Sold To The Cruel Prince

Meanwhile, at the far end of the forest, Theron was still shouting Aveline’s name.

Again and again.

His voice had gone hoarse hours ago, but that had not stopped him. The forest swallowed his calls and gave nothing back but the rustle of leaves and the distant, nervous cry of birds startled from their branches.

He had followed the wolves’ trail into this section of the woods, but after that, everything had dissolved into confusion.

No tracks.

No broken branches.

No sign of her.

Aveline should have left something behind—anything. She was small, not quiet, not in the way a trained assassin might be quiet, but in the way a person always left a trace simply by existing. A bent fern. A footprint in soft earth. A snagged ribbon. A sign that the world had touched her and remembered.

There was nothing.

Theron stopped abruptly in a clearing, chest rising and falling too hard. He dragged a hand through his hair, eyes sharp and wild as they searched the darkening woods.

"Aveline!" he called again.

The sound tore through his throat like it hurt.

Because it did.

He had never liked helplessness. He had been trained too long, too brutally, to keep control of every room he entered, every blade he drew, every life he chose to protect. And yet here he was, unable to find a girl who had once been sleeping beside him, unable to tell whether she was frightened, injured, or running from him on purpose.

The thought made his jaw tighten.

No. Not that.

Not after she had promised him.

He moved again, faster this time, nearly catching his boot on a root and stumbling. He caught himself on a tree trunk, one palm scraping bark hard enough to sting. For a second he stood there, breathing through the frustration, before he pushed off and kept going.

She could be anywhere. Behind a tree. Under a fallen branch. Curled up in some hollow because she thought hiding would make the world stop looking at her.

His throat closed around her name again.

"Aveline!"

He forced the sound out, louder this time, and it echoed back at him from the trees like mockery.

A few of the knights had split off in different directions, but he had sent them farther away after not finding her in the first few sweeps. He needed every possible angle. Every shadow. Every patch of ground.

Anything.

His boots struck uneven earth. He pushed through hanging vines, only to find they led to nothing. He checked behind a cluster of boulders. Nothing. He knelt by a patch of disturbed leaves, fingers pressing into the dirt.

Nothing again.

His breath came harder now, more ragged.

The wolves were still out there.

Other monsters too.

And if she had been caught by one of them...

No.

Theron forced the thought down before it could finish forming.

He could not afford it.

He turned sharply at the sound of movement and nearly lost his footing on a slope slick with damp soil. For a moment, he slid down the incline, catching himself with one hand and a curse that vanished into the trees.

He got back up immediately. Mud streaked his sleeve. His knee throbbed.

He ignored both.

"Little hare," he muttered under his breath, fury and fear tangling in his chest until he could no longer tell one from the other. "Where are you?"

A bush rustled ahead.

Theron spun toward it, every muscle in him tightening. For one breathless second, hope flared so hard it hurt.

Then a small white hare burst from the undergrowth and shot off into the trees.

Theron stared after it. Then shut his eyes briefly and exhaled through his nose.

Of course.

Even the forest seemed to be mocking him now.

He kept moving.

He checked every tree trunk. Every shadowed hollow. Every patch of dark where a person might hide if they were frightened enough to fold in on themselves and disappear. He called her name until it felt like his throat might tear open, until each shout was stripped down to something raw and desperate.

"Aveline!"

His voice cracked on the second syllable.

He hated how much it sounded like fear, that there was no one nearby to answer him.

He reached a ravine and looked down into it, heart jolting for no reason other than the fact that it was deep enough to swallow a body whole. He scanned it anyway, climbing halfway down before realizing there was nothing there but rocks and roots and the ugly dark mouth of the earth.

He hauled himself back up, breathless, irritated, and more frightened than he wanted to admit.

Somewhere behind him, a branch snapped.

Theron whirled.

Kael stood there in the dusk, half in shadow, expression unreadable as always.

"My liege," Kael said, lowering himself into a knee to report. "I searched under every shadow in the forest. I could not locate Lady Aveline."

Theron’s hands curled at his sides.

"Any animals acting strangely?" he asked, already knowing the answer might matter more than Kael’s failure. "They usually notice what humans do not."

Kael’s family had an unusual gift. Among the Vantaris, there were some who could sense monsters more easily than others, track them through places where no ordinary clues remained. It had been useful before. It was useful now.

"What about the monsters?" Theron pressed. "If she were wandering through the forest, they would go after her."

His voice had gone colder, but not because he wanted it to.

Because the fear was beginning to harden into something sharper.

Kael bowed deeper.

He knew, Kael thought bitterly, that his liege did not trust him enough.

And Kael knew why.

Hours had passed. He had not returned with anything useful. Not a mark. Not a direction. Not even a comforting lie.

Something in Kael’s face tightened, but his tone remained careful. "If I may, sire... she may be hiding from us on purpose."

Theron stopped.

The words struck too close to the one thought he had already been trying to bury.

Kael continued, quieter now, as if offering a poison he thought necessary. "She has wanted to escape before. If she believed the opportunity had come, she might have used the monster as cover."

Theron’s eyes narrowed.

He had considered it.

He hated himself for considering it. He didn’t want to believe it. He wouldn’t.

"Are you saying that she’s stronger than the golden child of the Vantaris family?" Theron asked.

Kael lifted his head just enough to speak plainly. "She may not be stronger than me, but she may have more in common with those creatures than with us."

Theron let out a short, humorless laugh.

"You are saying my Aveline is one of them?" he asked.

Kael did not answer.

Theron’s expression darkened.

"Get lost, Shadow Strider," he said, waving him away with a sharp flick of his hand. "Do this one thing properly. Find her."

Kael bowed and vanished back into the shadows. But he did not truly go looking for her.

He already knew where she was.

He had seen the direction the monster had gone. He had sensed it. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him, that Aveline could not survive what waited in the center of the forest.

Noctyrr.

The name alone made his spine go tight.

Even he and Theron had barely escaped that beast once before. It was not the kind of monster a fragile human girl wandered into by accident and walked out of alive.

So Kael followed Theron instead.

He moved through the shadows behind him as the prince searched.

Theron was alone now.

He had sent the others in separate directions, shouting Aveline’s name as though he could pull her back by sound alone. He bent behind bushes, checked beneath roots, lowered himself to inspect dark hollows and tree gaps, only to find nothing. He climbed over fallen logs, slipped once in the mud, and forced himself upright with a muttered curse. He looked behind every trunk, every rise in the ground, every place a frightened girl might crouch if she had lost her way.

And each time, Kael saw the same thing.

Theron’s face... Fear sharpened to devotion.

He kept going even as exhaustion began to gather in the line of his shoulders. He kept calling her name, voice ragged and breaking with strain.

Aveline.

Aveline.

Aveline.

Kael followed in silence. His chest felt strangely tight.

He had expected attachment, perhaps. Possession. Interest.

Not this.

Not the way Theron searched as if the forest itself had stolen something sacred from him. Not the way his voice had begun to sound hoarse with use. Not the way his eyes kept catching on every shadow like a man refusing to give up on someone who mattered far too much.

Kael’s fingers flexed at his sides.

Had he been wrong?

Did his liege truly need that woman?

Or was that exactly the reason he could not afford to lose her?

-----

Meanwhile, Aveline heard that the thud was getting closer to the cave. She looked at Helena and she was trembling. The baby... it was curled beside its mother.

Aveline bowed and thought for a moment.

Without thinking twice, armed with that rotten stick, she stepped outside.

She didn’t dare to look up, but the monster’s growl echoed in the forest.

I’m sorry I can’t be with you, Theron... Forgive me...

Her fingers tightened around the brittle stick as the ground trembled beneath her feet.Slowly... she lifted her gaze...

And the sky disappeared.