Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
I placed a binding heart curse on the general so that, for one day at a time, his eyes would hold no one but me.
But the curse only lasted a single day.
Every time it wore off, Lucian Vale looked at me like he wanted me dead.
Later, the enemy captured me and strung me up on the fortress wall.
He was afraid I would speak the curse again. Before the men across from him had even finished their demands, he loosed an arrow straight into my chest.
I watched my blood slide down the shaft of his war arrow in thin red threads, and for once, I smiled.
“System,” I whispered, “can I go now?”
[Rewards pending settlement. Estimated completion: ten days.]
I let out a faint sigh.
“Ten more days…”
By the time they hung me from the wall, I was already down to my last breath.
Caning. Branding. Whipping.
Everything Lucian had suffered in his last life, I had taken for him in this one.
And when I was half-dead, I saw him below the wall.
Joy rose in me before I could stop it.
So if the person hanging up here was me instead, he would still come.
I gathered the last of my strength and forced my mouth open, wanting to shout for him not to care whether I lived or died.
But before I could get the words out, the arrow in his hand flew.
No hesitation. No error.
Straight to my heart.
He wanted me dead.
Smoke choked the sky. War drums shook the ground. And yet my world went utterly still.
There was a hole in my chest, blood pouring from it in a steady rush, but I felt no pain at all.
When he caught my broken body in his arms, something flashed through his eyes—a softness I had never seen there before.
“I couldn’t put the soldiers behind me, or the people of this city, at risk,” he said. “No matter who had been up there, I would have done the same. I had no choice. Lydia… in this life, I owe you.”
I smiled.
Maybe even he did not know that what he owed me was more than just this life.
Once, it had been the same scene. The same impossible choice.
But that time, he had thrown down his weapon, dismissed the army, and entered the city alone. He had endured every torment and died there.
Only because the person hanging from the wall had been Celeste Ashford.
Not me.
It was never that he had no choice.
It was only that the one he chose was never me.
“System,” I said, “the mission succeeded, didn’t it? I can leave now.”
[Yes… Please wait while the system settles your reward. Estimated completion: ten days.]
“The arrow’s in my heart. Do I really have to stay alive for another ten days?”
For once, the system fell silent.
“What is it?”
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
[Master, you may choose not to leave. The targeted survival mission is complete. You may stay here instead of returning to the apocalyptic real world.]
I smiled as I answered, though a strange bitterness caught in my throat.
“Stay here? This place is worse than the apocalypse.”
It was true.
Lucian Vale had lived past twenty-seven. My mission was complete.
I could return to the real world.
I could live past my own twenty-seventh year, too.
I wanted to go back.
I wanted to go back now.
After a long pause, the system finally spoke again.
[Understood, Master. I promise that for these ten days, you will suffer no pain. You may spend them in health and peace, and say a proper farewell to this world.]
That was the system’s final mercy.
Its last gift to me was ten more days of life—
for a body full of wounds, with an arrow still lodged through its heart.
I had never truly lived.
This was my second time through the targeted survival mission for Lucian Vale.
I had come here from the apocalyptic real world, half-starved and desperate, with one assignment: keep the brilliant young general from dying before he turned twenty-seven.
If I succeeded—if he made it past his twenty-seventh birthday—I could return to my own world.
And when I did, I would be rewarded with more food than I could ever finish.
I had been dying of hunger back then. I accepted without hesitation.
The system told me that starting at twenty-three, Lucian would face a death cycle every single year.
So I traded one of my eyes for the binding heart curse.
I lost my sight in that eye, but whenever the curse took hold, I was the only thing he could see. Whatever I said, he obeyed.
The plan had seemed simple enough. On the day of each death cycle, I only had to make sure he went nowhere. If he stayed put, the mission would be complete.
So over the four years we spent together, I used the binding heart curse five times.
He called me a witch. Said I bewitched him, controlled him, turned him into something less than himself.
But every time I spoke the curse, it was only to keep him alive.
What I hadn’t known was that the binding heart curse could fail.
That day, he charged to the foot of the fortress wall without the slightest care for himself.
Because hanging there above him was the one he could never forget—Celeste Ashford.
To save her, he entered the city alone.
He was captured, tortured, and died there.
I failed the mission.
Then both of us were dragged back to the day we first met and made to begin again.
That was the system’s rule: when a mission reset, the skill would vanish, but whatever had been traded for it would never be returned.
So this time, I gave up my sense of smell and bought the binding heart curse all over again.
After that, everything unfolded exactly as it had in the last life.
With one exception.
The person seized by the enemy was no longer Celeste Ashford.
It was me.
And at last, I understood.
Lucian Vale’s death cycle had never been a string of accidents.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
From the beginning, all along, his death cycle had been Celeste Ashford.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in Lucian Vale’s room.
In four years of marriage, I had never once set foot here.
A woman’s sobs drifted in from outside the door.
“If I’d known it would end like this, I never would have let Lady Hartwell fetch the medicine for me. That day she kept saying she wanted the berry syrup I make, and I stayed in the kitchen the whole day… If—if I had gone myself, then my lady wouldn’t have…”
“Don’t do this. It isn’t your fault.”
Lucian’s voice was cool as ever, but there was a gentleness in it I had rarely heard.
“No, it is my fault. I’m the disgraced minister’s daughter. My life is worthless. If I die, then I die…”
“Enough.
“You are not allowed to speak of yourself that way.”
I had heard enough. I shoved the door open.
“L-Lady Hartwell… you weren’t—”
Celeste Ashford, all tears and trembling fragility, was leaning against my husband’s chest. She stared at me in shock.
Lucian looked startled too, frozen for a moment.
So this was what it looked like outside while I was dying inside.
The system had promised the wound wouldn’t hurt. Then why did my heart still feel like it was being twisted apart?
I walked straight past them and called out, “Susie.”
The little maid came scrambling in as if she’d seen a ghost.
And yet, unlike the other two, she looked genuinely happy to see me.
“I want tea.”
For some reason, Lucian suddenly reached out and caught my arm.
“You’re not dead? Your wound—”
I slapped his hand away.
“Yes. To your disappointment, I survived.”
There was still a smear of Celeste’s face powder on the front of his robe where she had rubbed against him. The sight of it made my stomach turn, and I stepped back.
Who would have thought that the man who usually recoiled from even brushing against me would now clamp down hard around my wrist?
“I was worried about you,” he said. “Why speak to me so harshly?”
I struggled with all my strength, unwilling to let him touch me for even an instant.
“Lady Hartwell, you misunderstand,” Celeste said quickly. “The general and I are nothing of the sort. I was only worried about you, and that’s why I… Please don’t quarrel with him because of me.”
“You’re overthinking it, Miss Ashford,” I cut in. “I truly am thirsty.”
She had just opened her mouth to continue when Lucian lifted a hand to stop her.
Then he scooped me up around the waist and carried me straight into the bedchamber.
The moment he set me down on the bed, he began tugging open my clothes without asking.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t move. I’m checking your wound.”