Chapter 190: The Waiting
His thoughts drifted.
And in the dark behind his eyelids, the memory of her began to rise again, gentle and maddening and warm enough to undo him if he let it.
Come to me... Please...
------
Aveline waited.
At first, she waited with the kind of restless hope that made time feel harmless. Theron had come the other day, had he not?
So today, surely, he would come too. She had things to say to him. More than things, really. A whole tangle of questions and complaints and feelings she had not yet sorted properly in her own mind.
She did not even know why he had sent Kael instead of coming himself, and that annoyance alone was enough to keep her awake longer than she wanted to be.
She sank into the bath and waited.
Then she dried her hair and waited.
By the time she sat in front of her mirror and began brushing her hair, her patience had begun to unravel.
The brush dragged through her golden locks far more aggressively than necessary.
"Where are you?" she muttered.
Poor hair.
It had done nothing wrong and yet suffered the consequences of Theron’s absence.
The brush caught on a knot.
Aveline yanked it through with entirely too much force.
"Sending Kael..."
Brush.
"Then disappearing..."
Brush.
"Without even saying anything..."
Brush.
By the time she finished, her hair was shining beautifully, and her mood was absolutely dreadful.
And still, she waited.
By the time she sat on the bed, she was no longer simply expecting him. She was glaring at the idea of him, at the delay, at the silence, at the whole foolish mystery of it. And then, at last, exhaustion won.
Aveline fell asleep... still waiting.
In her dream, the meadow returned.
Wildflowers swayed in the breeze, bright and gentle beneath an open sky, and the air felt light enough to lift a person’s heart without effort. There he was too, standing where she had expected him to be.
Theron.
Her first instinct was to smile and run toward him.
Then she remembered she was angry.
So instead, she lifted her chin, pressed her lips into a small pout, and turned away with deliberate offense.
This was not the real Theron, only the one her dreams had given her, but that did not matter. Dream or not, he was still the reason she had been waiting so long, and she intended to make that known.
He, meanwhile, had been waiting too.
Waiting for her to appear.
Waiting through the silence, through the empty space, through the growing unease that slowly curled tighter in his chest with every passing moment.
She was not coming. The thought began to bite at him. Had something happened? Had she changed her mind? Had his father done something to her? What if she had forgotten him entirely?
The questions came one after another, each more unpleasant than the last.
The longer he waited, the more the dark place at the edges of the dream began to creep back in, that familiar emptiness that always seemed ready to swallow him if he stood too long in one place.
He was on the verge of giving in to it, of turning back into the darkness because the darkness at least never pretended to leave him waiting.
And then she arrived, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
Golden hair.
Blue eyes.
Alive.
Safe.
His chest loosened so suddenly it almost hurt.
There she was... And she was smiling. The sight nearly shattered every fear he had built over the last hour.
Then the smile disappeared, completely. Her expression transformed into a magnificent pout. She turned around... and walked away.
Theron stared.
For several seconds, he genuinely wondered whether he had imagined her arrival. Then reality caught up.
She was angry. At him. He had absolutely no idea why.
And somehow, despite all the terror he had just endured worrying about her, watching her storm away through a field of flowers made him want to laugh from sheer relief.
She remembered him.
She was furious.
But she remembered him.
Theron ran after her at once, his heart still pounding from the relief of seeing her again and from the sudden sting of being ignored.
"Stop, little hare!" he called after her.
The words came out so naturally this time that they startled even him. They did not feel borrowed or half-remembered anymore. They felt as though they had always belonged to his mouth, as if some deeper part of him had known her by that name long before his mind had ever caught up. He said it without hesitation, without awkwardness, without the strange sense of borrowing a memory from someone else. It felt honest. It felt right.
Aveline kept walking, stubbornly refusing to slow down, which only made him more determined to catch her before she vanished into the flowers again. He reached her in a few quick steps and caught her by the arms, drawing her gently but firmly to a stop.
Then, because he could think of nothing else and because something in him ached too sharply to be cautious, he smiled down at her and said, "Hello, beautiful lady. I am Vaelor Theron Blackwyre. May I know who you are?"
He really wanted to know.
Not just her name, but everything that name might carry. He wanted to know why she looked at him as though she had known him forever and still wanted him to work for her attention. He wanted to know why his chest felt so unbearably tight whenever she looked hurt. He wanted to know why the sight of her pout could make him feel more unsettled than any courtly battle or political threat.
He looked into her eyes then, and his breath caught.
The red.
The white of her eyes had begun to flush.
Theron’s expression changed at once, alarm cutting through his confusion. His grip loosened instinctively, as though his hands had suddenly become too rough, too careless, too much.
"Do not cry," he said, his voice turning low with immediate concern. "Why are you mad at me?"
He let her go fully then, stepping back just enough to give her space, though every part of him resisted the movement. Aveline bowed her head, and for a moment he thought she might retreat again, might vanish into that stubborn silence of hers and leave him standing there with nothing but questions.
But when she lifted her face again, the redness had gone from her eyes.
And there it was.
That smile.
Small at first, then brightening slowly as though it had found a secret joy in the middle of being wounded.
"This is the first time you are calling me beautiful," she said. "Did you really mean it?"
Theron blinked.
First time?
The thought landed in him with absurd force. It seemed impossible to him that he had never told her something so obvious, something so true. How could anyone look at her and not think it? Her golden hair in the sunlight, her bright, startled eyes, the stubborn curve of her mouth, the way her whole face seemed to light up and darken so honestly with every feeling she had. Beautiful seemed far too small a word for her, and yet it was the only one that came to him.
"Aren’t you beautiful always?" he asked, almost confused by the question itself.
Aveline’s whole face seemed to lift at once.
The effect was immediate and devastating. She looked as though she might float right out of the meadow and into the sky, carried there by nothing more than the force of one simple compliment. Warmth rushed through her so quickly that she could not even pretend to hide it. For one shining moment, she felt light enough to fly.
He called me beautiful.
The thought alone nearly made her smile into the flowers.
But then her gaze faltered.
The brightness in her face dimmed a little, and her lips, which had begun to part with delight, turned downward again into a small, disappointed pout.
"It does not matter," she said.
Theron frowned immediately. "Why not?"
