The answer hovered just beyond my reach, close enough that I could almost feel it—and yet my mind recoiled from it, instinctively resisting whatever truth lay there, as though my consciousness yearned to keep it hidden.
“You’ve been noticing it more,” he said. “You simply haven’t understood what it meant. Perhaps you’re choosing not to.”
I frowned. “Why would I?—”
“Because the truth is inconvenient.” His voice softened, though it lost none of its precision. “And far more difficult to accept than the illusion.”
Something in my chest tightened. I had never been one to shy away from the truth. I was a thief—I pursued answers, chased secrets, uncovered what others tried to hide. I didn’t run.
And yet…a flicker of unease stirred, sharp and unwelcome. There were small, easily dismissed moments in this world where something had felt off—where a detail hadn’t quite aligned, or I’d noticed…something, but chosen not to look too closely.
Had I been ignoring it…or just afraid to see it?
The deeper we moved into the castle, the more the strangeness revealed itself. At first, it was so subtle I could have shrugged it off as mere imagination. A corridor that shifted or vanished entirely, a door that resisted when I pushed it, as though something unseen held it shut for a fraction of a second too long.
But the further we went, the harder it became to ignore: the castle was changing…or perhaps it had already changed, and I was only just beginning to see it.
With each step, flashes of the dreamworld flickered at the edges of my vision. For a heartbeat at a time, the polished stone beneath my feet seemed cracked and overgrown, the gilded walls dimmed to ruin…before the image vanished, leaving only thepristine corridor behind. As though one world lay uneasily over the other.
Evander slowed beside me, his gaze sweeping over the hall with quiet focus.
“I admit things have progressed more quickly than I anticipated,” he said, almost to himself. “Did anything happen while you were asleep?” His tone was a bit too knowing, as though he suspected my dreams during my cursed sleeps were anything but ordinary.
The memory of the dream pressed close, lingering on the awakening spell I’d performed with his counterpart. Had its power extended beyond the dream to awaken my awareness in this world. “Nothing unusual,” I lied. My voice trembled, betraying me. But if he noticed, he gave no sign.
We continued on. The silence deepened the farther we went, thick and oppressive, swallowing the sound of our footsteps until they seemed to vanish before they could echo. The castle should have felt alive—filled with servants, guards, even the king and queen—but it stood empty, suspended in a stillness that felt less like peace and more like absence. As though everything within it had simply…stopped.
My steps slowed, my gaze caught on a mantlepiece as we passed. A clock rested there, its polished surface gleaming faintly in the dim light, the hands moving…backward. I slowed, unease prickling along my skin as I stared at it. “That’s not?—”
“Correct?” Evander supplied lightly.
I tore my gaze away, unsettled. It wasn’t the only thing. A door appeared at the end of one corridor where I could have sworn only blank wall existed before. Another hallway seemed to narrow as we walked it, the distance between its walls tightening just enough to make the space feel wrong, though I couldn’t discern when it changed.
And always, just at the edge of my awareness, was the other version of this place cloaked in ruin and neglect. It was like trying to see through a reflection in glass, both images existing at once, neither fully yielding to the other. This world felt like something pretending, a careful imitation masquerading as reality.
The certainty pressed against my thoughts, insistent and familiar, like the pull of a hidden mechanism I had yet to uncover…only to slip away each time I reached for it.
Foreboding prickled beneath my skin. The answer felt close, as though it lingered somewhere within the countless stories woven through the castle, waiting to be uncovered. It was the same pull I felt when chasing a clue, or when the magic called me towards something worth stealing.
But this time, the familiar thrill of a challenging heist was absent, unease coiling tight in its place. For the first time in my lifetime of following a mystery to its source, I wasn’t sure I wanted to uncover the answer.
Even so, I couldn’t ignore the question that had followed me since the moment I first stepped inside these walls—the quiet certainty that something here was not as it seemed, that I hadn’t entered a castle at all, but an illusion. A performance already in motion, with me as an unwitting participant, forced to play my part as the scenery constantly shifted and the script rewrote itself around me.
Evander watched me, saying nothing, waiting. The silence stretched between us, filled with everything he refused to say. Frustration tightened my chest as I turned away from him and pressed my hand lightly against a stretch of the nearest wall. If the world itself would not give me answers, then perhaps its past would.
The stone was cold and empty beneath my touch, as though it had never known warmth at all. The familiar hum of magicstirred beneath my fingertips, faint but present—threads of memory woven into the stone, waiting to be uncovered. There were stories here awaiting my exploration. For a moment, instinct urged me to let the memories rise and guide me through this labyrinth of shifting reality.
I felt Evander’s gaze on me and hastily withdrew my powers. “There’s no need to stop,” he said. “I’ve already deduced you have the ability to see things when you touch objects.”
My breath caught. “How did you—” I was too startled to even lie, especially since I’d long lost any hope of getting away with deceit with him.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Keen observation aside…you told me yourself.”
My heart leapt. “I never told you such a thing.”
“You did.” His brow furrowed faintly. “Only…I don’t recall precisely when.” His gaze unfocused for a moment, as though reaching for something just out of his grasp. “I believe it was after one of the times I caught you on my balcony. You lost that round, and my reward was your confession.”
My pulse quickened. The memory stirred, faint and incomplete. I could almost see it: of standing on that same balcony beneath starlight, but not in this castle. The curve of stone beneath my hands, the night air, the low timbre of his voice, the way my breathing shallowed as he drew closer. No matter how much I tried to grasp it, it refused to fully form, like a painting left unfinished.
