Chapter 181: Their Hope
Aveline and Aelion both watched him in silence, each of them equally unprepared for what came next. Lucien’s expression softened in a way that was almost startling, and when he reached out and patted Aelion’s shoulder.
"Keep her with you," he said. "Bring her home safe, Adrian."
Aveline blinked. What did that mean? He cares for me too? But who does he see when he sees me?
Aelion, for his part, looked as though he had completely forgotten how to breathe.
Keep her with you.
Bring her home safe.
This was not the first time he had said that. And again... It was absurd.
It was also shockingly sincere.
Aelion did wonder. Even if Lucien mistook Aveline for his "Levert", why did he believe that she could fire-bend, when she was from the Sylvarion family?
Nothing made sense.
Aveline and Aelion stood frozen for a beat longer, both of them staring after him as though they had just witnessed something impossible and had not yet decided what to do with it.
And then, from behind them, came the low, grumbling sound of the creature.
The monster was not pleased about being forgotten.
Neither of them turned right away. They were both still trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Aveline slowly turned her head.
Aelion did too.
The creature behind them let out another low, indignant grumble, as though personally offended that the entire conversation had been interrupted by human drama.
Aveline stared at the creature for a long moment, her thoughts still caught between Lucien’s sudden departure and the strange way the dungeon seemed to keep forgetting to be quiet. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at Aelion.
He looked back at her.
Neither of them spoke.
In the silence, with the shadows still pressing in from every side and the creature behind them grumbling in wounded indignation, Aveline had the absurd and very immediate feeling that her day had somehow become even more complicated than it already had been. That was almost impressive, considering how strange it had begun.
Then the creature moved.
It came closer with a wobbling, uncertain gait, its dark little eyes turning inward and swirling in a way that made it look more exhausted than dangerous. Its legs trembled beneath it, and for all its strange shape and eerie proportions, there was something pitiful in the way it struggled forward, as if the dungeon had worn it down enough that even curiosity had become difficult.
It stopped a short distance away and focused on Aveline with a quiet, searching intensity that made the hairs at the back of her neck rise.
Aelion’s voice cut softly through the tension. "If you have any more hidden powers, this would be the time to use them, Ava."
There was nervousness in his tone, though he tried to hide it. He was afraid of the creature. That much was obvious. But there was something else too, something more careful and watchful beneath the fear.
He wanted to know whether what he had seen before was real. Whether the strange reverence the creatures seemed to show her had been some trick of light or imagination, or whether she truly was something different to them.
Aveline let out a long breath.
Aveline could feel the shadows around the creature, thin and sorrowful and strangely quiet. They did not cling to it the way malice did to certain people. They trembled instead, like fear, like pain, like a thing that had been hurt too often to trust the world anymore.
It meant her no harm. That much was clear to her. The creature merely stood there with its dark, glistening eyes and a body too weak to make any convincing threat.
Aelion moved behind her with caution, taking up an attack stance despite the fact that he already knew he could not do much in his current state. The crackle of lightning would be weak if he used it now, but it might be enough to give them time should anything go wrong.
He was still wary, still ready to defend them both if needed, though Aveline could tell he was trying hard not to reveal just how much he was watching her.
She looked at the creature again.
Then, very slowly, she reached out and placed her hand on its head.
The moment her fingers touched it, everything changed.
Aveline’s expression went still. Her eyes darkened, and her head tipped back as if something had rushed through her so abruptly that her body needed a moment to adjust.
The creature’s thoughts did not enter her all at once so much as spill into her, a flood of impressions, feelings, and raw, aching memories that struck with the force of a wound being reopened.
It was afraid.
Not in the shallow, animal way people might expect from a caged creature, but in a deeper, more aching sense. It was young. Very young. Too young to have understood what the darkness outside meant, too young to know why the first instinct to explore had been answered with pain.
It had wanted only to see what lay beyond the blackness. It had wanted to go farther, to move, to breathe, to understand the world outside the place it had been confined to. And for that, it had been punished.
Aveline saw flashes of it all.
The first time it had been struck.
The confusion.
The fear.
The pain that had followed curiosity like a cruel shadow.
She saw how it had tried to endure. How it had learned to keep still. How it had stopped hoping for kindness until every new touch made it tremble. Its thoughts were not simple, and they were not wild. They were full of hurt, and longing, and a strange, quiet intelligence that made the suffering far worse because it was so aware of it.
Her breath caught.
Then she jerked back, pulling her hand away as if she had been burned.
A small gasp escaped her.
Her shoulders shook once.
Then again.
Too much.
It was too much.
Again, the burden of another creature’s pain had come crashing into her with brutal intimacy, so close to the ache she already carried in her own bones that she had nearly lost her footing beneath it.
It hit too close to home. Too close to the memories she had never fully escaped. Too close to the helplessness she had once known in Aurelmont, when she had been the one trapped inside someone else’s power, unseen and unheard and unable to stop what was done to her.
Her throat tightened painfully.
Aveline looked down at her hand.
The creature stared up at her.
And when she looked around, she saw that every monster in the chamber was watching her now.
Watching her with the same quiet expectation one might give a person standing at the edge of a decision. It was not demanding, exactly. It was something more fragile than that.
Hopeful. As though they believed she might do something no one else would. As though they thought she might understand.
They hoped she’d rescue them.
