That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 22

Each movement sent the soft fabric of his shirt fluttering.
With every flutter, the sculpted lines of his chest and the countless scars etched across it from battlefields flickered at the edge of Bridget’s vision.
Not knowing where else to look, she found her gaze darting away, always in the opposite direction of his movement.
“Tell me.”
Watching her roll her eyes in avoidance, he stopped a hand’s breadth before her feet.
“What did you do to my beloved caretaker?”
In the depths of Bridget’s downcast eyes, the liquor he held rippled as though threatening to spill.
There was so much she’d wanted to say when she finally saw Julian.
But now, faced with him like this, she couldn’t find where to begin, and her lips remained sealed.
Bridget fought to calm the turbulent rush of emotion within her and managed only a single sentence.
“I wanted to see you, Your Highness.”
She’d wanted to say she missed him.
But in stripping away the raw intensity of that feeling, what emerged from her mouth was a stiff, hollow greeting—bleaker than what she’d rehearsed in her mind.
At those words, Julian’s brow creased.
“Your Highness?”
He laughed, a low, bitter sound.
“Hearing that title from your lips—only now does it truly sink in that I’m king.”
With a twisted smile, he drove his words deep into her chest like a blade.
“If you hadn’t sold me out to Josephine, I’d have gone to my grave never knowing the exquisite thrill of tearing open the chest of my half-brother and holding his still-beating heart in my hand. So perhaps I owe you my thanks.”
……
Josephine was the title of the former empress dowager—the mother of the king Julian had killed.
She had attempted his life multiple times, seeking to assassinate him, the illegitimate son of the previous king, to secure her own son’s throne.
Josephine had feared Julian.
He had been born with a Special Ability, one that rarely manifested among the royal bloodline.
Believing he would use that power to seize the crown, she had coveted his death for years.
The last assassin Josephine sent was dispatched on the very day Julian had promised to meet Bridget in secret.
Only Bridget had known the date and place.
Julian nearly died that night.
And soon after, he discovered that a vast sum of money had flowed into Bridget’s family from Josephine.
Julian’s fury was absolute.
He could no longer tolerate Josephine, who had extended her reach even to his lover to end his life.
That fury was why he had raised a rebellion—why he had seized a throne he’d never cared for.
Only after Josephine’s death, after the hastily concluded rebellion had run its course, did Julian begin to suffer the delayed sting of betrayal and loss.
He was still suffering now, deeply.
“To think the day would come when you and I would stand face to face in this hellish palace.”
As Julian stepped closer, wavering slightly with each stride, a sorcerous aura radiated from him—dangerous enough to make one’s skin crawl.
Bridget instinctively stepped backward.
The thick miasma of sorcery made her breath feel strangled.
“It’s amusing, isn’t it?”
Bridget’s back met the wall.
Gasp—
Her breathing grew ragged, and she drew in a shallow, desperate breath.
Julian closed in, caging her against the wall, and roughly tilted her chin upward to meet her gaze.
Those blood-red eyes, precarious in their intensity. She saw the fury churning behind them.
“I kept you alive as an act of mercy—mercy scraped together from the very bottom, won with difficulty.”
Beneath his fingers, a wound on her lip that had barely begun to heal split open, and blood trickled down.
“It was not a simple thing.”
His eyes, drained of their natural color by his power and stained a deep crimson, reflected her blood rippling within them.
A painful, bitter shade.
“Yet you cast that aside and linger near me. You dare approach Milea? Did you truly believe I wouldn’t notice, or—”
The hand that had held her chin now closed around her throat.
“Did you want to die?”
Bridget understood then how Julian had saved her the night before.
Though he feigned indifference to everything and everyone, he had been watching—watching every person Milea met, every move she made, never letting a single moment escape his attention.
Whether that came from the wounds of betrayal he’d carried since childhood, or from some possessive attachment to the sole person he trusted—Milea—she could not say.
Watching Bridget tremble in his grip, he smiled with bitter mockery.
“Why? You knew that seeing me again meant death. Is this really so unbearable?”
Yes, she had believed he would die.
That’s why in her past life she never sought him out. She couldn’t have dared.
But he came.
When everyone had abandoned her and she was dying, he came to her.
She cast aside her betrayal, her rage, her pride—and ran to him weeping, demanding why he had never looked for her.
So she made a vow.
This life would be devoted to him.
“Tell me. You sold me out and ran off with some man, and then that man betrayed you and sold you in turn. How did that feel?”
His grip tightened.
“I felt like a dog. A real dog.”
Bridget did not resist him.
She went limp, closed her eyes, and simply accepted his fury.
The dark energy pouring from him was so overwhelming that her breath came in gasps and cold sweat beaded her skin.
“Beg for your life, Bridget.”
Julian ground his teeth.
……
“Plead. Ask my forgiveness.”
Bridget’s eyes opened to narrow slits as she gazed up at him.
She lifted her hand and cupped his cheek.
“Don’t cry, Julian.”
You can’t even bring yourself to hurt me. Foolish thing.
There was no physical strength in the hand that gripped her throat—only raw, turbulent emotion. She felt only the murky sorcery that filled it.
“I missed you.”
……
Julian glared down at her.
His eyes were fierce, yet where Bridget’s fingers brushed his eye socket, the tips glistened with tears.
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I wasn’t trying to be cold and distant.”
……
“I just didn’t know if I had the right to say that I wanted to see you.”
The hand that had been crushing her throat fell away.
“Get out.”
He glared at Bridget and threw down his glass, the liquid sloshing onto the floor, then turned away.
“I can’t stand the sight of you.”

* * *

At that same moment, Isaac paced restlessly through his study.
‘Why haven’t I heard anything yet?’
Bridget, whom he’d sent to the Kensington Estate, still hadn’t returned, and there had been no word from the estate itself, despite the sun climbing high into the sky.
Then a servant he had dispatched to scout the Kensington Estate’s surroundings came rushing back, wild-eyed and panicked.
“A terrible calamity befell the Kensington Estate last night, sir!”
The servant’s face was ashen.
He had gone near the Kensington Estate and now relayed to Isaac what the crowds gathered there had been whispering.
“Every soul in the manor was slain. A single young servant boy—the only one who managed to flee and survive—said that creatures like knights, neither living nor dead, ransacked the entire house. Being only a child, he couldn’t say for certain, but it seems they let only him escape.”
As Isaac heard of the catastrophe that had befallen the Kensington Estate, his jaw went slack.
“Knights neither living nor dead… could it be……”
The servant, harboring the same suspicion, didn’t dare speak further and merely nodded, watching Isaac’s reaction carefully.
Shadow Knights, or Black Knights as they were called—mysterious, dreadful beings. There was only one person who could command them.
Julian Blake, King of Baltac Kingdom, who possessed the Special Ability known as the Shadow Curse.
The Blake Royal Family had once produced powerful sorcerers during the Age of Sorcery and fortified the dynasty through dark magic, and the traces of that ancient sorcery still flowed through their bloodline to this day.
That was the Shadow Curse.
The power to command monstrous knights.
Because they were not truly alive, they neither died nor ate, nor possessed reason.
They were servants of darkness, bound in absolute obedience to their master’s command.
They were a perfect weapon that no one could oppose.
The reason such a formidable ability was called a curse was because it exacted a price in lifespan.
Tremendous power swiftly consumed one’s years.
Julian, judged to be the strongest among all royals born with the Shadow Curse, was said to have precious little time left to live.
No one stepped forward to stop his tyranny and slaughter—not entirely from fear of him, but also because there was simply no need. Why bleed oneself fighting a man already marked for death?
Yet suddenly he’d left the Royal Palace, where he’d been confined awaiting that fated day, and appeared at Kensington Estate to personally wreak havoc.
Why?
“What in the name of—” Isaac tore at his hair once the servants had been dismissed.
“Bridget? What’s happened to her?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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