Chapter 22
Ilistened intently to my powers as they swept through the castle, searching for the one I felt with unshakable certainty was asleep somewhere within it. They sought a possession worth stealing, and never had there been a greater quarry than the possessor of my heart.
I followed the enchanted thread through the silent corridors, past doors I did not pause to open, through spaces that no longer tempted me with their secrets. Nothing mattered to me now but him.
At last, I found myself standing before a set of doors at the far end of the hall I did not remember ever seeing before.
They loomed over me like foreboding sentinels, their surface carved with patterns of intertwined thorns and roses that seemed almost to shift beneath the flickering candlelight, similar to the mural room.
For the first time since I had awakened, uncertainty brushed against the edges of my resolve.
Not enough to stop me, but enough to make me feel the weight of what lay beyond.
If he wasn’t there—I hastily pushed the sobering thought aside and pressed my hand against the door. It opened without resistance.
The room beyond was vast, though its scale felt muted beneath the heavy stillness that filled it.
Tall windows lined the far wall, their curtains half-drawn, allowing thin strands of light to spill across the stone floor in pale, fractured patterns.
Dust hung in the air, catching the light in slow, drifting currents, undisturbed by anything but my own movement.
And at the center of it…my breath caught. Him, my beloved Evander.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. The world narrowed to that single point, every thought falling away as my gaze fixed on the figure lying upon the raised dais at the heart of the room.
He looked unchanged—exactly as I had last seen him when he pushed me through the portal…
and yet entirely different for the unnatural stillness that now claimed him, for the absence of the quiet awareness that had always lived beneath his gaze.
“Evander…” The soft name slipped from me instinctively, as though speaking it might bridge the distance between us.
He didn’t stir. The silence shrouding the chamber remained complete, as though the room itself had fallen under the same enchanted sleep.
I forced myself forward, each step measured and careful, though I couldn’t have said what I feared might break if I moved too quickly. The space between us stretched longer than it should have been, drawn taut by something unseen, until at last I reached the dais and stood at its edge.
Up close, the illusion of sleep fractured. There was no rise and fall of breath, no subtle shift beneath the consuming stillness. He didn’t look as though he slept, but as though he had been preserved—untouched by time and decay, caught in a moment that refused to move forward.
A chill rippled through me. Was this how I’d once appeared imprisoned in my own enchanted slumber?
I bridged the last of the distance and reached out before I could stop myself. My hand hovered for only a fraction before settling against his arm. Warmth met my touch. Relief surged through me so fiercely it left me unsteady. Warm, not cold and lifeless, just…still.
My fingers tightened slightly, as though to confirm he was real, that he was truly here and hadn’t been entirely lost to the curse that held this kingdom in its grasp.
“You’re still here,” I whispered, the words trembling despite my effort to steady them.
He didn’t respond, only remained as he was. Silent. Still. Unreachable.
My gaze traced his sleeping form hungrily, as though I could memorize him back into wakefulness. “I’m going to awaken you,” I promised softly, even though the way forward remained obscured in mystery. How could I find him when even in dreams I hadn’t been able to reach him?
A wild idea seized hold.
There was just enough room on the settee beside him. I hesitated only a moment before climbing onto it, settling carefully at his side, curling my body against his chest. The warmth of him seeped into me where we touched, precious proof that he still lived beneath the spell.
I took his hand, tracing each knuckle as I studied his face. After a moment, I laced our fingers together, hoping and praying that the contact would guide me to where his mind was trapped. That somewhere within the dream, I would find him.
I squeezed his hand gently, as if offering reassurance. Then keeping our hands entwined, I drew in a steadying breath. With a silent prayer, I closed my eyes.
Sleep didn’t come easily the second time. It resisted me—not with the same impenetrable distance as before, but with a fragile reluctance, as though whatever path once existed between worlds had thinned to something that could no longer be crossed without consequence.
I felt it as I drifted—the slow unraveling of waking thought giving way not to the vivid immersion I had once known, but to something quieter, dimmer, as though I were stepping into a reflection rather than a place.
When I finally managed to completely cross over, it didn’t feel like sleep.
There was no drifting, no soft surrender into unconsciousness, no gradual slipping from one world into another. The transition came sharply, as though I had stepped not into rest, but into something that had been waiting for me to choose it.
The world formed around me in fragments—not the garden or castle, but something broken between them.
The ground beneath my feet was stone, fractured with thin veins of darkness that spread outward like cracks in glass.
The air was unnaturally still, as though even time had ceased to move within this place.
Above me, the sky stretched wide and colorless, neither day nor night, caught in a state of suspension that felt unsettlingly wrong.
This wasn’t the dream I had once known, but what remained of it.
“Evander?” My voice carried strangely, absorbed by the space rather than echoing through it, as though the world itself resisted the presence of sound.
There was no answer, but that didn’t stop me from moving forward.
Each step felt heavier than it should have, as though the world pressed subtly against my movement—testing and resisting it, as though I hadn’t yet earned the right to pass through it freely.
“Evander,” I called again, more steadily this time. “I know you’re here.” It was fragile, unyielding hope that carried me forward.
The cracks beneath my feet deepened. A faint tremor passed through the ground, stirring at the sound of his name. My heart lifted. Evander.
“I’m not leaving without you,” I continued, my voice firm now, no longer uncertain. “Please stop hiding.”
Once more the world shifted in response. The fractured landscape gave way, still not fully formed or entirely real, but shaped by an intention that still lingered beneath the surface of the curse.
As though our joined hands in the real waking world acted as a tether, I felt myself pulled through the fractured remains of this dreamscape.
The haze began to thin and the garden gradually emerged around me, its familiar shapes softened and indistinct at the edges.
Vines and roses still adorned the trellis, but their color and vibrancy had faded, their petals pale beneath a muted sky that felt more like memory than reality.
The air carried no scent, nor did the wind stir, the shadow of life that had been left behind.
The dream continued to rearrange itself, filling in what details it could. A balcony took shape, the place where we had once stood beneath the stars, where he had shown me a world that had felt more real than anything I had known.
Only now it was dim, fading. The stars flickered weakly above, their light unstable, as though they no longer had the strength to remain. And there, standing at the balcony…my heart lifted.
He stood several paces away with his back to me, his gaze fixed on the horizon as though he had been standing there for a very long time, waiting.
“Evander?” My voice sounded distant, as though it belonged more to the space than to me. He didn’t answer, as if he hadn’t heard me.
I drew closer. His form was clear where the world was not, as though he had been anchored here even as everything else around him faded.
There was no mistaking him, no distortion in the lines of his face or the steadiness of his posture—and yet something about him felt…
unreachable. Like a figure seen across water, present and yet separated by something unseen.
“Evander.” I said his name more firmly this time, willing him to answer.
Still he didn’t turn. For a moment, I wondered if he could hear me at all.
Then, faint enough that I might have imagined it…
“Mirelle.” He exhaled the word like a sigh, not the greeting I’d been anticipating when he sent me through the portal.
“You shouldn’t be here.” The words were not sharp, but resigned, as though he had surrendered to that truth long before I arrived.
Something in my chest tightened. “How could I not come? Nothing in the world—or any other—would prevent me from finding you. Not in waking, nor in dreams.”
A subtle shift passed through his posture, so slight I might have missed it had I not been watching for it.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” he said quietly, his voice catching as though emotion pressed too tightly against it. “More than you can possibly know. But it’s futile; I’ve drifted too far out of reach.”
The defeated finality in his voice sent a flicker of unease through me.
I refused to let it take hold. I took another step closer until I finally reached him, close enough now that I could see the tension held rigidly in his shoulders, the unnatural stillness that had settled into him as something closer to surrender.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I said fiercely. “And I know deep down you don’t mean that.”