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 fundamental truth of my existence slip into the background of my mind like a half-remembered dream?

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

I remembered collapsing in the dirt, the smell of my own singed hair, the terrifying sensation of losing control over my own limbs as the Pyronox hammered at the inside of my skull.

Every breath I took was a calculated battle to prevent my own blood from turning into liquid flame. 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 meeting 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 time 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 me harder than the avalanche: I forgot I was dying.

I had been walking a tightrope this entire time, 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 meant to be a permanent arrangement.

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 me time. And time, 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 emerge, my physical body would incinerate, and I would be gone. I had eighteen months from the moment of awakening to the moment of expiration. It was a clear timeline 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 consume me. He had looked at me with those ancient, molten eyes and stepped back. The seal had reformed differently, stronger in some ways, stranger in others.

But what did that actually mean? What had the dragon omitted in that moment of silent pact?

He hadn’t told me how long the new seal would hold. He hadn’t told me what the cost of his "mercy" 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 merely a candle waiting for a slight breeze to snuff me out.

I don’t know how much time 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 moment I acted, the moment I tried to be the weapon Nevareth needed, I strained the very thing keeping me alive.

It was a cruel, perfect irony. For the first time in two lifetimes, 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 me. I had a future I never thought possible, and now, I was being reminded that I might not have enough time to live it.

I looked at the fire. My element. 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 game 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 flames dance, wondering how many more fires I would get to sit by before the one inside me finally won.

Across the ridge, Soren was likely staring at his own fire, his eyes searching the dark for me. He was terrified of losing me 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 me 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 time. 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 meet.

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.