Chapter 586: Chapter-586
The Third Wife flinched at the sharp tone, but something else caught her attention. She looked up, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Why are you calling me ’My Lady’?" the woman asked, her voice trembling but confused. "Should you not call me ’Madam’? I am the Prime Minister’s wife."
Heena looked at her calmly, her sharp eyes missing absolutely nothing. "Well, if you truly want me to call you that, I will. But judging by the way you flinch at his name, and how you look ready to vomit at the thought of returning to his manor... it does not seem like you are quite fond of that title."
The Third Wife froze. The heavy, suffocating truth of her existence had just been laid bare in a single sentence. She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw popped. Her small, bruised hands curled into tight fists. Completely defeated, she literally lowered her head, burying her face between her crossed knees.
"I need your help," she whispered into the dark room, her voice finally breaking with raw, unfiltered desperation.
Heena looked at the broken woman, her expression completely unchanged.
"Well," Heena replied coldly, adjusting her torn collar. "I am not running a charity. So, I cannot help you."
Underneath her collar, the glowing blue lion gasped in sheer, digital horror.
"Host!" the System shrieked, floating up and pointing an accusatory, glowing paw at Heena’s face. "At least have some shame! This woman literally just dragged you out of a literal nightmare and saved your life!"
’Shut up,’ Heena snapped back in her mind, completely unbothered.
The Third Wife slowly raised her head from her knees. Her eyes were red and wide, staring at Heena as if she were looking at an alien creature.
"But..." the woman stammered, her voice thick with disbelief. "But I saved you."
Heena looked down at her, her fox-like eyes completely calm, devoid of any guilt or debt.
"I did not tell you to save me," Heena stated simply, as if stating a fact of the weather.
The Third Wife stared at her, completely dumbfounded. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. The sheer, terrifying audacity of the Vanguard Madam’s logic broke her brain.
"How..." the woman finally choked out, staring at Heena as if she were the most unreasonable, terrifying monster in the entire empire.
"How..." The Third Wife’s voice trembled, her tear-filled eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated disbelief. "How... how can you be so shameless?"
She had just dragged this woman through a ruined palace, fractured her own ribs, and stabbed her in the spinal cord with a two-inch silver needle. She had literally risked being skinned alive, and the Vanguard Madam was sitting there, calmly wringing out her wet sleeves, claiming she never asked for it.
Hovering near the ceiling, the glowing blue lion aggressively nodded its pixelated head.
"Exactly!" the System shrieked, pointing both paws at Heena. "Host, you are a menace! A villain! A toxic, ungrateful tyrant! She carried you on her back! Have you no human decency?!"
’Decency gets you killed on the battlefield,’ Heena retorted internally, completely unbothered.
Externally, Heena looked down at the shivering, outraged woman on the floor. Her expression remained completely flat, completely devoid of the gentle, comforting warmth the Third Wife had desperately expected.
"Shameless? No. I am simply pragmatic," Heena said, her voice smooth and echoing with cold authority. "You acted unilaterally. You made a gamble. And now, you are trying to use that gamble to force my hand into a debt of gratitude."
The Third Wife opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out.
"Do you think I survived on the borders by blindly trusting every person who offered me a bowl of water?" Heena leaned forward, her wet, blood-stained robes clinging to her frame, making her look less like a noblewoman and more like a predator examining its prey. "You did not save me out of the goodness of your heart. You saved me because you saw an opportunity."
The Third Wife froze. Her trembling hands slowly clenched into tight fists in her lap.
"You watched your husband’s flawless assassination plot fail in the Great Hall," Heena continued, her fox-like eyes piercing straight through the woman’s fragile facade. "You realized that his power is not absolute. And when you saw me paralyzed in the Cold Palace, you didn’t just see a dying woman. You saw a weapon."
The silence in the ruined bathroom was deafening, save for the steady drip, drip, drip of the wet floorboards.
"You realized that the Vanguard is the only blade in this entire capital sharp enough to cut your chains," Heena said softly, but the weight of her words felt like iron. "You saved me because you needed me to survive so I could kill him for you."
The System floated down, its digital jaw hanging slightly open as it looked between the two women. "Wait... she... she used you? Host, were you just a pawn in her divorce settlement?"
The Third Wife slowly lowered her head. The tears stopped falling. The frantic, terrified trembling that had seized her body began to subside, replaced by a cold, hollow stillness.
Heena had completely stripped away her mask of a pitiful, helpless victim, exposing the desperate, calculated survivor underneath.
"So," Heena said, leaning back and resting her arms on her knees. "Stop crying. Stop asking for charity. The Vanguard does not do charity. We do trade. Tell me exactly what it is you want to buy with the life you just handed back to me."
The Third Wife remained silent for a long moment. She stared at the wet wooden floor, the dark pools of diluted blood serving as a violent reminder of what she had just been an accomplice to.
When she finally raised her head, the doll-like emptiness was entirely gone. Her eyes were bloodshot, dark, and burning with a hatred so profound it could have set the room on fire.
"I want to live," the Third Wife rasped, her voice completely stripped of its noble stammering.
"Everyone wants to live," Heena replied coldly. "Be specific."
"I want a complete severance," the woman demanded, her voice growing stronger, harder. "I want my name struck from the Prime Minister’s genealogy records. I want to leave this capital, and I want enough silver to never have to look over my shoulder again."
She paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes locking onto Heena’s with terrifying intensity.
"And before I go... I want to watch him burn."
Heena stared at her. A slow, dark, incredibly dangerous smile finally curved her red lips. This was exactly what she had been pushing for. She didn’t want a weeping liability clinging to her robes; she wanted an asset. She wanted someone who possessed enough venom to strike back.
"Whoa," the System whispered, floating behind Heena’s shoulder. "Host, you just unlocked her villain origin story."
"Nice dream," Heena said calmly, her hands methodically smoothing out the wrinkles and wringing the last of the freezing water from her ruined champagne robes.
The Third Wife’s eyes widened, the dark, burning hatred instantly morphing into sheer, confused anger.
"What the hell do you mean by ’dream’?" she shouted, her voice echoing sharply in the damp room, completely forgetting her fear in the face of Heena’s casual dismissal.
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