The Villainess Wants To Retire Chapter 391: My Curse

ERIS

I sat by the dying fire, the orange light flickering across my boots, and felt the dull, insistent throb behind my ribs. It wasn’t a sharp pain, not yet. It was more like the slow, rhythmic beat of a drum made of glass, a constant reminder of the structural failure sitting right over my heart.

For months, I had lived in a beautiful, dangerous delusion.

I looked down at my hand, palm resting flat against my chest. My fingers curled into the leather of my tunic. How could I have forgotten? How was it even possible to let the most fundantal truth of my existence slip into the background of my mind like a half-rembered dream?

In the beginning, after I woke up in this second life, every second was a war. I spent every waking mont fighting to stay stable.

I rembered collapsing in the dirt, the sll of my own singed hair, the terrifying sensation of losing control over my own limbs as the Pyronox hamred at the inside of my skull.

Every breath I took was a calculated battle to prevent my own blood from turning into liquid fla. I was a walking catastrophe, a girl with a dragon’s soul trapped in a vessel of porcelain.

And then, the impossible happened.

The seal had repaired itself. It happened mysteriously, after that strange, ethereal eting with the beast in the realm beyond. For weeks, for months, I had been stable. No pain. No hairline fractures in my sanity. No fire threatening to burst through my skin every ti I got angry or scared.

I got comfortable. Too comfortable.

I let myself get distracted by the sheer, overwhelming noise of living. There was Soren, always Soren, and the cold, biting beauty of Nevareth. There were the politics of the North, the wedding, the dresses, the scent of pine on his skin, and the way his laughter sounded when we were alone. I got swept up in being an Empress, in being a wife, in being... human.

The bitter, icy truth hit harder than the avalanche: I forgot I was dying.

I had been walking a tightrope this entire ti, but I’d looked at the horizon instead of my feet.

The seal was connected to my core, the very center of my magical essence, and housing a dragon was never ant to be a permanent arrangent.

Even when the seal was "repaired," the dragon’s presence was a natural drain. It was a slow poison, depleting my core day by day.

The math didn’t lie, even if my heart did. The seal being fixed hadn’t solved the problem; it had just bought ti. And ti, in any life, is the only currency that never gets refunded.

In my first life, the variables were so much simpler. I knew my fate with the clinical precision of a death sentence. The Pyronox would erge, my physical body would incinerate, and I would be gone. I had eighteen months from the mont of awakening to the mont of expiration. It was a clear tiline with a clear, agonizing ending.

But this life... the story had changed because I had changed it.

I stood in that silent, frozen realm face-to-face with the beast, and he had chosen not to consu . He had looked at with those ancient, molten eyes and stepped back. The seal had reford differently, stronger in so ways, stranger in others.

But what did that actually an? What had the dragon omitted in that mont of silent pact?

He hadn’t told how long the new seal would hold. He hadn’t told what the cost of his "rcy" would be. I didn’t know if I was still fated to die in eighteen months, or if I had earned eighteen years, or if I was rely a candle waiting for a slight breeze to snuff out.

I don’t know how much ti I have.

The thought was a cold stone in my stomach. It could be months. It could be days. It could be that today’s battle was the beginning of the end.

I felt the ache sharpen for a second, a phantom sting. In the clearing today, I had pushed. I had seen Jorel’s life hanging by a thread and I hadn’t hesitated. I had reached deep, gathered that fire, and unleashed it with a bigger impact than I’d allowed myself since the wedding.

And I’d felt the crack.

It was small. A hairline fracture in the foundation. But it was there. It was a physical manifestation of a pattern I could no longer ignore: my stability was a direct result of my passivity. As long as I didn’t use the dragon, the seal held. But the mont I acted, the mont I tried to be the weapon Nevareth needed, I strained the very thing keeping alive.

It was a cruel, perfect irony. For the first ti in two lifetis, I was genuinely, hopelessly happy. I had found love that didn’t feel like a transaction. I had found acceptance in a land that should have hated . I had a future I never thought possible, and now, I was being reminded that I might not have enough ti to live it.

I looked at the fire. My elent. My curse.

If I use the magic, I risk the seal. If I don’t use the magic, I’m a useless spectator while the people I care about are crushed by golems or buried in snow. It was a lose-lose ga designed by a god who clearly had a dark sense of humor.

I felt a surge of hot, rebellious frustration. No. I wouldn’t go out like a flickering ember.

If fate wanted to write my story as a tragedy, then I would make it a masterpiece. I would make every second count. However long I had, however this ended, I would be the one to choose how I spent the minutes I’d bought. I had survived one death; I wasn’t going to spend the rest of this life cowering in the shadow of the second one.

I would be with Soren. I would fight for this empire. I would live until I simply couldn’t anymore.

But the fear didn’t leave. It just settled, heavy and cold, at the base of my spine. I kept my hand on my chest, feeling the steady, damaged rhythm of my heart. I watched the flas dance, wondering how many more fires I would get to sit by before the one inside finally won.

Across the ridge, Soren was likely staring at his own fire, his eyes searching the dark for . He was terrified of losing to the forest, to the golems, to the cold. He didn’t realize that the real danger wasn’t outside. It was here, tucked neatly behind my ribs, counting down.

Or maybe he did. And that’s why he is so protective.

"Empress?" Thyren’s voice broke the silence. He was standing by his bedroll, looking at with concern etched into his tired face. "You should sleep. We move at dawn."

I looked at him, forcing a small, weary smile. "I know, Thyren. Just... thinking."

"About the Emperor?"

"About everything," I replied.

I lay down, pulling the heavy furs up to my chin, but I didn’t close my eyes for a long ti. The ache in my seal was a dull companion in the dark, a secret I wasn’t ready to share, and a deadline I wasn’t ready to et.

How much longer do I truly have?

The mountain didn’t answer. Only the wind did, howling through the pines, carrying the distant scent of ice and the terrifying, inevitable promise of the morning.