Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 175: Left Alone

Aveline returned to class after two days of absence with the quiet confidence of someone who had decided the world could manage without her for a little while.

It was a decision she felt entirely justified in making.

After all, she had been busy, she had been sore, she had been learning, and frankly, the universe had been very rude to her body. Two days of rest had seemed like the least it could offer in return.

So when she finally stepped back into the classroom, expecting perhaps the usual noise, the usual students, the usual chaos, she stopped in the doorway.

The room was empty.

She blinked once.

Then again.

Not a single person sat at the desks. Not a single voice echoed through the space. Not even the professor was there.

Aveline stared at the vacant classroom with the same expression one might wear upon discovering that an entire banquet had been eaten while one was still on the way to dinner.

"Well," she muttered, "how rude."

With a faint huff, she turned on her heel and headed for Lucien’s lab instead. If the class was gone, then fine. She had work to do anyway, and she was not about to waste a perfectly good morning wandering around in search of people who clearly lacked basic punctuality.

She had barely made it halfway there when she ran into Aelion.

He appeared from the corridor ahead, and the moment she saw him, she almost did not recognize him.

The man who usually carried himself with an almost unreal elegance looked entirely unlike himself. His hair was disheveled, his clothes were not quite arranged properly, and there was a faint tiredness to him that made the whole impression feel less polished and far more human.

Most unsettling of all, the color around him was dark. Not the bright, neat tones she had grown used to seeing around him of all people, but something shadowed and heavy, as though his presence had been dragged through a storm and had not quite recovered.

Aveline slowed to a stop and looked at him properly.

"You look... different," she said.

Aelion coughed into his hand, then gave her a look that suggested he had already suffered enough for one morning.

"I have a cold."

Aveline’s brows rose. "You look like death for a cold?"

That earned her a dry look, but she was too busy staring to feel properly chastened.

Because something had just clicked.

The color around Aelion was dark, yes, but it was not the same shade she had seen around the King. It was lighter. Not kinder, exactly, but less oppressive. Less tangled. The purple-black she had seen around the King had felt like something coiled and patient, something that sat in the dark and waited. This was different.

Aveline looked between Aelion’s face and the colors around him, her mind suddenly racing.

Was that it?

Was she seeing the health of people now?

Not only their intentions, but their condition too?

The thought hit her so suddenly that she stood there in stunned silence.

Aelion watched her with a faint narrowing of his eyes. "What are you staring at?"

Aveline barely heard him.

Her thoughts had already gone somewhere else entirely.

The King.

If the colors meant what she thought they meant, then the King’s had not simply been dark. They had been heavy. Coiling. Twisting around him in a way that made her skin prickle now that she thought back on it. She had not known what it meant then, but now...

Her heart gave a sudden, uneasy thud.

Is he dying?

The thought was so sharp and unexpected that she nearly frowned at herself.

No. Surely not.

And yet the color around him had been so dark, so close and strangled-looking, that she could not quite dismiss the idea. It had clung to him in a way Aelion’s did not. It had felt more dangerous, more exhausted, more wrong.

Aveline pressed a hand to her chest and looked at Aelion again, this time with renewed suspicion and a little awe at her own realization.

Then, without warning, she turned and began walking much faster.

"Aveline?" Aelion called after her.

She waved a hand over her shoulder without slowing.

She needed to find Theron.

Because if the King was truly in some sort of trouble, and if the colors were telling her more than she had guessed, then she needed to know what was happening. Immediately.

And Theron, unfortunately, was usually where the interesting disasters were.

Aveline stopped mid-step and turned back to look at Aelion, the urgency in her chest briefly eclipsed by confusion.

"Where is everyone?" she asked.

Aelion looked at her as though the question itself was impossible.

"You do not know?" he said.

Aveline’s brows drew together.

Know what?

Aelion seemed to realize, a moment too late, that she truly had no idea. He sighed, then glanced toward the brightening sky as if the answer ought to have been obvious to everyone alive.

"Today is the Day of First Light," he said. "The day Lord Vaelis gave light to humankind."

Aveline blinked.

The name stirred something faint and old at the back of her mind, but not enough to form anything useful. She had been too busy being sick, sleepy, and annoyed at life to notice the date. The academy itself looked strangely deserted now that she thought about it, the silence less eerie and more ceremonial. freёweɓnovel.com

Aelion continued, his tone growing more matter-of-fact as he spoke.

"The students have all gone to the ceremonies. Sunrise prayers, lantern lighting, blessings for noble heirs, public oaths, the usual."

Aveline stared at him.

Of course, they had.

Of course, the entire academy had chosen to vanish on the one morning she actually decided to return.

Her mouth parted in slow disbelief before she let out a long sigh, equal parts exasperated and defeated. "So everyone is at a festival, and I am walking around like a fool looking for an empty classroom."

Aelion’s mouth twitched, the closest he came to smiling. "That would seem to be the case."

Aveline pinched the bridge of her nose.

She knew one person who wouldn’t be at the ceremony. Lucien.

She walked to the lab, when Aelion stopped her. "He’s not there either," he said.

"He went to the ceremony too?" Aveline asked. He didn’t appear to be the kind who’d pay respect to gods and whatnot.

"No, somewhere else," Aelion said with a smirk.

Aveline got curious.