Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 171: Hidden Truths

Theron struck the creature with a small burst of firelight, not enough to kill it, only enough to see how dangerous it truly was.

This place was fortified. Monsters like this should not have been able to slip in so casually, not without leaving some trace of interference.

And yet, the moment the flame touched it, he felt something strange in the creature’s presence, something wrapped around it like a veil. It was magic, certainly, but not the kind he could easily name. There was something familiar in it, something disturbingly close to his own power. It was the sort of concealment spell that made a thing seem harmless, even ordinary, when in truth it was hiding right in plain sight.

Something he might have made himself.

The thought barely had time to settle before the creature opened its mouth far wider than its size should have allowed and swallowed the flame whole. Then it blinked up at him with bright amber eyes that gleamed with startling intelligence, wagged its tail, and suddenly sprang toward him with obvious delight.

Theron lost his balance and fell flat onto the floor with a stunned thud.

Before he could gather himself, the creature was on him, licking him with the frantic affection of something overjoyed to see him again. Its tail thrashed, its little body wiggled with excitement, and the more it pressed against him, the more absurd the whole scene became. It was behaving as though it knew him.

Theron stared at it in complete disbelief.

"Ham... Hamilton?" he asked slowly, uncertainly, as though the name had floated up from somewhere buried deep in him.

At once, the creature’s tail wagged even harder.

Its wings fluttered with frantic enthusiasm, and then it opened its mouth again, wide and expectant, as if it were waiting for something very specific.

Theron blinked at it. "You want me to shoot fire at you?"

The creature nodded.

Not in a vague or accidental way, but with such eager certainty that Theron nearly forgot how to breathe.

Still bewildered, he gathered a small flame in his palm and flicked it toward the creature.

It swallowed the fire as if it were nothing more than a sweet snack. And then, with all the burst of energy gained from its snack, it jumped on the bed and lay beside Aveline, resting its head on her arm.

Theron sat there on the floor for a long moment, staring at it, and then at the ceiling, and then back at it again, because nothing about this made sense. The creature was a monster. Everyone knew monsters were dangerous. The kingdom had sent troops into the forests to kill them. Scholars studied them because no one could understand what they were or why they behaved the way they did.

And yet this one was acting like an overexcited lapdog.

More than that, it was acting as though it belonged here. As though it belonged to... her.

Theron’s confusion deepened with every second.

He rose slowly and moved toward the table, still trying to make sense of what he had just seen. And there, waiting in plain sight, was the pill.

The sight of it struck him harder than he expected.

This woman had spoken of the pill in his dream. She had talked about shrinking Hamilton, about a spell she needed to place on it, about all the things she had been doing while she spoke in that bright, unbroken stream of thought.

At the time, he had assumed it was only a dream, a strange and disjointed thing his mind had invented from fragments of desire and confusion. He had assumed she had been talking because his mind had placed her there.

But now he was standing in her room. Now he was looking at the pill itself. Now the shape of the memory felt wrong. A cold suspicion started to creep through him.

What if the dream had not been a dream?

What if the place in it had been real?

What if he had truly been there with her?

What if he knew her more than he knew now, and some part of him had been stolen before he could remember it?

The thought hit him so hard that his head throbbed immediately. He clutched at it, his fingers tightening against his temple as the pain sharpened and pulsed behind his eyes.

His father.

His father’s presence here.

The strange gaps in his memory.

The way certain moments felt missing, as though they had been cut cleanly out of his life and left no visible wound behind.

Theron’s breathing turned shallow.

His father must have erased something.

Not just anything.

Her.

His memory of her.

The realization settled over him slowly, then all at once, until it felt impossible to deny.

But why?

Why would the King erase her from his memory?

Why would he hide a girl like her from him?

Theron turned his head toward Aveline.

She was still asleep, curled in the bed with the creature nestled close against her as though it belonged there. Even in sleep, there was something gentle in the way she held it, something unguarded that made the whole room feel softer than it had any right to be. Hamilton, for his part, was deeply asleep as well, pressed contentedly against her as though he had found the safest place in the world and had no intention of leaving it.

Theron stared for a moment.

Then he moved to the window.

His father was gone.

He could no longer feel that oppressive presence at all. The air outside the window seemed ordinary again, carrying only the pale stillness of dawn and the faint chill that clung to the morning.

His gaze returned to Aveline.

Something in his chest tightened.

Without looking back, without giving himself time to think too much about what he was doing or why it felt so urgent, he climbed out through the window and vanished into the morning.

Aveline had been in the same dream as Theron, though she had not understood it at the time.

She had felt him there, somewhere close, only to lose sight of him all at once. One moment he had been part of the dream, and the next he was simply gone, swallowed by the shifting edges of sleep as if he had never been there at all. She had tried to find him even then, wandering through the half-formed traces of the dream with a growing sense of unease, but he did not return.

When she finally woke, Theron was no longer beside her. freewebnoveℓ.com

Only Hamilton remained, snuggled close and breathing softly in his sleep.

Aveline blinked, then slowly sat up.

"Did he leave already?" she murmured, disappointment tugging faintly at her voice.

She rose too quickly, glanced around the room, and found only emptiness where he had been. The bed beside her was cold. The space near the window was empty. For a moment she simply stood there, lips pursed in a small pout, her disappointment settling over her with surprising heaviness.

But then her eyes fell on the pill on the table.

It was glowing.

The same glow she remembered seeing after Theron had placed the spell on it.

Aveline’s heart gave a small, startled leap. She crossed the room at once and picked it up, her fingers tightening with sudden excitement. Then, without wasting another thought on where Theron had gone or why he had disappeared so suddenly, she placed the pill into Hamilton’s mouth.

A bright flare of light followed.

When it faded, Hamilton had shrunk down at once, returning to the little size she had expected.

Aveline clapped her hands together in delight.

"Yay!"

The sound burst out of her with such unrestrained happiness that even Hamilton twitched in his sleep.

He had put the spell on it.

She had done it.

Her smile lingered for only a moment longer before something shattered the brightness.

A stone slammed through her window.

Aveline froze.

Her heart jumped hard in her chest, all the warmth from a second ago vanishing in an instant. She hurriedly pulled on a robe, her expression tightening as she crossed toward the window, each step carrying her closer to whatever waited outside.

When she reached it, she looked out with her pulse hammering in her ears.