The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 110: Am I dead now?

ERIS

The first thing I felt was nothing.

Not pain. Not heat. Not the fire that had been eating me alive from the inside out, turning my bones to kindling and my blood to ash.

Just... nothing.

Which was strange enough that I opened my eyes.

Or thought I did. It was hard to tell when there was nothing to see, when existence had gone soft and formless around me like someone had taken the world and blurred all its edges until definition became optional.

I knew this place.

The weightlessness. The endless grey-white expanse that wasn’t quite light and wasn’t quite dark but something suspended between the two. The way sound felt muffled, like I was underwater but could still breathe, still think, still be even though being itself felt questionable.

The in-between.

The space where I’d gone when I died the first time. Where Orrian had found me and told me truths I hadn’t wanted to hear, truths that had shattered everything I thought I knew about existence and choice and the fundamental nature of reality.

I floated.

Not falling, not rising, just suspended in the nothing like a thought someone had forgotten to finish.

And that’s when the question came, quiet and unbidden, rising from somewhere deep in whatever passed for my consciousness in this place:

Am I dead? 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The thought should have been terrifying. Should have sent panic clawing through me, should have made me fight and scream and rage against the dying of the light the way I had the first time, when death felt like defeat and oblivion felt like the ultimate loss of control.

But it didn’t.

Instead, I felt... sad.

Just sad.

Not the numb rage I’d carried through most of my first life, not the bitter resignation that had wrapped around my soul like armor until nothing could reach me. This was different. Softer. More honest.

A new grief.

My chest ached with it... or would have, if I’d had a chest, if my body existed as more than concept in this formless void. But the emotion was real regardless, pressing down on me with familiar weight, reminding me that I’d left something behind.

Someone behind.

And gods help me, I wanted to go back.

Not to the throne. Not to the crown. Not to the palace or the power or any of the trappings that had defined my existence in both timelines.

I wanted to go back to him.

To pale hair that glowed in moonlight and eyes like winter dawn. To hands cold enough to soothe my burning and a voice that said my name like it meant something, like I was more than just the monster everyone believed me to be.

To Soren.

Who’d carried me through fire and beasts and his own exhaustion. Who’d looked at me... not through me, not past me, but at me... and seen something worth saving.

Who’d whispered please like it was a prayer and I was the god who might answer.

The ache intensified.

I missed him.

Missed him with an intensity that should have been impossible for someone who’d known him barely weeks, who’d spent more time arguing with him than anything else, who’d built walls so high around her heart that nothing should have been able to climb them.

But he had.

Somehow he’d gotten in, gotten under my skin and into my bones and wrapped himself around whatever passed for my soul until the thought of never seeing him again felt like losing something essential.

Like dying for real this time.

"Well then... what do you think it means?"

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, whispered directly into my ear despite the fact that ears were questionable at best in this place, and I knew... knew... before I even turned around who it would be.

Orrian.

He floated above me, upside down because orientation was meaningless here and he’d always had a flair for the dramatic. That luminous form, all flowing fabric and glowing skin and eyes that were too bright, too knowing, too entertained by my suffering.

I wasn’t scared.

I was annoyed.

"You," I snapped, reaching up to grab him... not thinking about whether hands worked here, not caring, just acting on pure instinct because if I had to be stuck in the void again, I was at least going to make it his problem too.

My fingers closed on fabric.

Or tried to.

Orrian squealed... actually squealed, like I’d threatened him with something worse than fire... and twisted out of reach with speed that shouldn’t have been possible.

"What are you trying to do?!" he yelped, scrambling backward through the nothing, eyes wide with what might have been actual fear.

I glared at him, letting flames spark in my palm because even here, even in this place between places, my fire answered when called. "You better watch your back before I burn you."

"Why are you so angry?" He ducked behind a fold in reality that didn’t exist, peeking out at me like a child hiding from punishment. "I haven’t done anything!"

"You’re never there when I need you!" The words came out hotter than I intended, edged with frustration that had been building since the moment I’d woken in Solmire’s gardens and realized I was alone in this knowledge, alone in this awareness, alone with the weight of understanding that everything was written and everyone was playing roles they didn’t know they’d been given.

"You only show your annoying face when you feel like it."

Orrian floated back out, hands raised in surrender. "That’s absurd! I’m an outsider. I don’t belong to the story. It’s against the rules!"

"And yet you still showed up before no?"

"That’s different!"

"Well then I don’t give a shit about your rules." I let the fire grow larger, brighter, hot enough that the void around us started to shimmer like air over hot stone. "You brought me back. You told me the truth. The least you could do is show up when everything falls apart."

"You can’t break the rules of the mechanics!" he protested, but his voice had gone higher, thinner, like he was genuinely worried I might actually set him on fire despite the impossibility of it.

I glared harder.

He flinched. Dramatically. With his whole body, like I’d struck him.

"What a scary woman..." he muttered.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing!" He straightened so fast I half expected to hear a crack. "Absolutely nothing! You’re wonderful! Terrifying! Magnificent in your wrath!"

I let the fire die.

Slowly.

Making him sweat... or whatever the equivalent was for entities that existed outside normal reality... before finally dismissing the flames entirely.

My irritation settled into something more manageable. Not gone, never gone, but banked enough that I could think past it, could form words that weren’t threats.

"Am I dead again?" I asked, quieter now.