I’m a Villainess in a Historical Novel

The wind howled through the cracks of the old barracks, stirring the dust and the scent of gunpowder in the air. Moonlight crept through the slats in the ceiling, casting ghost-white lines across the stone floor.

Arthur Penrose stood before them.

Red-wine hair tousled, falling just past his collarbone. A black coat draped over his shoulders like a mantle of shadow. His blue eyes—piercing, cold, unwavering—surveyed the room.

Around him stood nearly thirty men and women. Most were young. All were armed. None wore noble colors.

This wasn't a banquet hall.

It was a war room.

And at the center of it was him.

He stepped forward, boots clicking on stone.

"Today is Thawmoor 18."

His voice echoed across the walls, calm and sharp like a blade unsheathed.

"In ten days, the empire will celebrate another hollow, blood-soaked ball in the Grand Citadel."

He scanned the faces. Most nodded. Some clenched their fists.

"In ten days… we begin."

A woman stepped out from the shadows. Her face was half-lit by the moon. A long scar ran from her left brow to her cheek, old and cruel. Captain Reine Voska. Once a soldier of the Empire. Now his blade.

"Are you sure of this, Arthur?" she asked, folding her arms. "There's no going back after this. If we spill blood in that ballroom… even the commoners will fear us."

Arthur looked at her serious, resolute.

"Good."

A murmur ran through the room.

"Let them fear. Let them know there is a cost for silence. For kneeling. For obeying monsters in gold."

He walked past them all, toward the back wall where a torn flag of the Empire hung crooked.

"We are not nobles. We are not lords. We are not sheep."

He ripped the flag down in one clean motion and dropped it to the floor.

"We are the weight of every lash. The voice of every buried name. The fire in the gutter."

Silence.

Then he turned back to them. Eyes burning.

"I will be the start of the revolution."

And in that moment everyone believed him.

From the corner, a small boy no older than ten gripped a slingshot. A former chimney sweep. Beside him, a priest with scars on his knuckles held a vial of holy oil and a pistol.

This was not an army.

It was a reckoning.

And Arthur Penrose…

Was their symbol.

The bastard prince.

The blood of a tyrant.

The future of an empire.

And in ten days, he would walk into a ballroom of velvet and violins—

And become Zero.

…

Arthur POV

"I Will Never Forgive Them"

I will never forget that day.

I was ten years old.

The air smelled like cold stone and ash. I remember standing in that grand marble hall—barefoot, bruised, humiliated. My hands were chained. My clothes torn.

And my father—Leopold James Wexley, the Emperor—stood above me on his throne like a god in a painting.

He didn't look at me like a father.

He looked at me like filth.

A mistake that should've been erased.

And to him, I was.

A half-blood bastard, born of a woman he never intended to remember.

But I remembered everything.

My mother… her name was Moira Penrose.

She was noble. She came from the once-great Penrose family lords of the northern frontier, scholars of the sword, old blood.

But that blood didn't save her.

The Penrose line was betrayed. Framed by the court. Declared traitors overnight. Their lands seized. Their name erased.

My mother was spared execution but only as a token slave, gifted to the palace like a trophy. A broken flower to decorate the Emperor's halls.

She was reduced from nobility… to nothing.

To survive, she cleaned the halls of those who used to call her sister. She washed the floors that bore the weight of the very men who destroyed her family.

And then…

He took her.

The Emperor.

One night. Without warning. Without mercy.

He raped her.

And when she cried, when she screamed—no one listened.

No one ever listened.

Nine months later, she gave birth to me in a cold servant's quarters. No midwife. No warmth. Just blood, pain, and silence.

I was not greeted as a prince.

I was cursed as a blemish.

A child of crime.

An eternal reminder.

She raised me in secret, between shifts of polishing golden thrones and scrubbing blood from noble boots. She sang me lullabies of old Penrose valor and swore that I would never belong to the monsters who stole her pride.

But they found us.

When I turned seven.

And the first thing the Emperor said when he saw me was:

"Put the boy to work."

No greeting. No recognition. Just a command.

From that day on, I became a palace slave.

No name.

No rights.

No title.

Just "Boy."

I carried firewood.

Not once. Not twice.

Every single day.

I hauled barrels of wine for feasts I'd never taste, polished silver cutlery for nobles who forgot my name before their bread reached their mouths. I walked barefoot through marble halls in winter, while my half-brothers princes lounged in velvet and gold.

They would sneer at me.

"Bastard."

"Trash."

"Don't touch that. He might stain it."

Some would trip me just to watch me fall.

Others would spit when I passed.

One day, the youngest Prince Calder dumped an inkwell on my head and laughed.

"A proper baptism for filth!"

The ink dripped into my eyes, and the guards didn't stop him.

They laughed.

And my mother?

She stood hidden behind the column.

Silent. Unmoving. Watching.

Her lips were pressed tight. Her eyes dry.

Not because she didn't want to cry.

Because she couldn't anymore.

She'd cried herself dry years ago.

She was the only one who ever called me by name. The only one who ever whispered stories of honor, of what our blood once meant.

"You're not a mistake," she told me once as she tucked me into a thin, threadbare blanket. "You're a Penrose. The empire just forgot that."

But they never let her forget what she had become.

A maid. A slave. A warning to others.

When I turned fifteen, they came again.

No trial. No announcement.

Just chains. And silence.

I remember her hands tied behind her back still trying to fix the strands of hair falling across my eyes.

"Don't cry," she said as the soldiers dragged her away.

"Don't give them that."

They accused her of spying. Of treason.

It was a lie. Of course it was a lie.

A recycled script used for every threat to the crown.

That day, I wasn't allowed to speak to her.

Wasn't allowed to touch her.

I wasn't even allowed to watch.

But I heard it.

The crowd.

The cheering.

The snap of the blade.

And that was the day I stopped being a boy.

That was the day I stood alone in the empty servant's hall, my fists clenched so tightly that blood pooled beneath my fingernails.

And I made a promise:

"I will never forgive them."

Not my father.

Not the Wexleys.

Not the nobles who watched her die.

Not the guards who laughed.

Not the servants who turned away.

Not the gods who let it happen.

They turned me into a ghost.

Unseen. Unwanted.

Now?

I will become their shadow.

I will haunt their banquets.

Slip between the walls they built with blood.

I will burn their truths and drag their sins into the light.

And on the 28th of Thawmoor—when they dance beneath chandeliers and clink glasses over lies—I'll remind them what they created.

What a bastard's rage looks like.

I will not beg.

I will not kneel.

I will not vanish.

I am Arthur Penrose.

No.

I am Zero.

The beginning… of the end.

To be continue