Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 168: In Her Room

Aveline had only asked it on a whim, but the second the words left her mouth, her heart gave a violent thud.

This man.

She knew this man well enough to know he would not refuse such an offer. He was the same man who had once spoken so casually about helping her breasts "grow" with a massage, as though her embarrassment had been an inconvenience to be solved with ruthless practicality.

And in her current condition, with her body aching and her face already hot from the shame of having nearly suggested something so absurd, she absolutely could not survive if he actually agreed.

She did not even dare look at his face.

The moment she realized what she had said, her whole expression burned with mortification. She hastily looked away and corrected herself before the silence could grow any worse.

"Never mind."

Then she slipped behind the divider so quickly it was almost a retreat, pressing a hand to her chest as if she could physically quiet the pounding there.

Aveline, what are you doing? she scolded herself furiously. You want that beast to unleash on you? Not now. Absolutely not now. Just get dressed.

She remained there for a moment, listening, half hoping and half dreading that he might say something. But there was only silence on the other side of the divider, and that silence made her relax a little.

She told herself she was relieved. She told herself she had done the sensible thing. It was safer this way. Better this way.

Meanwhile, Theron was standing frozen in place, far more stunned than she could have guessed.

She had let him into her room without a single ounce of hesitation. No suspicion. No guardedness. No awkward distance. And then, as though that were not strange enough, she had offered him that.

That.

What exactly had she been thinking?

And why, above all else, had she sounded so oddly familiar with him when she said it, as though they had known one another for a lifetime rather than a handful of chaotic encounters?

Theron pressed a hand to his chest, unsettled by the strange heaviness there.

Why does it feel as though I have known her a lifetime?

He did not let himself think too hard about it, because from behind the divider came the faint rustle of cloth and movement. She was changing. She was there, only a thin screen of wood away from him, and the knowledge struck him with such sudden force that his whole body went rigid.

She was naked behind that divider.

There was only a little wood between them. freēwēbnovel.com

His jaw tightened.

Ah, cursed, he thought bitterly.

Why had he frozen? He could have been with her there, could have done nothing at all and still stood closer than this.

Then her voice came, clear and bright from the other side, as natural as if she were discussing the weather.

"There are snacks on the table. Pick whichever ones you like."

And because Aveline apparently believed in impossible things, she began describing them in detail as though he were a guest she had invited for tea rather than a man standing alone in her room while she dressed behind a divider.

Her voice moved easily from one snack to the next, listing flavors, ingredients, and the little distinctions that mattered to her with a kind of careless attentiveness that made him listen despite himself.

Then she mentioned one item with buckwheat and told him not to eat it.

Theron went still.

His head turned sharply toward the divider, though he could see nothing through it.

How does she know I am allergic to buckwheat?

The question landed in him with the force of a blow.

He had never told her. He was certain of that. No one here should have known. Yet she had said it with complete confidence, as though it were something obvious, something she had always known.

And she kept talking as she dressed, her voice carrying on in that same easy, unbroken rhythm. That should have irritated him. It usually did, when anyone spoke too much, especially women. His mother’s voice alone had often been enough to leave him with a headache, and he had never possessed much patience for girls who filled silence with chatter.

But this was different.

Her voice did not grate on him.

It did not press at his temples the way others did.

It moved around him instead, oddly soothing in its own relentless way, and that unsettled him even more than if it had annoyed him. He had never been able to tolerate that much talking from anyone, not without wanting space. Not without wanting silence. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

So why was he standing here, listening to her explain snacks through a divider, and finding, to his own disbelief, that he did not want her to stop?

He glanced around the room and took in the few available chairs, each of them occupied by some odd little object or half-forgotten thing, as though the space had been arranged by a mind that cared more about usefulness than tidiness.

There was no clear place to sit except the bed, and after a brief hesitation, he chose it. The mattress dipped slightly beneath his weight, and he placed his sword away and set the parchment in his hands as if pretending that this was all perfectly ordinary.

He knew she was Lucien’s assistant now. He knew she was busy, that she worked here, that she had every right to fill the room with her things. That did not mean he had expected her to do this to him, to leave him standing here in a state of half-dazed confusion while she changed behind a divider and talked to him as though he belonged in her private space.

He looked down at the parchment and saw lines of notes written so tightly together that the page seemed almost crowded by her thoughts. He leaned back against the headboard and tried to read, but the script was dense and the meaning slipped through his mind far too quickly for him to catch it all.

He understood only fragments, enough to know that she had been working carefully and seriously, and enough to make him feel strangely unsteady about how much of herself she seemed to put into everything she touched.

Then the realization struck him, slow and undeniable.

He was sitting on her bed.

A prince raised on propriety, on boundaries, on the quiet certainty of what belonged where, should have noticed that much sooner.

Yet he had been too distracted to think properly, and now her scent had begun to gather around him in the most disarming way, soft and unmistakable, lingering in the fabric and the sheets and the air itself.

It was not overpowering. It was worse than that. It was intimate. It wrapped around him with a quiet familiarity that made the room feel less like a temporary refuge and more like somewhere he had no right to be, and yet no desire to leave.

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When Aveline finished changing and entered the room... Theron was...