Chapter 192: The Darkness
Hamilton slowly peeked out from beneath the covers.
At first, all he saw was a shadow pooled near the bed, darkness bending around it in a shape that seemed to swallow the dim light of the room. It was terrifying in the way the unknown always was, wrong in a way that made even the air feel tense.
Then the shadow reached toward Aveline and rested a hand against her forehead, and something about it flickered. The darkness wavered as if it could no longer cling properly to the form beneath it.
Hamilton crouched lower at once and began scratching at Aveline with all four limbs, nudging, pawing, trying anything he could think of to rouse her.
But Aveline did not stir.
The shadow flickered again.
This time it shuddered violently, as though the darkness itself were being peeled away. And then, with a sudden blinding flare of light, the shape broke apart.
When the brightness settled, the figure standing by the bed was no longer a shadow at all.
It was a man.
The King.
Hamilton let out a soundless panic and immediately squeezed himself farther beneath the blanket, pressing close against Aveline as if his body alone could shield her. He nudged her again with his nose, more urgently this time, willing her to wake, because whatever stood beside the bed did not belong in a sleeping girl’s room in the dead of night.
Meanwhile, in the dream world, Aveline and Theron were still walking through the meadow together.
"This is your place," Theron said.
Aveline turned her head toward him, her brows lifting with quiet curiosity. "Really?"
He gave her a look, one that was half amusement and half something softer, then tilted his brow. "Want to see my place?"
Aveline’s lips quirked. "Why does that sound scandalous?"
Theron shook his head, though the movement could not quite hide the way his expression softened when he looked at her.
This woman. This impossibly adorable, impossible woman. Nothing ever went the way he expected with her. She surprised him at every turn, and for reasons he did not fully understand, he loved every second of it.
He took her hand.
It felt warm.
Soft.
Softer than his own.
He still did not understand how a dream could feel this real, how the touch of her fingers could settle so naturally into his palm that it made the rest of the world seem almost irrelevant.
Perhaps this sensation was only an imagination. Perhaps his mind had simply grown too hungry for her presence to tell the difference. But whatever it was, he liked it far too much to question it for long.
Aveline looked up at him, and her gaze sharpened with immediate interest.
Was that a blush on his cheek?
He was acting strange again, but she found that she liked this version of him too. There was something endearing about it, something that made him seem less like the boy she once used to know, the prince everyone talked about, and... more like a man trying very hard not to reveal how deeply he felt.
He pointed toward the distance. "There. That forest."
Aveline followed his finger and frowned. "That is your place?"
"Yes."
"But it is dark."
Theron’s gaze drifted toward it, and for a moment the softness in his face dimmed. "It is dark, isn’t it?"
Something in his tone caught her immediately. There was sadness hidden there, quiet and old and lonely, the kind that had lived in him for so long he might not even have noticed it anymore. Aveline’s hand tightened around his instinctively, as though she could steady that sadness simply by refusing to let go.
So they walked.
And walked.
Yet the farther they went, the farther the forest seemed to retreat. The trees stayed just beyond reach, the darkness always a little more distant than it should have been, as though the place itself were keeping them away.
Aveline glanced at him with a puzzled frown. "Do you not want to go there?"
Theron looked just as confused. They did not feel tired. They did not feel pain. The world around them did not behave like a normal place should. "No," he said slowly. "I do want to show it to you. But why is it moving away?"
Aveline looked at the dark forest again, then back at him. "I want to see your forest. I just do not understand why it keeps going farther."
For a few more steps, they continued, but the forest only retreated in answer.
Then Theron stopped.
A thought crossed his mind, sudden and bright.
He turned around, and gently pulled her with him.
This time, they walked backward.
And immediately the forest changed.
The darkness, which had seemed to slip away from them a moment ago, now began to come toward them instead. The trees drew closer. The shadows thickened. The path, if there had been one at all, bent itself in their direction.
Theron stood still for a beat, his breath catching.
It was as if the darkness could not keep its distance from him when she was there. It was as though the forest itself refused to come near while they walked toward it together.
As though something within that darkness could not reach him while he was with her.
Theron slowly turned toward Aveline. She looked just as bewildered.
And suddenly, he understood.
The dark forest was not merely a place. It was loneliness. It was the endless darkness that had always lived inside him.
The emptiness. The cold. The isolation. The burden... All the things that had shaped him.
And somehow... When he was with her... That darkness could not reach him.
Theron’s hand tightened almost without thought around hers.
The moment it happened, a sudden flash of light cut through the dreamscape.
Theron flinched, instinctively aware of it, because the brightness carried something familiar, yet wrong.
He could not name it at first, only feel the difference. This was not the gentle, sunlit glow that seemed to gather around Aveline. This light was harsher, more deliberate, as though it had been shaped by intention rather than warmth.
It bent at the edges in a way that made his skin prickle, a dangerous light that felt less like comfort and more like control.
Aveline turned toward it.
And then she saw it too.
Her whole face changed.
There, in the distance, stood Willowgrave mansion.
Her home.
The sight struck her so sharply that her breath caught. For a heartbeat she simply stared, as though the dream had unexpectedly reached down and offered her something she had not known she still missed so deeply.
"My home," she said, lifting a hand and pointing toward it at once, her voice brightening with sudden, trembling certainty. "Let us go there."
