Chapter 193: Her Childhood
Theron looked at her, then at the mansion standing beneath that strange and unsettling light.
"It does not seem right," he said quietly.
Something in the way Aveline had spoken, so quickly and so naturally, tightened in his chest. He could hear the longing beneath her words, a need so immediate that it seemed to pull at him as much as it did at her.
She wanted to be there. She needed to be there.
And though the light around the mansion was still wrong, still tainted by something he did not trust, he could not bring himself to refuse her.
It would be better if he went with her. Better if he stayed close. Better if whatever waited there had to face both of them at once.
So, he let her lead him forward, even as the air around the mansion shimmered with that unfamiliar light, as though something dangerous had settled over the place and was waiting patiently at the edge of memory.
-----
The King almost withdrew his hand.
"The Willowgrave mansion?" he murmured in disbelief.
His eyes sharpened at once, and for a single stunned breath, all the careful composure he had worn slipped. "She is the Willowgrave girl? How is she here?"
He could hardly believe it. And yet the memory was there now, sliding into place with a force that made his pulse leap and his skin go cold.
Of course, she looked familiar. Of course, that face had stirred something he had not been able to name. It had been buried too deep beneath years of silence, but now it was rising.
His heart raced.
He lifted his free hand to his chest, his breathing tightening in his throat as perspiration gathered at his brow. The memory of that earlier meeting came back to him with painful clarity. The way she had looked at him. The way she had smiled, had spoken, had stood there with that quiet, dangerous innocence that had made her seem far more harmless than she truly was.
His breathing turned uneven.
No.
No, this could not be happening.
She could not be her.
His hand trembled where it rested against her forehead. The magic he had been preparing wavered with it, his certainty fraying under the weight of recognition. The realization was too sharp, too deeply unsettling to ignore.
The girl he had thought was only a suspicious little enigma, the one who had made him hesitate, the one who had smiled at him while defending herself from him, was not some random child from the Arcanum.
She was the Willowgrave girl.
And if that was true, then everything was more dangerous than he had imagined.
His dark eyes swirled with something deep and ugly and careful all at once, the kind of darkness that belonged to a man making a choice he did not want to make but knew he must.
"You really should have stayed in Aurelmont. And now... I will have to erase your memories of my son now, won’t I?" he said under his breath, the words sounding almost like an accusation against fate itself.
He drew in a long, steadying breath.
Then another.
And by the time he had composed himself, the panic had been buried again beneath the cold discipline of a king who had already decided that this was the path he would take, no matter what it cost him.
This... he had to do this.
But...
His lips curved to a smile.
"Why is my son here?"
-----
Aveline saw her home not as it was when she had left it, but as it had once been in the warm, unbroken years before grief had entered its halls.
The mansion stood before her like a memory made solid, every familiar corner illuminated by the strange light that still clung to it.
Yet for her, that light did not matter nearly as much as the feeling that rushed through her the moment she saw the gates, the windows, the gardens beyond. Her chest tightened with a sudden ache so deep it was almost sweet.
She had not realized how much she had carried this place with her until now, until the sight of it opened something tender and painful inside her all at once.
"Theron, let us go," she said quickly, and there was no hesitation in her voice now, only urgency and longing.
Those had been the happiest years of her life. The years before everything had broken. The years when she still had a father and a mother and a home that felt alive with laughter instead of silence. She hurried forward, tugging at Theron’s hand as though she could not bear to waste a single moment standing still.
"Do you remember this fountain?" she asked as they reached the courtyard, her voice bright with sudden memory. "We used to—"
She stopped, then laughed softly to herself, already rushing onward before the memory could settle.
"Do you remember this garden?" she asked, turning toward the beds of flowers as if expecting them to answer. "We used to spend hours here."
She moved through the grounds with growing excitement, pointing, calling out, remembering.
"This hall... this is where we learned to dance."
"My father’s study."
"My mother used to sit there."
One by one, the old places stirred her memories awake. The corners of the estate no longer felt empty to her. They were alive again, layered over with the people she had lost, the small routines that had once made up her world, the simple happiness she had not known to value until it was gone.
She walked faster and faster, and Theron followed her, though something in him remained tense.
He tried to remember.
He truly did.
But nothing came clearly.
The place tugged at him with the sharp insistence of familiarity, yet every time he reached for the memory, it seemed to slip just beyond his grasp. Worse, his thoughts felt blurred, unsteady, as though something inside him did not want him looking too closely.
At last he stopped walking.
"Aveline," he said, his voice low and uneasy, "I do not feel right about this place."
She turned back at once, startled by the seriousness in his tone.
"But why?" she asked, looking around as if the mansion itself might explain him. "If this is my place... this is my happiest place."
Her smile was open, almost radiant. But he felt something was not right.
There was something here.
Something familiar.
Something that felt less like a memory and more like the sharp edge of a wound.
Then the entire place flickered.
Just for a second.
But it was enough.
Theron’s eyes narrowed immediately. "We need to leave," he said, his tone changing at once. "This is not your place. Someone else is here."
Aveline still looked uncertain, as though her heart refused to believe him even while her instincts began to catch up. But she trusted him enough to move, and so she let him guide her back toward the way they had come.
Only then did the darkness gather.
It rolled in from the edges of the mansion like a living cloud, thick and heavy and wrong. Aveline barely had time to draw in a breath before the air around them turned cold and strange.
The shadows pressed closer, swallowing the light, swallowing the walls, swallowing the path ahead. She felt Theron’s grip on her hand tighten once, then loosen.
And then, with awful suddenness, he was gone.
Aveline stumbled to a stop, her heart lurching hard in her chest.
"Theron?"
But the space beside her was empty.
The darkness had swallowed him whole, and with him went the strange, fragile comfort of having him there. For one terrifying moment, she could not even think. Her mind was flooded instead with fragments of another time, another home, another pain.
Her father’s voice.... Her mother’s laughter.... Rooms filled with warmth before grief emptied them out.
The feeling of being too small to stop anything. Too late to change anything.
Her breath caught.
She took a shaky step forward, then another, panic rising fast beneath her skin.
Theron was gone.
But her mother was there... calling her...
And in the sudden confusion of the place, with the darkness pressing in and old memories clawing at her from every side, Aveline lost herself in the past all over again.
