Sold To The Cruel Prince

That beast was the reason Helena had been afraid.

Aveline still did not understand why it had wanted the baby so badly. It felt wrong in a way she could not name; something dark, something hollowed out by murderous instinct alone.

It had killed Helena. It had tried to kill Theron. If she let it go now, it would only find other innocents to destroy. The baby would never be safe

And she could not allow that.

She no longer thought about its size or the fear it had filled her with only moments ago. Her chest already ached with grief for Helena, the motherly creature who had died trying to protect her child. Helena must have brought her here for a reason. She must have believed Aveline could protect them both.

She had already failed Helena. She would not fail the baby.

Aveline lifted her hand again, narrowing her eyes until all she could see was the beast. Nothing else mattered now. She made a sharp grasping motion, and the creature went still, not because it had surrendered... because it could not move.

Aveline felt it then... that dreadful, shuddering fear in the beast. The same fear it had likely been forced into others all along. For the first time, it was tasting its own poison.

Her fingers curled tighter.

She could feel the shadow inside it, the thing that made it so difficult to destroy. It was like grasping at the dark itself, squeezing it, forcing it to obey.

The beast convulsed. Its shadow writhed. And still she held on, forcing the dark shadows, bending it to her will.

Kael stared at her in disbelief.

She was not using runes. She was not chanting either. She was not drawing circles in the air with practiced hands.

She was just... willing it?

And yet she was binding the creature in shadow as though she had done it all her life.

Who was she?

Even his grandfather with all his experience never could do a spell of this magnitude without a rune.

Kael could not understand what he was seeing.

Then a faint sound came from beside him.

"Sire!"

Kael turned sharply.

Theron had collapsed.

Kael reacted at once, fishing a few pills from his pocket and forcing them into Theron’s mouth. He had already overexerted himself with the earlier spells. If he did not recover soon, his heart might give out.

Aveline felt it then.

The beast’s life still throbbed beneath her grip, one last vicious thread waiting to be severed. One squeeze... and it would be gone.

But then she saw it as her head turned.

And there, in the dim light, she noticed the dark-purple glow surrounding Theron.

Her breath caught. She knew that glow. It was wrong. It was the color of death.

The beast, the fear, the hatred, her protectiveness toward the baby... all of it vanished from her mind in an instant.

"Theron!"

She forgot everything else and ran to him.

The beast remained suspended behind her, trapped in the invisible hold of her power... forgotten.

Kael saw Aveline running toward Theron.

One thing became terrifyingly clear in that instant—she was not like the others.

No, that was not right.

She was like him.

Not in the way of ordinary shadows, not in the way Kael moved through darkness and vanished into it. She was something deeper, something colder, something far more dangerous than that. If he had to name it, she was closer to the darker currents beneath shadow itself. And Theron—Theron’s light was not merely bright. It was pure. Divine.

He was already on the edge of collapse.

If someone like her reached him now, if that darkness touched his weakened light in the wrong way—

Kael’s body moved before the thought finished.

He stepped in front of her and blocked her path.

"No, Lady Aveline," he said quickly, trying to catch her attention before she could reach Theron.

But Aveline’s eyes were fixed on Theron alone.

She did not slow.

She did not even seem to hear him.

"Get away from me!" she snapped, and flung a hand in his direction.

Kael’s breath caught.

His own shadow surged beneath him, not of his own making, but dragged and swept away as though her command had reached through the moonlight itself and seized it. The darkness around his feet shifted, yanking him sideways with an invisible force that made him stumble.

Kael stared.

That was no ordinary spell.

Those were high-level shadow arts. The kind only the most gifted of his bloodline could shape with effort, and she had done it in a breath, without a rune, without a chant, without even seeming to understand what she was moving.

How?

Aveline was already gone from him.

Her focus had narrowed entirely on Theron.

She dropped to her knees beside him and bent over his still form, her hands moving with urgent certainty as though she knew exactly where to place them, exactly how to draw him back from the brink.

Kael watched from the distance she had forced him into.

He could see only her back.

But it was enough.

She was trying to save him.

And that was exactly the problem.

Everything Kael knew told him she should not be touching him now. Her power, whatever it truly was, would be a poison to Theron’s light if she drew too close. He could already feel the tension in the air, the strain in the delicate balance between their opposing attributes.

It was wrong.

It had to be wrong.

Kael forced himself upright and fought against the pull of the shadows that still seemed to obey her. He took a step toward her, then another, and reached out to shove her away before she made things worse.

But Aveline turned.

The movement alone made him freeze.

Her eyes were no longer crystalline blue.

Kael’s breath stopped in his throat.

Shadows ribboned around her gaze, coiling there like soft organza silk caught in a cold wind, drifting and unfurling with a beauty that was all the more unsettling for how unnatural it looked. It was not simply darkness.

It was alive.

And then she spoke.

"What’s with you, Son of Vantaris?"

She stood slowly, rising to her full height with a stillness that did not belong to the Aveline he had known.

Even her voice was wrong.

It was deeper now. A woman’s voice, yes, but weighted with something ancient and composed, something that carried through the ruined forest like a blade slipping free of its sheath. The tone was calm. Controlled.

Predatory.

Kael stared at her.

And for the first time since the battle began, uncertainty crawled under his skin.

"Have you not caused enough trouble for me tonight?"