The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Mid-Confession
Ravielle wakes before the Emperor reading her own crimes aloud, refuses the last one, and is given thirty days and a trial; her father won't stand surety, the duke she was engaged to does, and her maid whispers that she jilted him herself.
"...and the night before my sister's debut, I cut her gown to ribbons with my sewing scissors."
The voice was Ravielle's own.
She hadn't told it to speak.
Ravielle was on her knees on a marble step, holding a sheet of paper.
The entire court of the Empire was staring at her.
The last thing she remembered was standing in the rain on her balcony.
Now there was a throne above her, and the Emperor on it, and his beard had gone white since last week.
"Go on, Lady Ravielle," he said.
She looked down at the paper.
It was in her handwriting, and she had never seen it before in her life.
The first line said she had dismissed her maid without a reference for spilling wine on her sleeve.
That was true.
She had sent the girl away without a second thought and gone dancing the next night.
The line after said she had told the whole court that a certain countess stuffed her bodice with stockings.
Also true, and she had only said it because the countess owed her money and wouldn't pay.
Every line on that page was something Ravielle had done, written out by someone who was sorry for it.
She found the last line.
"And the summer before last, I sold the Wolfsgate survey maps to the northern raiders for gold, and forty-one soldiers of Vaelhart died for it."
Ravielle stopped reading.
The throne room waited.
She lowered the paper and looked up at the Emperor.
"I didn't do that one."
Nobody breathed.
Then the whole hall breathed at once.
The Emperor leaned forward.
"You came before this throne to confess freely, Lady Ravielle."
"I came before it to confess what I did," she said. "I've done plenty. I'll own every line of it. Not that one."
"A free confession earns you the veil. You'd become a nun with the Sisters of the Faith and live out your life in peace."
"I'd rather not."
"Refuse, and the charge stands. You'll answer it at the Midwinter Assize, in this room, in thirty days."
"Then I'll answer it."
"If the Assize finds you guilty," he said, "it won't be the veil. It will be the chopping block."
Her mouth was dry as chalk.
"Then they'd better not find me guilty, Majesty."
Someone in the gallery laughed, one sharp bark, and choked it off.
Ravielle turned her head and looked at the front row for her family.
Her father sat in his Chancellor's chain of office, staring at the floor.
Beside him sat her cousin Damien, with one hand resting on her father's shoulder.
Her stepmother, the duchess, sat very straight, the way she did when she was angry with God.
On the duchess's other side was a young woman with honey-blond hair and a wet, freckled face.
She looked like Ravielle's half-sister, Liliane.
But Liliane was seventeen, round-cheeked and sulky.
This woman was older, and she was crying for Ravielle.
"Thirty days," the Emperor said. "The accused stays free until the Assize only if a peer of this court stands surety for her. Who stands?"
Ravielle looked at her father.
He didn't lift his eyes.
Damien bent and murmured something into his ear, and her father gave the smallest shake of his head.
The blond woman stood up.
The duchess caught her wrist and pulled her down again.
The silence went on long enough that Ravielle could hear the candles.
She had a fair idea of how many people in this room she had insulted.
It was most of them.
"I'll stand for her."
The voice came from the pillars on the left.
A tall man walked out onto the open floor, and the court drew back from him.
He had dark hair cut short and a nose that had been broken once and set badly.
A grey streak ran through his left temple that Ravielle didn't remember at all.
Kyrian Vaelhart, Duke of Vaelhart.
The forty-one soldiers on her paper had been his.
"Your Grace," the Emperor said slowly. "Those were your men."
"I'm aware, Majesty."
"And you'll answer for her with your own name?"
"With my name and my lands." He didn't look at her. "If she runs, take Vaelhart."
"Kyrian," Ravielle said.
It came out of her before she could stop it, the way it always had.
The whispering died.
Every head in the room turned from him to her and back again.
He looked at her then.
His eyes were the same green, and as cold as a frozen pond.
"Lady Ravielle," he said.
Then he bowed to the throne and walked back into the pillars.
The Emperor waved a hand, and two guards came to lift her off her knees.
A maid stepped up from the side of the dais and put a cloak around her shoulders.
It was beige.
Ravielle turned to tell the woman she had never owned anything beige in her life, and the words got stuck in her throat.
The maid was tall, with hands rubbed red and raw from hard work, and her hair tied in a knot.
Ravielle knew that face.
She had last seen it in her dressing room, white with shock, and wine dripping off her sleeve between them.
"Hanne?"
"Yes, my lady."
"I dismissed you."
"That was six years ago, my lady," Hanne said quietly. "You brought me back."
Ravielle didn't remember that either.
She gripped the maid's arm, hard, because Hanne was the only solid thing in the room.
"Hanne. Why did they all go quiet when I said his name?"
Hanne glanced at the pillars, then back at her.
Her voice dropped to nothing.
"Because you jilted him, my lady. At the Spring Ball, in front of the whole court."
"I was engaged to him last night."
Hanne looked at her for a long moment.
"That was two years ago, my lady."
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