossaire name and a single rose. At the center stood a pedestal, and atop it—a glass coffin. Inside, Seraphine's corpse lay preserved, her hands clasped over a bloom of Rosa Noctis. Its petals were blacker than oblivion, its thorns dripping faint luminescence.

Evangeline froze. "Gods."

"She's… perfect," Jack whispered.

And she was. Seraphine's skin was alabaster, her scar a silver thread, her hair a cascade of ink. But her eyes were open—storm-gray, his eyes—and they followed him.

"Take the rose," Seraphine's voice slithered through him. "Burn it. Free us both."

Evangeline stepped forward. The roots beneath their feet writhed.

The first guardian emerged from the walls.

It was a collage of thorns and bones, its body a tangle of rib cages, its claws serrated rose stems. Evangeline lunged, her daggers sparking against its limbs. "Jack—the rose!"

He dodged a root that lashed at his ankles, vaulting onto the pedestal. The glass coffin fogged under his breath. Seraphine's corpse smiled.

"You see it, don't you?" The voice was inside him now, sweet as poison. "She'll use you. Discard you. I can give you peace."

Jack's fingers brushed the coffin. The rose pulsed, its scent intoxicating—midnight and metal. "What's the cost?"

"Her heart."

Evangeline screamed.

The guardian had her pinned, thorns circling her throat. Blood welled as she struggled, her daggers skittering out of reach. "Jack—!"

He tore his gaze from the rose. For a heartbeat, he wavered—freedom or her—then grabbed a bone shard and drove it into the guardian's spine.

It shrieked, collapsing into brambles. Evangeline scrambled free, her neck ribboned with cuts. "What the hell were you waiting for?"

"A invitation," he snapped, yanking her up.

Their hands touched. Blood, sweat, and something electric.

The crypt awoke.

Roots erupted, thrashing like whipscorpions. Evangeline carved a path to the coffin, her blades a silver blur. Jack slammed the bone shard into the glass, cracks spiderwebbing. Seraphine's corpse sat up.

"Fool," she hissed, her voice no longer in his head but in the air, rotting and resonant.

The rose's thorns lashed, slicing Jack's cheek. He grabbed the bloom, its venom searing his skin. Evangeline plunged her dagger into Seraphine's chest.

The corpse dissolved into ash.

"Burn it!" Evangeline tossed him a tinderbox.

Jack struck the flint. The rose ignited with a scream—not his, not Seraphine's, but a chorus of a thousand voices. The fire spread, devouring roots, bones, the very air.

Evangeline dragged him toward the stairs. "Run!"

They burst into the dawn, the crypt collapsing behind them.

Jack collapsed on the grass, the rose's ashes clinging to his hands. Evangeline knelt beside him, her gloves charred, her braid unraveled.

"Did it work?" she panted.

Before he could answer, the locket at his chest clicked open. The miniature of Evangeline had changed—her painted eyes now wept black sap.

"The covenant is broken," Seraphine's voice sighed on the wind. "But the garden is hungry, vessel. It will feed again."

Evangeline stared at the locket. "What did you do?"

Jack's vision blurred. The world tilted.

He fell into thorns and shadows.

Chapter 7 End.