The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!

The archery yard was bathed in the harsh, unforgiving light of two afternoons later, the sun beating down on the desiccated grass with a relentless intensity. Iris worked with a focused, almost meditative precision, her fingers moving with practiced familiarity as she restrung a recurve bow.

She treated the equipment with a reverence she rarely afforded people; to Iris, tools were honest. They responded to skill and maintenance, not to emotional manipulation or hidden agendas.

The crunch of gravel announced his approach before his voice did. Rex didn’t announce himself with the usual swagger that had become his signature since claiming authority over the Nightwing household, though the swagger was still there, coiled beneath a new, dangerous layer of calm.

"You did Aurelia a kindness," he said, dropping onto the low wooden fence beside her without waiting for an invitation.

His movement was fluid, the casual confidence of a predator who knew he owned every inch of the territory he occupied. "Telling her to leave Theo alone."

Iris didn’t flinch. She didn’t even pause her work.

She simply glanced at him from under her lashes, her expression as impassive as the stone statues lining the courtyard. "You hear everything in this household eventually."

"Most of it," Rex replied, leaning back on his elbows, watching her hands work. "Some of it I am not told and simply notice."

"Which is this?" Iris asked, finally looking up, her sharp eyes meeting his unreadable gaze.

"Both," Rex said simply. "I noticed Theo has not been seen in the training halls, the mess, or the briefings for a week."

"The boy has become a ghost. And I was told, separately, that you were the reason his mother stopped hammering on his door like some desperate supplicant."

"I put the two things together without much effort."

Iris didn’t respond immediately. She finished threading the string through the grooves, applying the precise pressure required to seat it properly.

When she finally tested the draw, the bow gave a satisfying, resonant thrum, the sound of perfect tension restored. She set the weapon aside, the movement deliberate.

"He needed to be left alone," she said, her voice flat but carrying an undeniable conviction. "Some people heal faster when they are given the room to actually fall apart."

"If you prop someone up before they have finished falling, you only succeed in breaking them again when they inevitably collapse."

"You know that from experience," Rex said.

His tone wasn’t mocking; it was observant. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the understanding that she wasn’t speaking from theory but from scar tissue.

"I know it from experience," Iris agreed.

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.

Rex didn’t push. In the days since he had asserted his dominance, he had learned something valuable about Iris: she was not a door to be kicked down but a fortress to be respected.

He understood the specific, unspoken code between them: the quiet respect of two people who understood that not every wound needed to be exposed and not every silence needed to be filled with meaningless chatter.

They sat there for several minutes, the silence between them stretching, but it wasn’t the suffocating, tense silence that filled Theo’s corridor. This was different.

It was a comfortable, shared stillness, born from the mutual recognition of strength and the shared understanding of what it meant to wield it. The only sounds were the distant clang of training swords from the yard beyond and the occasional rustle of wind through the dead grass.

The quiet was broken not by Rex, but by Iris. She shifted her weight, turning her attention toward the horizon where the Veylor territories lay beyond the mountains.

"The working," she said, her voice cutting through the afternoon heat like a blade. "The one you mentioned... For Veylor."

Rex shifted his attention fully toward her. The casual ease didn’t vanish, but it sharpened; his pupils seemed to contract, focusing on her with a predator’s intensity.

The lazy posture remained, but the air between them suddenly hummed with the weight of something transactional and dangerous.

"I have been thinking about it," Iris said, her voice cutting through the afternoon heat. "More than I expected to..."

"I told myself I was not going to let myself hope for it, because hope is a specific kind of weakness I do not usually allow myself."

"It’s a vulnerability, a crack in the armor." She looked down at her hands, then back at him, her jaw setting. "And then I found myself hoping anyway, in the quiet hours when the training ends and the silence becomes too loud."

"I decided I would rather ask you properly than keep circling it in my own head like a vulture."

"Ask," Rex said. It wasn’t a question but a permission.

"What do you actually need from me?" Iris pressed, her fingers gripping the edge of the wooden bench. "You said sixty percent..."

"You said it was complex. I want to know exactly what ’complex’ means before I commit my life to this, because I have learned, the hard way, that vague promises usually hide the part that costs the most, the part that bleeds."

Rex didn’t answer immediately.

He stared out at the archery range, his mind clearly working through the metaphysical architecture of the ritual. When he spoke, his voice had taken on a gravelly, ritualistic quality.

"The work requires a soul-layer connection that is still fresh enough to be reachable," he said. "Veylor’s is... But that connection is fraying at the edges; it will not stay that way indefinitely."

"The connection also requires an anchor on this side, someone whose bond to the departed soul is strong enough to give the working something to hold onto while it reaches across the veil."

"That anchor has to be you, Iris... It cannot be me standing in for you."

"The magic doesn’t care about my power; it cares about the tether..."

"The bond... the working needs are not ones I have with him. It is the one you forged."

Iris felt a cold shiver trace her spine despite the sun. "What does being the anchor actually require me to do? What is the physical price?"

"Stillness," Rex said, turning his head to meet her eyes. "More stillness than you have ever given anyone, for longer than feels comfortable."

"The work does not tolerate a mind that is fighting it, or bracing against it, or trying to micromanage the outcome while the ritual unfolds."

"I will need you to surrender completely to the process..."

"That is not a small thing to ask of someone whose entire existence has been built around never trusting anything she cannot control with her own two hands."

Iris fell silent. Her mind raced through years of combat training, the way she learned to brace for impact, to anticipate a blade, and to control every muscle twitch.

To be still wasn’t just to be quiet; it was to be passive, to be a vessel.

"You are telling me the hardest part is not the magic itself," she said quietly. "It is letting go of the reins long enough for the magic to take over."

"Yes," Rex said grimly. "I could lie to you."

"I could make it sound like some grand, heroic spectacle... But it isn’t."

"The working itself? I can manage the blood, the incantations, the channeling."

"What I cannot manage for you is the moment where you have to stop being a soldier and start being a bridge."

"I cannot stop you from trying to steer the ghost."

"And if I panic partway through?" Iris asked, her voice tight. "If the stillness breaks? If I flinch when the connection opens?"

"Then the connection fails," Rex said bluntly. "Not permanently, perhaps."

"We could try again if the window hasn’t slammed shut. But I will not lie to you; failure has a brutal cost."

"It costs you the specific, crushing weight of having reached for something precious only to watch it slip through your fingers because your own nerves betrayed you."

"That kind of regret... that stays in the bones. And that is a burden I won’t ask you to carry lightly."

Iris studied him with that flat, searching attention she reserved for threats and allies. "You are not making this sound easy, Rex..."

"Most people, when they want something from someone, paint a picture of glory and success."

"I’m not trying to convince you of anything," Rex countered, his voice hard. "I’m not your recruiter."

"I’m telling you exactly what it costs and exactly what it requires because you deserve to walk into that circle with your eyes wide open, rather than with some sanitized version I invented to make you say yes faster."

Iris took a breath, feeling the weight of the decision settling in her chest. She thought of the empty space beside her, the silence of the dead, and the desperate need to hear one last truth.

"I will do it," she said, her voice gaining an edge of steel. "Whatever it takes... I will hold still."

"I will trust whatever needs to happen while it happens... I have wanted one more conversation with him since the moment he went into the ground, and I am done pretending I do not want it badly enough to endure whatever hell this requires."

Rex nodded once, a slow, approving motion. "Then we will find the right night for it."

"Soon... The window will not stay open forever."