The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 126: Chains

They slept tangled together.

Soren and Eris. Bodies pressed close under frost-woven blankets that insulated rather than froze, that trapped warmth between them despite being made of ice magic. Her bare skin against his, her back curved into his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist with the kind of possessive grip that suggested even unconscious he refused to let go.

Peaceful.

For a while, anyway.

The first sign something was wrong came in the form of light.

Faint at first. Barely noticeable against the cave’s ambient glow from the river beyond. But it grew steadily brighter, blue-white luminescence emanating from Soren’s skin where the runes marked him.

They had always been there.

Lines and symbols carved into his flesh through magic rather than blade, inherited through bloodline, placed there by powers he’d been born into rather than chosen. Usually they stayed dormant. Visible if you looked closely but not glowing, not active, just marks that proved he was descended from those Aenithra had blessed.

Now they pulsed.

Rhythmic. Like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own. Like something far away was pulling at them, testing the connection, reminding him that certain bonds couldn’t be severed just because he wanted them gone.

The light grew brighter.

Not painful. Not yet. Just present. Insistent. A reminder written in magic that distance meant nothing when blood called to blood, when the one who’d shaped him decided it was time to pull the leash and see if he’d come running.

Soren’s breathing changed.

Deeper. Faster. His grip on Eris tightened unconsciously, fingers digging into her waist hard enough to bruise if she’d been awake to notice. His face, peaceful moments ago, tensed. Brow furrowing. Jaw clenching.

The nightmare took him before he could fight it.

---

Stone walls.

Cold. Colder than anything had a right to be. Frost covered every surface in thick layers that never melted, that grew thicker with each passing day because the temperature in this place stayed well below what human bodies were meant to survive.

But he did survive.

Had to. Wasn’t given a choice.

The chains helped with that. Kept him alive through magic woven into every link, into every binding that wrapped around small wrists and ankles too thin for someone his age. The spell-work glowed faintly in the darkness, blue lines tracing patterns across iron that shouldn’t be possible but were because she’d made them possible.

Because keeping him alive was important for the throne. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

He was small in this memory.

Eight years old. Maybe nine. Hard to track time when days bled into each other and the only way to mark passing hours was by watching moonlight move across the floor through the single barred window high above.

That window was his only light source.

Torch flames didn’t reach this deep into the palace dungeons. Or maybe they did and she just didn’t allow them here because darkness was part of the lesson, part of the conditioning, part of teaching him that comfort was a privilege she granted rather than a right he possessed.

His organs hurt.

Internal. Deep. The kind of pain that suggested something fundamental was wrong with how his body functioned. She’d been experimenting again. Pushing his ice tolerance. Seeing how far she could freeze his internal systems before they stopped working entirely.

Halfway seemed to be the answer.

Halfway frozen was where the line existed between alive and dead, between functional and failed. She’d found that line through trial and error. Through nights where he’d thought his heart would stop, where his lungs had struggled to expand, where everything inside him had seized up and refused to work properly.

But he’d survived.

Always survived.

Because failure meant disappointing her, and disappointing her meant the experiments continued longer, meant the chains stayed on longer, meant being kept in this frozen hell until he learned whatever lesson she’d decided he needed to learn.

Footsteps echoed.

Metal on stone. Measured. Deliberate. Getting closer with each passing second.

He knew that sound.

Had learned to recognize it the way prey animals learned to recognize predator calls. The specific rhythm of her walk, the way her boots struck stone, the particular echo it created in the dungeon’s acoustics.

She was coming.

He couldn’t escape.

The chains saw to that. Spell-woven bindings that would shock him if he pulled too hard, that would tighten if he fought, that would remind him through pain that struggling was pointless.

Couldn’t fight either.

He was eight. She was an adult. A sorceress. Someone who wielded power he barely understood and couldn’t hope to match even if his body wasn’t half-frozen and his wrists weren’t bleeding from where the chains had rubbed them raw.

All he could do was wait.

Watch the doorway. Watch the shadows shift as torchlight approached. Watch as the figure that haunted every nightmare and waking moment stepped into view.

Vetra.

Backlit by torchlight that made her look more shadow than woman. Beautiful even then. Beautiful always. That was part of what made it worse, made it confusing, made him unable to understand why someone who looked like that could do things like this.

She smiled.

Seeing him chained. Seeing him shivering. Seeing the fear in his eyes that he tried to hide but couldn’t because he was eight and fear was honest at that age.

She stepped forward.

Reached toward him with hands that would touch his face, would cup his cheek with false gentleness, would speak words that sounded like comfort but carried promises of more experiments, more tests, more nights spent wondering if this would be the time his body finally gave up.

Her fingers were inches from his face when—

---

Soren jerked awake.

Gasping. Disoriented. Heart racing in his chest like it was trying to escape his ribs. Sweat cooling on his skin despite the cave’s chill.

The nightmare clung to him.

Sensation memory. The phantom feeling of chains around his wrists. The deep ache of organs frozen halfway. The helplessness of being small and trapped and knowing no one was coming to help because the person who should protect him was the one conducting the experiments.

He forced himself to breathe.

Slowly. Deliberately. In through nose, out through mouth. In the way he’d taught himself to do after waking from similar nightmares, after decades of practice at forcing his body to remember it was safe now, was free now, was an adult with power instead of a child with none.

The runes on his skin still glowed.

Pulsing. Rhythmic. Connected to something far away that pulled at him even now, even here, even in this sacred space that should be beyond her reach.

But distance meant nothing to blood magic.