The Villainess is the Villainess [LitRPG]

Book 2: Chapter 29 - The Ball [Part 2]

Left in the sudden vacuum, Seraphina exhaled slowly. The group Este Liza had surrounded herself with were the scions of various staunch royalists, if her memory served her right. Block-headed warhawks and bigots who wanted to go back to the old ways. Still, she had a feeling that she had won that encounter, if only on points. Este Lize, she felt, had not made any friends with some of her comments.

Hughes touched her elbow. "Are you all right, milady?"

"I am fine," she answered stiffly. Across the hall, Este twirled beneath the chandeliers, each spin making the silver-haired girl's smile ever wider. Velens' laughter—her Velens—floated with her on practiced feet to the music.

So. The silver-haired girl wished for a contest of talent and popularity. Very well.

Seraphina's gaze swept the room, mind already stitching a counter‑offensive. The musicians… her Bard Haze Finleigh… the untouched delicacies… the beckoning dance floor. An idea kindled.

"Hughes," she murmured, "tell me, can you dance?"

"Not very well, I am afraid."

Este Lize's waltz spun to its final cadence, and she dipped before the Crown Prince with something that only aspired to be a curtsy. Her knees bent at uneven angles, her back wobbled a breath too long, and the hem of her plain gown brushed the marble like a nervous broom.

Talent and power she did not deserve, she had. Beauty she possessed in spades, silver hair catching every lantern‑flare, yet grace eluded her the way court etiquette eludes a cow. So common, Seraphina thought, the word tasting of bitter ash. Then a sharper realization cut in: perhaps the clumsy deference was deliberate, a carefully stitched costume meant to tug at Velens' errant heart and rouse his endless urge to rescue.

The music had scarcely faded when the trollop raised her hands, fingers splayed as though plucking invisible strings. A hush rippled through the hall. Threads of air coiled around her wrists, whirling into miniature cyclones that siphoned moisture from the very atmosphere. In the next blink, fountains of water burst forth—crystal arcs that unfurled into lace‑fine fractals, each droplet catching the Zajasite light and scattering it into prismatic shards across the ceiling. Gasps bloomed like fireworks; students craned for a better view, awash in rainbow mist. To Seraphina, it was nothing more than a village fair trick—parlor sorcery puffed up by scale and stage—but the crowd drank it in as though witnessing the birth of a new constellation.

And there stood Velens, awestruck, rainbows dancing in his gray eyes, utterly oblivious to the strings being wound around his princely wrists.

"I see… If you cannot dance, then I shall sing," Seraphina told Hughes, nodding to herself.

This would be a different kind of magic—one that pierced the heart and soul instead of merely delighting the eyes. It would be a performance with weight, an appeal for justice now that the battle lines were drawn. For Seraphina knew she had something that Este Lize did not, and could never, possess. She had made it so.

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She stepped onto the floor, and every gaze in the Great Hall followed her. Her "friend" Michelié de Montan drifted closer like a sly tugboat, wearing a devious smile.

"Seraphina, what just happened between you and Velens?" she asked with faux concern.

The young noblewoman answered with the faintest smile and walked on.

She approached the musicians, whose elegant but lifeless tune filled the air. Haze Finleigh strummed her master‑crafted Chordrelle, looking thoroughly bored.

Seraphina raised a hand, and the players fell silent as if a goddess had spoken. The hall hushed with them.

"Haze, I will sing now. You and the others must follow me as best you can," the girl demanded.

"But, Lady Seraphina…" Haze adjusted the brim of her oversized hat.

"Must I sing unaccompanied?" Seraphina arched a brow.

"The others… they do not know your music."

"Then let them listen. They may join when they can. But you will accompany me." The young girl looked at the rest of the band. "Listen with your hearts, not just your ears; if even a spark of music lives in you, you will find the way."

"As you wish, Lady Seraphina," they said at once.

Haze struck a tentative chord, and the first notes floated out like sunrise over still water—gentle, gold‑rimmed, full of promise. Seraphina inhaled, letting the hush settle deep into her lungs, and began to sing.

Her opening phrase was soft as breath: a single line of yearning. A shiver passed through the crowd as they stilled whatever it was they were doing, forgotten now in this solemn moment. The song spoke of a distant shore where two souls, parted by war and winter, promised to find each other again when spring returned. It was simple, almost childlike in its faith, yet each word carried the gravity of prophecy.

Then something impossible happened.

A second voice—hers, yet not hers—slipped beneath the melody, threading a low harmony that vibrated through marble and bone alike. The Covenant's power had awakened, weaving strands of the very Divine into her voice.

Michelié de Montan, so quick with mischief and quick to mock, forgot her smile and simply stared, lips parted, eyes reflecting the dancing light.

Seraphina moved through the second verse, voice and echo twisting together in a braid of sound—first yearning, then blooming, then exultant. Now the musicians had found their muse and added their music to hers. Even the great tapestries depicting ancient battles on the walls of the grand hall seemed to soften, their bloody reds mellowing to rose and dawn.

Across the hall, Este Lize stood rigid, goblet frozen midway to her lips. The crimson wine within began to quiver, as if humming in resonance with the song. Seraphina saw her rival's knuckles whiten and felt a fierce thrill: the lines had indeed been drawn, and tonight they would bend toward her.

She let the bridge swell, eyes half‑closed, remembering the first time she had heard the melody—sung by her mother on a storm‑tossed night, when thunder rattled shutters and love alone felt safe. The memory flooded her notes with gracious gold; the harmony rose higher, blossoming into a third line—a ghost‑soprano that hovered like a lark above. Three voices now, weaving past and present and possibility into a single, radiant chord.

The final chorus and outro arrived not with fanfare but with surrender. It seemed as if the music itself became a physical thing, settling on shoulders, hair, and the clasped hands of a captivated audience. Wherever the notes landed, they left a warmth that lingered like an answered prayer.

No one applauded; the moment was too sacred for such noise. Instead, the hall exhaled as one, a shared breath of awe.

Seraphina opened her eyes. Este Lize lowered her goblet, face pale, and turned away as if she had seen a ghost of the past.

As the last notes peacefully faded, Hughes looked at her with worship in his eyes. "That was truly beautiful, Seraphina."

"I know, darling—it was meant to be." She smiled and cast a glance toward the dancers. "Now, I believe I'd like a turn about the floor."

"But—"

"But nothing." She arched a brow. "Or shall I find someone who will?"

Victory, Seraphina thought, was sometimes as gentle as a song. Gentle, but powerful enough, she believed, to catch grey eyes that had so recently turned away from her.