Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 165: Dark And Territorial

For a heartbeat, Aveline could not move at all. The word struck her with a force so sudden and precise that it seemed to split the silence open.

Leveret. The name Lucien had given her.

The name that had already begun to feel unsettling in ways she could not explain. And now here it was again, tied to something old and hidden and far more important than she had realized.

Her heart nearly stopped. She didn’t want to think of the implications of that.

Aveline lifted her eyes to Aelion, searching his face for some sign that this was a mistake, a coincidence, a cruelly strange overlap of history. But he looked utterly certain. And that certainty made the weight of the moment settle deeper into her chest.

Something old had just brushed against something new.

And Aveline, for the first time in a long time, had the unsettling feeling that she had just stepped too close to the edge of a secret that had been waiting for her all along.

"Do you, by any chance, descend from Greenvale?" Aelion asked.

The question landed with a strange quietness, yet it seemed to carry far more weight than its softness suggested. To him, it answered too many things at once. It might explain her impossible affinity, the ease with which she seemed to move among Greenvale’s benders, and the almost instinctive way some old, buried part of the kingdom appeared to recognize her.

Aveline rejected it at once, almost sharply. "I come from a proud noble family in Aurelmont," she said, her chin lifting with immediate defiance. "We do not mix with Greenvale blood."

She sounded certain of it, and for good reason. She had studied her lineage. She had been forced to. Every branch she knew, every woman in her family, every carefully recorded name and inheritance had traced back to Aurelmont and to noble houses there. Nothing had ever suggested another kingdom’s blood in her veins.

How could it have? That would be absurd. Just because she was different did not mean she did not belong to the Willowgrave family.

And yet, even as she said it, something small and sharp pricked at her chest.

Theron had come from Greenvale. The Crown Prince of Greenvale had ended up in her family home. And then her family had been murdered.

The connection was too ugly to linger on, too strange to ignore.

Could there have been something her parents never told her? Some buried history, some hidden link between her bloodline and Greenvale that had been concealed from her all her life?

Aelion saw the immediate defensiveness in her tone and wisely chose not to press her. He was not so reckless as to wound her curiosity before it had even begun to open.

Instead, he watched her for a moment, when she asked, "What happened to that grandaunt of yours?"

Aelion blinked, the shift in topic catching him off guard enough to let some of the tension drain from her shoulders.

"She disappeared four decades ago," Aelion said, though his voice had already lowered.

He glanced around the corridor, his expression sharpening. There were too many eyes in the Arcanum these days. Too many watchers. Ever since Lucien had taken her in as his apprentice, too much attention had begun to gather around her, and not all of it was innocent.

He leaned a little closer, as though even the walls might have ears. That was why he wanted her beside him first, before anyone else could claim her.

Aveline looked at him, unsettled by that possessive edge, though not yet enough to object.

Aelion continued in a low voice. "Some say she died in the fire that destroyed the Caelvaris mansion the same day she vanished. She was known for being openly in love with Lucien Caelvaris, and he was deeply fond of her in return. No one ever learned what happened that night. She disappeared, and after that Lucien stopped going home. It was his wife who rebuilt the Caelvaris legacy afterward." freёweɓnovel.com

Aveline’s brows lifted slightly. "He had a wife then?"

Aelion nodded.

That, somehow, made the whole story feel even stranger. freewebnøvel.coɱ

She had grown up in a household where her father had refused to take another woman merely to produce an heir, even when her mother had insisted it might ease the burden on the family. He had chosen one woman and meant to live and die with her. That had been her world, quiet but unwavering in its devotion.

But here, in Greenvale, it seemed as if everyone and their servants had mistresses, hidden affairs, and illegitimate heirs scattered across the bloodlines like careless stains. She could not decide whether that was the curse of wealth, the curse of power, or simply the rot that came when people believed they could possess everything and still remain unpunished.

Aveline could not say.

But the thought left a bitter taste in her mouth all the same.

She did not want to linger on it any longer than necessary. Whatever strange fascination Lucien seemed to have with her could be set aside for now, so long as he did not cross a line and so long as he continued to teach her what she needed to know. That was enough. More than enough.

Her fingers drifted to the pill she had made, touching it as if to reassure herself that it was real.

She had learned something important today. She could learn. Truly learn. If she put her mind to something, she could unravel it, understand it, make it her own. That realization settled in her chest with a quiet, steady thrill.

She needed more than answers. She needed knowledge. As much as she could gather, for as long as she could hold it. Knowledge did not betray her. Knowledge did not vanish without warning. Knowledge could be kept.

Aelion watched her closely, and without quite meaning to, he leaned in a little closer. The thought had been growing in him ever since he mentioned the grandaunt who had disappeared.

There was something about Aveline that tugged at the edges of memory and instinct, something that made him feel as though she belonged to a story older than the one she thought she knew.

And now that she stood before him, looking torn between disbelief and curiosity, with that thoughtful little crease between her brows, she seemed unexpectedly vulnerable. Small. Almost too adorable for her own good.

He wanted to say more.

He wanted to get closer.

He wanted...

A faint prick of danger slid across his back.

Aelion straightened at once, his gaze snapping upward.

On the rooftop above, a dark figure had gone still in the shadows.

Aelion leaned back, his expression sharpening. Who was that?

"Let’s get out of here," Aelion said, and holding her wrist, led her away.

Aveline followed quietly.

-----

Above, unseen by most but not by him, Theron stood rigid on the rooftop, his hands clenched so tightly that the bones in his knuckles ached.

For days, he had been haunted by the memory of the girl who had kissed him. She had settled into every waking thought and followed him even into sleep, appearing in fragments of dream and half-remembered sensation until he no longer knew where memory ended and longing began.

He had come here to find her. To see her. To understand why the thought of her still sat so heavily inside him.

And now he found her standing too close to someone else.

His hands fisted harder.

The strain cracked faintly through his knuckles, but he barely felt it. All he could see was the way Aelion had leaned toward her, the way Aveline had not noticed the danger until the very last moment, and the way something dark and territorial began to burn in his chest before he could stop it.