The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 113: Hug

(hi, for those who have unlocked the previous Chapters, I changed the last few paragraphs there because some details felt off, Eris was unconscious the whole time so she wouldn’t know the things that Soren did for her while she was unconscious. So yeah I changed that.) Enjoy!!!

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Soren looked at me, not through me, not past me, but at me, and seen something worth saving. Had proposed marriage in a ballroom while fire and ice danced between us, had pulled me onto his lap in Crimson Port like it was the most natural thing in the world, had been patient when I pushed him away at the military outpost even though I could see the hurt in his eyes.

Had marked my neck in that commander’s office, erasing Caelen’s claim with ice and intention and a possessiveness that should have terrified me but didn’t.

Had run toward me in that temple when I screamed. When the dragon woke and beasts converged and reality itself seemed to crack around me. He’d run toward the danger instead of away from it because I was at the center and that was apparently all that mattered.

Always choosing me.

Always coming for me.

Even when I was the monster everyone else wanted dead.

The ache intensified until it felt like my chest might crack open from the weight of it, from the realization that I’d somehow gone from not wanting to care about anyone to caring so much about this one person that the thought of never seeing him again felt like dying for real this time.

I missed him. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Even though he was right there. Even though I could reach out and touch him and confirm he was solid and real and alive. I missed him with an intensity that should have been impossible for someone who’d spent most of her existence learning how to feel nothing at all.

But he’d changed that.

Had made me vulnerable in ways that felt strange.

And gods help me, I didn’t even mind.

My hand moved before I could think about it.

Reached out across the small space between us, fingers trembling slightly from exhaustion or emotion or the sheer foreignness of the cold still coursing through my veins.

I tried to be gentle. Tried not to startle him awake because he needed rest, needed to recover from whatever horrors he’d endured while I was unconscious and burning and dying by degrees in his arms.

My fingertips brushed his cheek.

His skin was cold. So cold it should have hurt, should have made me recoil on instinct the way I had every other time something freezing had touched me.

But it didn’t hurt.

It felt... perfect.

Like my hand had been made specifically to touch him, like his cold was the exact counterpoint to my heat, like we were two halves of something that only made sense when pressed together.

I traced the line of his cheekbone. Sharp and elegant and somehow both hard and soft at once. Then his jaw, softly.

As if sensing my consciousness, as if even in sleep he was still attuned to me in ways that defied logic—Soren’s breathing changed.

Deepened. Hitched slightly.

His lashes fluttered.

I froze, hand still cupping his cheek, thumb resting against his jaw.

His eyes opened.

Slowly. Heavy with exhaustion and sleep and the effort it took to drag himself back to waking when his body was screaming at him to rest.

Those winter-bright eyes. Ice-blue and piercing and somehow still glowing faintly with whatever power lived beneath his skin. They were unfocused at first, hazy with sleep, trying to make sense of where he was and why he was awake and—

They widened.

All at once. Sharp and sudden and filled with so much relief it was almost painful to witness.

Because he saw me.

Awake. Conscious. Looking at him instead of burning from the inside out or floating unconscious in water that glowed as bright as him.

I opened my mouth to say something. Anything. Some quip or deflection or question that would break the intensity of the moment before it could crack me open completely.

But I didn’t get the chance.

Soren surged up and forward with a speed that suggested he’d forgotten his body probably needed rest as much as I do. Water splashed around us as he moved, as he closed the distance between us and wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him with a desperation that stole whatever words I’d been planning.

He held me tight.

Desperately tight. Like I might disappear if he loosened his grip even slightly. Like I was made of smoke and wishes and the last fragile hope in a dying world.

And I felt something I couldn’t name.

Something that hurt in the best way, that pressed against my ribs and made my throat tight and my eyes sting with tears I absolutely was not going to shed because I hated it.

But it hurt.

In a way that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with being seen, being wanted, being held like I mattered more than kingdoms or power or any of the things people usually valued about me.

I liked the hurt.

Loved it, even, in a way I didn’t fully understand.

Because it made me feel human. Made me feel like more than just the vessel for a god’s fire or the villainess everyone needed me to be. Made me feel like Eris—just Eris—and that was somehow enough.

Instinct took over before thought could interfere.

I melted into him.

Let myself go soft in his arms in a way I never had with anyone, not even Caelen in the rare moments when I’d tried to be a real wife instead of just a tyrant wearing a wedding band.

Soren made a sound against my neck, something between a laugh and a sob and a prayer of thanksgiving and pulled me even tighter, impossibly tighter, until there was no space between us at all.

He buried his face In the curve where my neck met my shoulder, and his breath hit my wet skin in cold bursts that immediately crystallized into tiny ice flakes that melted a heartbeat later from my residual warmth.

The sensation made me shiver.

Not from cold, though that was novel enough to be distracting but from the intimacy of it. The way his cold sank into my skin and met the heat still living beneath it, the way they didn’t fight or repel but found some impossible equilibrium that felt both painful and perfect.

His body pressed against mine. Chest to chest, no space for air or doubt or any of the walls I usually kept between myself and the world. And I could feel him. The ice in his veins meeting the fire in mine. The way his skin felt like winter mornings and frost-covered windows and everything I’d never been able to touch without burning.

But I wasn’t burning him.

And he wasn’t freezing me.

We were just... together.

Perfectly, impossibly balanced.