That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 52

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

Episode 52

Bridget stepped out of the bedroom and peered around the corridor.
‘If it’s anywhere in the Royal Palace, I’ll see it.’
Sure enough, not far away, a building wreathed in Magical Energy came into view.
It was an empty building, long abandoned.
She pushed through the haze of Magical Energy and entered, only to find the interior hollow and bare—nothing left but the ghost of ornate decoration.
The Royal Palace was full of such places.
Small palaces kept for visiting dignitaries who stayed long-term, or for the king’s adult children, or for friends—places that might house any of them.
Now that no one lived here, dust lay thick upon every surface as Bridget’s feet touched the ground.
With nothing to obstruct her path, each step rang out—tap, tap—clear and distinct.
Bridget did not wander. She moved straight toward Julian Blake.
The Magical Energy guided her.
Julian Blake drew the Magical Energy toward himself, gathering it.
She had found him the same way the day they first met, by following that beacon of power.
Back then, fleeing from assassins, he had hidden himself in a warehouse in a civilian quarter.
When Bridget saw a concentration of Magical Energy—darker and more intense than anything she had witnessed before—gathering in one place, curiosity drew her there, and she discovered him.
He was bleeding to death.
Just like now.
“Julian Blake…!”
The moment she wrenched open the great door at the corridor’s end, the sight before her made her clap a hand over her mouth.
The stench of blood hit her—thick and choking—and there lay Julian Blake, precariously propped on his hands, collapsed face-down upon the ground.
Magical Energy was consuming his body.
Countless black hands sprouted from the earth and walls, writhing with obscene life as they coiled around him.
Hands of Magi—grotesque and horrifying in their mimicry of flesh.
And beneath that grip of Magical Energy, Julian Blake convulsed in agony.
“Ugh… hack!”
Blood poured crimson between his teeth.
“Good God! Julian, Julian…!”
Bridget tore through the mass of Magical Energy and rushed toward him.
The black hands shrieked and lunged at her too.
‘Magical Energy shouldn’t have physical force!’
Yet these things did possess a weight, a tangible pressure.
Was it because they were so densely concentrated?
Her carefully arranged hair came loose and her prepared dress was drenched in blood.
But Bridget did not hesitate.
“Get away!”
Whoosh!
Light exploded from her body with her cry.
It was a faint luminescence.
Yet in the suffocating darkness where the Hands of Magi choked every inch of space with their black forms, that gentle radiance blazed like a beacon.
Sizzle, sizzle-sizzle.
Startled, the hands squirmed wildly like earthworms writhing on a sun-heated stone.
Bridget cursed through gritted teeth, forcing them back into the corners, and pulled Julian Blake into her arms.
Light seeping from her body wrapped around him.
Only then did Julian Blake recognize her.
“Go.”
He gasped the word between gulps of agony.
Even in his torment, a stubborn pride crystallized within him—he would not let her see him in such ruin.
“Get away.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying. I won’t leave you now.”
“Damn it, go!”
His voice rose harsher, fiercer—and his pupils dilated violently.
“Aagh! Cough!”
Blood and black bile poured down upon her dress in a torrent.
“Julian. Oh, Julian…”
She wanted to do something—anything.
But there was nothing she could do.
Bridget could only watch Julian Blake through her tears.
Then his body, struggling painfully against the torment, went limp and collapsed into her arms.
“Julian?”
Bridget wiped frantically at the tears blurring her vision.
Blood from her hands smeared across her cheeks and forehead, but she had no mind to notice it.
She pressed her fingers to his neck, then brought her ear to his lips.
He was still breathing. Barely.
Bridget’s hands trembled violently with terror as she gripped him, desperate.
As though his life might slip away at any moment, she clung to him with the frenzy of someone determined to hold on to even a fragment of it.
She knew he was dying.
But knowing and witnessing were entirely different things.
The shock of it hit her all at once.
Bridget had seen those hands before—masses of Magical Energy congealed into shape.
They had clung to Julian Blake when he came to find her before his death as well.
She had thought it horrifying then.
She had not imagined it would progress this far already.
“I thought you were managing. I thought you were holding up well. I’m sorry, Julian. I’m so sorry.”
The apology spilled from her lips, though no one bore fault.
She was sorry for not knowing his suffering.
How long had he endured it?
Every time the pain came, he must have hidden himself away in some forsaken place.
All those nights he had not returned to the bedroom, all those hours he suddenly vanished and no one could find him—he had been alone, suffering all that time.
Bridget pulled him close and wept.
Then his hand covered hers.
“Julian…… Oh!”
He pulled her down toward him.
Her upper body toppled forward, and their lips met briefly before parting.
Bridget froze, staring down at him in shock.
His eyes, darkened with blood-red irises, were unfocused.
‘He’s not himself.’
In that moment, their positions reversed.
Julian Blake rolled her beneath him, seizing the advantage, and looked down at her from above.
His unfocused eyes were not seeing her at all.
He was moving only by instinct.
“Being with you does something strange to me.”
“Is it bad?”
“The opposite. I feel a kind of ecstasy I’ve never known before. Why is that?”
Julian Blake was searching desperately for the sensation that made him forget pain, that transported him into rapture.
“Come back to yourself, Julian……”
He clearly could not hear her.
Bridget tried to push him away, but her strength was no match for his.
‘He’s like stone.’
He did not budge an inch.
He lowered his head and pressed his forehead against her temple.
Though her tears had dried, fresh ones still clung to her eyes and now spilled onto his forehead.
Where their skin touched, it burned with heat.
No—his entire body radiated warmth.
“Good……”
A low murmur, almost a rumble from deep in his throat, brushed against her ear.
Whether from the heat of his breath or the sudden chill that followed in its wake, a shiver ran down the back of her neck.
When he buried his face in the hollow between her neck and collarbone, she felt the fever-hot warmth of his cheek.
“So good……”
“Julian, wait……”
Bridget’s body quivered.
The sensation of his lips pressing against her collarbone was unfamiliar, startling.
Soft kiss after soft kiss.
Each place his lips touched burned as if branded.
When she swallowed involuntarily, he licked at the delicate line of her throat.
“Ah!”
Her body kept shivering, trembling uncontrollably.
She felt the weight of his body pressing down on hers.
He seemed desperate to hold her as close as possible.
His movements were driven by a need to draw nearer to the source of light radiating from within her, to touch as much of her as he could.
‘I have to bring him back to his senses.’
But how?
After struggling in his embrace for some time, Bridget realized that strength alone would never free her from him.
Then.
Bridget wrapped her arms around Julian’s neck.
He instinctively tilted his head slightly upward.
She angled her face and pressed her lips against his.
Julian’s body jerked.
The sharp metallic taste of blood lingering in his mouth scraped through the back of her throat.
Then came the sensation of his soft, wet tongue.
Bridget licked his tongue and traced the roof of his mouth.
She drew his lower lip in and teased it, then wound her tongue around the base of his.
It was a rough kiss.
Their breathing grew ragged to match.
“Mm.”
A sound escaped between their locked lips—whose, she couldn’t tell.
After holding him and kissing him like that for a while, she felt his movements still.
When she pulled her lips away, a thin strand of saliva stretched between them.
“Ha… ha…”
“…”
His eyelids parted slightly, revealing the crimson of his irises.
Julian’s gaze was clear and fixed upon her.
His face held a stunned, vacant expression.
But it lasted only a moment. His features twisted, and his body went limp.
“Ugh!”
“Julian, are you alright? Julian!”
The pain he had pushed away while surrendering to instinct came flooding back all at once now that consciousness returned.
“Julian, Julian!”
“For now… just hold on… stay still…”
What he really wanted to say was not to cry.
He wanted to reassure her that everything would be fine.
But he could not manage a single word of what he meant to say.

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