Chapter 195: Working Together
Theron knew, even as the plea left his mouth, that his father would not listen. He knew it with the cold certainty of a son who had seen too much of his father’s cruelty to mistake him for mercy.
And still he said it. Because there was nothing else left to do. Because even if his voice vanished into that blinding wall of light and changed nothing at all, he could not stand there in silence while Aveline was led away from him.
His hands curled into fists against the dreamscape beneath him.
He had found her.
He had reached her.
And now she was slipping out of his grasp again.
The thought settled into him with a terrible stillness.
Is this it?
Is he going to lose her?
On the other side of the barrier, the King’s hands faltered for a brief moment. He heard his son’s plea, and for one thin, dangerous instant, it unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
He remembered what it had felt like when he had cut her from Theron’s memory. He remembered the strange gentleness of that stolen absence, the cruelty of making something precious vanish as though it had never existed.
And now he was doing the same thing again, only this time to her. The realization made a crack form in the defensive wall he had built around himself.
And through that crack, Theron’s heart reached her.
"Aveline..."
Her name was all he could think to say, and somehow it was enough to tremble through the dream and find her.
"Come back to me..."
Deep inside the shining fort of illusion, Aveline turned.
The voice had not reached her ears. It had reached somewhere deeper, somewhere that did not belong to the false world around her. It was not loud. It was not commanding. It felt like something fragile and desperate, like the last wish of someone who had already been hurt too many times and could not bear to be hurt again.
Her hand flew to her chest.
Her heart hurt.
Not in the ordinary way. In the way that made the breath catch and the body go still. In the way that told her something precious was trying to get through to her and the world around her did not want it to.
Love.
The word came to her all at once, dreadful and tender.
She gasped, clutching at her chest as though she could hold the feeling still if she pressed hard enough. Her mother turned to her with that same soft smile she had worn since appearing in the dream, but now the expression seemed to waver at the edges.
"Aveline," she said gently, "aren’t you coming?"
Aveline froze.
For one moment, she stared at her mother and saw only her mother.
Then the smile flickered.
It changed.
Not much. Just enough. Just enough to make the hair rise at the back of her neck.
Something intentional moved beneath it.
Something that was not entirely hers.
Out beyond the dream, the King gathered himself and pressed harder into the illusion. He could feel the resistance now.
He could feel the pull of Theron’s voice reaching through the barrier, and it made his jaw tighten.
He was not going to falter. He was doing what was best. What was necessary. What had to be done for everyone involved.
The brightness surged. The corridor smoothed itself back into impossible perfection, and her mother’s face settled once more into gentle familiarity. The warmth returned. The impossible normalcy of it tried to swallow her whole.
But the voice remained.
Aveline’s breathing had turned uneven. The memory of it still throbbed in her chest.
The walls around them trembled.
The pillars gave a low, shuddering groan.
"Aveline, come with me," her mother urged, her voice still sweet, still coaxing. "Your father is waiting."
Aveline took one uncertain step forward.
What was she doing hesitating?
This was her mother.
This was home.
This was the place she had been aching for all along.
But something in her chest would not settle.
Something in that voice had shaken the ground beneath her more than the dream itself.
-----
Outside the barrier, Theron forced himself to his feet.
He would not stop.
He could not.
If this was her dream, then he would make it obey him somehow. He did not understand why his power had failed to cross into this place, but he refused to accept that the world would simply take her from him while he stood helplessly on the edge.
He reached for the barrier again, not with runes this time, not with polished technique, but with raw force, with will, with every ounce of energy he could gather and hurl into the resistance before him.
The wall shimmered.
It held.
He struck it again.
And again.
The effort burned through him, but he did not care.
-----
Inside the dream, Aveline was still moving toward her mother, though each step now felt heavier than the last. She was almost there. Almost close enough to take her hand. Almost close enough to surrender to the relief that had tempted her from the beginning.
And then she remembered.
Suddenly, clearly, as though the memory had been waiting for exactly this moment to surface.
She stopped.
Her brows knit together as she looked at her mother and felt the first true fracture in the illusion.
"Mother," she said, her voice small at first, then steadier, "what is my favorite flower?"
Her mother blinked.
The question seemed to catch the illusion off guard.
"What does that matter now, my precious?" she asked, the smile remaining on her face a little too carefully. "Come with me."
Aveline took a step back.
"You talked about jasmine gardens, didn’t you?" she asked, and now the uncertainty in her voice had begun to harden into something else.
The woman before her smiled, almost too quickly. "I will take you there if you are quick. Your father and I—"
"I hate jasmines."
The words came out sharp enough to split the air.
Aveline’s voice did not shake. Her face did not soften.
"I despise the scent of jasmine."
The fake mother’s smile twitched.
"Oh?" she said, and now there was something strained in the voice. Something thinner. "Then I will plant hydrangeas."
Aveline’s expression hardened at once.
"Mother," she said, and there was no sweetness left in it now, only absolute certainty, "tell me what my favorite flowers are."
The silence that followed was brief. But in that silence, the world cracked.
The smile on her mother’s face warped. The corners of it turned dark.
The pillars around them shuddered so violently that stone dust sifted from the ceiling above. The floor trembled beneath Aveline’s feet. The light faltered. The warm, beautiful lie began to collapse under the weight of her doubt.
"Aveline..."
The voice that called her name began to tremble.
Then it changed.
The sweetness stripped away. The softness broke. For a breath, it was no longer her mother speaking to her at all.
It was a man’s voice.
Aveline’s heart skipped a beat and she turned at once and ran.
The corridor behind her began to crumble with every step she took. Bright walls gave way to splintering stone and twisting shadow.
The illusion howled as it fell apart around her. She did not look back. She did not let herself hesitate. Her feet struck the floor with frantic speed, and ahead of her the air opened into a vast, blinding brilliance.
There, suspended in the light, was the hand.
Huge.
Twisting.
Waiting.
It no longer looked gentle.
It looked controlling.
Manipulative.
Cold.
Aveline stopped short and lifted her face toward it, her chest heaving, her fear sharpening into fury.
"Who are you?" she shouted.
The hand did not answer.
Her breath came hard and fast.
"Leave me alone!"
And somewhere beyond the collapsing dream, beyond the light, beyond the wall of force that was trying to swallow her whole, Theron struck the barrier again with everything he had left.
