Sold To The Cruel Prince

Aveline lifted her head... and the sky vanished beneath the shadow of the monstrous beast.

It was so enormous that it seemed to swallow the moonlight whole, blotting out both the stars and the trees around it. She could not make out where its face began or where its legs ended. It was all bulk and darkness and a terrible, shifting presence that made the cave feel smaller even from the forest’s open air.

Helena had looked frightening when Aveline first saw her. But once Aveline had touched her, she had felt the creature’s fear, her love, her desperation.

Could that work here too?

The thought came and went in the same breath as her fear.

Aveline’s heart thudded hard against her throat.

For one terrible moment, she wondered whether Helena had brought her here as bait. As a sacrifice. As a shield. But she swallowed that thought down at once.

No matter what this beast was, there was a baby involved. Monster or not, that child deserved a chance to live.

Her pulse shaking in every limb, Aveline stepped forward.

The creature lowered its head.

A glistening strand of slobber slipped from its mouth and landed on her hair. Aveline flinched with disgust, immediately wiping it away with a grimace, but she did not retreat. Instead, she inched closer, her eyes fixed on a pair of legs so massive they looked sturdier than the columns in the temple.

She reached out with the tip of one finger.

The moment she touched it, the world changed.

The skin beneath her fingertip was slick and rough and foul-smelling, damp with rot and something worse. Aveline nearly gagged. It smelled like meat left too long in the sun, like decay clinging to bone. She would not have wanted to stand anywhere near it, let alone touch it.

And then she heard it... Not with her ears, but with something deeper.

The creature’s thoughts crashed into her all at once.

They were vile.

Murderous.

Sharp with hatred, soaked in bloodlust and rage so thick it made her stomach twist. Images, impulses, savagery... everything in it felt wrong, cruel, and starving. The force of it hit her so hard that her breath caught in her chest.

The disgust she felt was not only from the smell. It was from the thoughts.

Rotten thoughts.

Her fingers jerked back, and she staggered in place, her face draining of color as the weight of what she had touched settled over her.

This was not like Helena.

This was something else entirely.

Aveline stumbled backward, then immediately regretted it.

"Helena, what did you get me into?" she shouted, glaring toward the creature as if outrage might somehow become a shield.

Of course, Helena gave her no answer she could understand.

Aveline did not even manage to take another step before her foot caught on uneven ground. She pitched backward and landed hard on the earth with a pained gasp, the breath knocked clean out of her.

And that was when the beast in front of her moved.

Its body was little more than a vast shape of darkness against the moonlit forest, so black it seemed to absorb the light around it. Then its mouth opened.

Aveline’s blood turned to ice.

The teeth gleamed in the pale light, each one as long as a broadsword, thick as stone, sharp as razors. The maw came down toward her with terrifying speed, and all at once the forest disappeared. The cave. Helena. The baby. Everything.

There was only the beast, and her, and the awful certainty that she was about to die.

Aveline curled in on herself, arms wrapping around her knees as though she could make herself smaller than fear.

The stench hit her first—rotting meat, wet earth, something sour and wrong.

Her throat tightened.

This was how it ended?

Not in a grand hall. Not under a roof. Not even with dignity.

Eaten by a disgusting beast in the middle of the forest.

No.

She shut her eyes tight, tears burning behind them.

I do not want to die...

The thought rose in her chest so fiercely it almost hurt.

And then Theron came to mind.

His hands. Warm and steady, so often reaching for her before she understood she needed them. His smile, rare and infuriating and somehow always meant for her. His eyes, dark and unreadable one moment, then soft enough the next to make her forget herself.

The strange safety of his presence... The kisses she had not known what to do with. The warmth of him, his voice, his ridiculous stick-obsession, the way he had looked at her as though she were something precious and impossible.

Her chest tightened hard enough to ache.

I really do not want to die...

Not like this.

Not before she understood anything. Not before she could even answer the feeling blooming helplessly in her heart whenever she thought of him.

The beast’s shadow swallowed her whole.

-----

Kael watched Theron stand perfectly still, and for one reckless moment he thought his liege had given up.

That the girl had been lost.

That the little toy he had been so intent on keeping had simply vanished into the forest, swallowed by darkness and bad luck and whatever else the woods took from careless people.

Then he saw it.

Theron’s hands moved; not in surrender, but in preparation.

Kael’s eyes sharpened. He was drawing a rune.

No.

His breath caught.

That was not just any rune.

It was the forbidden technique—Aurelion Lattice.

A chill slid through him.

Theoretically, it would weave a net of light across the land, revealing everything to the caster within its reach. Every presence. Every hidden shape. Every living thing caught beneath it.

But every spell had a cost.

This one took a quarter of the caster’s strength for an entire day.

It was forbidden for good reason. Even practicing it left a mark. No sane warrior used it, not when strength had to be preserved for battle, for escape, for survival. Especially not Theron, who had never once relied on it before, not even when their lives had been on the edge of ruin.

And yet now... Now he was trying.

For her. To find Aveline.

Kael’s hands curled into fists.

He wanted to rush forward and stop him. He wanted to tell him it was foolish, that the monster surrounding that girl would tear her apart before the spell could even fully form, that this was madness.

But he could sense something dark. She might already be dead.

And still... Theron kept going. Again. And again.

Kael watched the attempts fail in tiny flashes of light, each spark a little brighter than the last, each one stealing more from Theron’s strength. His liege’s breathing grew harsher. His shoulders tightened. The effort was clearly costing him, but he did not stop.

Not once.

Kael’s jaw tightened. This was not like his liege. Or perhaps it was. Perhaps this was the part of him that no one else ever got to see. Maybe he needed that woman. Maybe he should have her if it would stop him from hurting himself.

Maybe... his liege loved that dangerous woman... and maybe it was not wrong.

Kael could not bear it any longer.

"Sire!"

He stepped from the shadows and moved quickly toward him.

But before he could reach him, before the warning even fully left his mouth, Theron’s hands completed the rune.

The spell ignited.

Aurelion Lattice unfurled across the forest in a blinding spread of light, a radiant grid opening outward like a vast net thrown across the dark. Theron stood at the center of it, the source and the anchor of everything it revealed.

Kael staggered.

The brilliance was too pure, too fierce. For one with shadow attributes, it was almost unbearable. It struck his eyes and his body alike, forcing him down to one knee before the light as if his own darkness had been judged and pinned beneath it.

Theron did not even flinch.

Blood trickled from his nose, bright against his skin as he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

His voice came low, strained, and filled with something far more dangerous than command.

"Aveline..." he murmured.

His gaze swept the forest, the lattice still burning around him.

"Where are you?"