Aveline was curious, far too curious.
If she revealed who she truly was, she wanted to see what it would force out of him. He was the King, after all. Surely he would know what had happened to the family that had raised his son for ten years. Surely he would know sothing, even if the truth had been buried under years of silence and lies.
She wanted to ask.
She wanted to watch his face when she did.
But she held herself back.
Theron had promised her that he would find the person who had killed her parents, and though he had not yet given her any real answers, she had chosen to trust that promise for now.
He had asked her to hide her identity for a reason, and she had reasons of her own to believe that he and his father did not stand on the sa side of this matter. If they had, then Theron would have introduced her properly.
Even if he had not dared call her soone he wanted to spend his future with, he would at least have nad her as the girl who had once lived beside him, the one he had grown up with, the one who had been part of his life before everything else had changed.
Instead, she remained silent.
When the King studied her a mont later, his gaze sharpened slightly. "I can hear the accent of Aurelmont in you," he said.
Aveline blinked, then looked at him again.
The malice she had sensed earlier was gone, or perhaps he had buried it too well for her to catch. It was difficult to tell with him. His face was controlled, almost gentle now, and it would have been easy to believe he was only a concerned man speaking to a girl beneath a tree. If she had not already been wary, she might have believed it.
She let a small, innocent smile touch her lips.
"My father was a chicken farr," she said, and the lie ca out so smoothly it almost frightened her. But even as she spoke, a flicker of true sadness slipped through. It was impossible not to feel it when she thought of her father and mother. "We lived on a farm. And... they died."
For a mont, the King looked at her with a strange, helpless expression, as though so part of him had been struck by the sight of her smallness, her softness, the way she suddenly seed so vulnerable beneath the morning light.
The confidence in his eyes shifted, and for a brief instant, he looked as if he had begun to reconsider everything.
Maybe Edric had been right.
Maybe it was not this girl.
Maybe the one he sought was soone else entirely.
Slowly, he lifted his hand toward her head.
Aveline saw it coming.
Or perhaps she felt it before she fully understood it, because the mont his palm rose, she noticed sothing else too. There was darkness in it. Sothing ugly. Sothing that did not belong to a simple gesture of comfort.
She did not know what he intended to do, only that whatever it was had nothing to do with kindness.
She looked up at him again.
His face had gone sad, and for a mont it almost seed as though he regretted what he was about to do. But regret did not matter if he continued anyway. If he truly ant her no harm, he should have stopped. Instead, his hand kept moving toward her temple, carrying that strange, malicious thing with it.
Aveline’s smile deepened.
Softly. Sweetly. Innocently.
As though she had not noticed anything at all.
The King’s hand was only a breath away when she pressed the dallion Lucien had given her.
Fire erupted at once.
A roaring wall of fla burst around her, rising in a sudden ring that forced the King to pull back with a hiss. He recoiled quickly enough to avoid the worst of it, but not quickly enough to escape entirely.
A faint burn marked his hand, and Aveline saw the sharp surprise that crossed his face before he could hide it.
He had retreated.
She noted that imdiately.
Aveline kept her expression bright, almost delighted. "Isn’t it splendid?" she asked, her eyes shining with pleasure as though she had just shown him a clever little trick rather than a defensive asure. "Even now, I can scarcely believe Lucien entrusted it to ."
The King stared at her in utter shock.
If anyone else had done this, he would have assud it was an attack. But this girl looked far too innocent, too harmless, too wide-eyed to seem capable of harm. That seed to disturb him more than if she had looked openly hostile.
He did not know how to classify soone who smiled like this while turning fire into a wall between them.
Aveline pressed the dallion again, once, then a few more tis, letting the fire flare and settle as though she were testing a toy rather than a spell. Her voice remained light, almost giddy.
"There is sothing wonderfully satisfying about doing this."
The King continued staring at her.
For so reason, her cheerful tone lingered around him, refusing to fade the way it should have. It stayed with him as if he could not quite decide whether he had just t a careless little girl or sothing far more dangerous dressed as one.
At last, he gave in and said goodbye.
Aveline’s smile widened again, all sweetness and brightness. "Let us et again, Mr. Just Kev."
And only after he had turned away, only after he had vanished from sight, did her smile disappear. The mont his presence was gone, the warmth left her face, and the ease she had worn so convincingly collapsed into sothing cold and thoughtful.
She stood there for a mont in silence, the dallion still warm in her hand, and the morning suddenly felt much less gentle than it had a minute ago as she saw the purple-black shadow curling around his chest and back, like a serpent.
What is that around him?
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