The Villainess Wants To Retire

Chapter 576: A starving man

The dinner tray had been settled on the low table near the window, the steam from the roasted fowl and spiced tubers rising in thin, lazy curls against the glass.Eris had given her instructions. They were clear, imperial, and left no room for deviation: he was to wash, he was to eat, and she would wait in the outer room until he resembled a civilized man.

But Soren had never been particularly good at following instructions that kept him away from her.

He reappeared at the washroom door, his skin still damp, a loose robe thrown over his shoulders. He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence about the palace acoustics. He simply walked across the rug, his hand finding hers with a silent, magnetic certainty.

"Soren, I told you to..."

The protest began, but it was a half-hearted thing.

It died in her throat because the bath was already drawn, the water steaming and fragrant with the oils he had always preferred.

He had decided that his instructions superseded hers tonight, and as he drew her toward the water, Eris found she didn’t have the strength to fight him.

She was tired in a way that lived in her marrow, and he was warm, and she had missed the solid, grounding reality of him with a specificity that made her chest ache.

The protest ended. She let him pull her In.

The water rose around them, warm and silk-smooth, a barrier against the freezing night outside the palace walls. Soren didn’t speak.

His eyes moved over her with the intensity of a man performing a desperate inventory.

He was checking everything, the curve of her shoulders, the pulse in her neck, the way her hair clung to her damp skin.

He looked like someone who had been afraid he would never see any of it again.

Then, his gaze drifted lower.

He noticed it immediately. The water distorted the lines of her body, but it couldn’t hide the slight, firm protrusion of her stomach.

It was a small change, a nuance of her silhouette that had not been there when he rode North a month ago.

A thought formed in the back of his mind, sharp and sudden, but he didn’t give it a voice.

He said nothing. He didn’t want to make an assumption that might startle her, and he didn’t want to draw attention to a vulnerability she hadn’t yet mentioned.

He simply pushed it away, a data point for a later hour, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly as he focused back on her face.

Instead of asking, he moved.

His arms came around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest until there was no space left between them. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, taking a long, deliberate inhale.

It was the act of a starving man finally sitting at a table. He had been craving this particular scent, this mix of cedar, sharp winter air, and the underlying heat of her, for thirty days of blood and grit. He took his time.

His mouth moved against her skin, soft at first, pressing against her shoulder and her jaw. Then the softness faded into something more urgent, more desperate.

"I missed you," he whispered against her ear, the words a jagged repetition. He said it the way a man says a prayer he’s been reciting in the dark for weeks. "I missed you. Every single day. Every province. Every road. Every night... I missed you."

The repetition wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was the specific, raw honesty of a man who had stopped performing restraint because she was the only audience that mattered. There was no one else here to maintain the Emperor’s mask for.

Eris felt every word vibrate against her skin, sinking into her. She had never been built for this, for the fluent language of longing, for the vulnerability of being wanted so loudly. She didn’t know how to say it back with the same poetic weight.

She turned in the water to face him. Her hands came up to his face, her grip far from gentle. She held him there, her fingers digging into his damp hair, forcing him to look at her.

"I know," she said, her voice low and cracking. She paused, her eyes searching his. "I... Missed you too."

Soren’s expression fractured. He had learned to read her well enough to know that the words from her mouth carried the same weight as every confession he had just poured out.

It was her register of truth, the only one she fully trusted. He pulled her closer, his arms a vice, as the water sloshed around them in the quiet room.

The meal didn’t happen at the table.

Soren had arranged it his own way. He sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a heavy silk robe, with Eris settled firmly in his lap.

He had taken the sheets from the bed and wrapped them around her, creating a cocoon of fabric and muscle that shielded her from the drafty air of the room.

Her protest was brief. She mentioned something about the impropriety of an Empress eating like a child, but Soren had simply tightened his hold with a calm, silent finality that ended the discussion.

He fed her.

He took pieces of the roasted bird and the soft bread from the tray, handing them to her, watching with a strange, focused intensity as she ate.

He wouldn’t let her reach for the tray herself. He took more, handed it over, his own hunger seemingly forgotten in the face of hers.

He hasn’t eaten properly either, Eris thought, watching the hollows of his cheeks. A month on campaign, and he’s treating me like I’m the one who’s been through a war.

She took a piece of the bread and pressed it against his lips. "You also need to eat," she murmured. "You are not a martyr, Soren. Eat."

An amused smile quirked the corner of his mouth, the one that usually preceded a sarcastic remark, but he didn’t speak.

He simply complied, eating the food she offered while continuing to feed her at the same time.

It was an absurd, inefficient way to have dinner, the two of them tangled in silk and sheets, neither of them commenting on the ridiculousness of it.