The answer should have come easily, but it wasn’t even a blurred fragment, or even the sense of something just beyond reach. Not hidden, it was simply…gone, as though it had never been there at all. The realization struck with a force that stole the breath from my lungs.
I had been in that forest for a reason, I knew I had. I could feel the certainty of it, anchored somewhere deep inside me. But when I searched every nook and cranny of my mind for the memory, there was nothing there. Not even an echo.
“Why can’t I remember?” The question came out more sharply than I intended, edged with something dangerously close to panic.
“There is an explanation,” Evander said. “Hidden within the castle.”
Hidden…butwhere?I needed a clue, but I wore none of the thief attire from when I’d first infiltrated the palace from which to retrieve a memory…save for the bracelet that always adorned my wrist. My thumb grazed the metal, tracing the familiar links—each one tied to a memory I had chosen to keep. Fragments of my past, pieces of myself I refused to lose.
They stirred faintly beneath my touch, as though trying to rouse from heavy sleep. But none of those I searched held the reason I had been in that forest, none explained why I had come here; I couldn’t even remember what had driven me into the castle in the first place…except curiosity, a force stronger than what usually compelled me. As if I had to return here at all costs.
I stilled, noticing the quiet, unsettling thought.Return?
Evander watched me carefully, something quieter settling into his expression. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “There’s a reason you’ve forgotten.”
I forced myself to meet his gaze. “And you know what it is?”
A faint, almost rueful smile touched his lips. “Of course. It’s similar to…” He paused, as though considering how best to phrase it. “…the way dreams work.”
The words echoed in my mind. With them, fragments began to shift—the dullness of this world, the vividness of the other. The memories that felt more real than the present. The life in the ruins, the emptiness here. The missing pieces, the slipping edges of my own mind.
A terrible, quiet realization began to take shape.
If this world felt like something fading…if the other world felt alive…if my memories belonged more to there than to here, then?—
My breath caught. No, that couldn’t be…could it?
I stood very still, afraid that if I moved, the fragile thread of understanding would snap. But nowhere near as afraid of what would happen if it didn’t.
Because if I followed the thought to its end and allowed myself to truly see what was right in front of me—then everything I thought I knew would unravel, and I wasn’t certain I would survive what lay on the other side of that truth.
That this world I had trusted as real was the dream, and the world I thought was a dream was the only reality that had ever been true.
CHAPTER 20
Time seemed to still as I stood trapped within my revelation, the world I had once accepted without question was now unraveling at its edges. I slowly took in my surroundings, as though seeing them with new eyes. The castle appeared unchanged at first glance—the same towering walls, the same polished floors, the same distant hush that had always lingered in its halls—but the longer I looked, the more something beneath the surface began to reveal itself.
The light didn’t fall quite right, as though it had been painted rather than cast. The air felt dulled, stripped of the subtle textures I had once taken for granted. Even the silence carried an artificial stillness, like a stage waiting for its next cue. What I had once dismissed as dreamlike was not an embellishment of reality, but its absence.
“It appears you’ve finally realized.” Evander’s voice broke softly into my whirling thoughts.
I turned to find him watching me with an intensity no longer entirely masked by charm or calculation. There was something else there now—something quieter, more uncertain—though whether it stemmed from my realization or from what he knew would follow, I couldn’t tell.
“I realize, but I still don’t understand. How can this be a dream?” Even as the words left my lips, they felt insufficient for the magnitude of what had shifted inside me.
My gaze drifted once more across the corridor, tracing the faint distortions I could now perceive—the way the world seemed to hesitate beneath my attention, as though unsure how closely it needed to resemble something real. From the moment I had awoken to this reality, I had sensed something wasoff. Yet no matter how strange it became, I had never questioned it.
“How could I not have seen it before?”
“You had no reason to question your reality,” he explained. “No one here does.”
A quiet unease settled deeper within me. “Then everyone in this castle…?”
“Cursed,” he confirmed with a solemn nod. “Trapped, one way or another. Whether we share the same dream or each inhabit our own version of it, I cannot say. But whatever this place is, it’s not life—only an imitation of it.”
His words should have startled me more than they did. Instead, they settled into place, aligning with something I had already begun to understand. The life I remembered—the years of theft, of movement, of purpose—felt distant now, like a story I had once known but could no longer fully recall. I couldn’t remember where I had been going the day I first entered the castle, nor the details of the last heist I had completed. It was as if those memories had never belonged to me at all, slipping away the moment I ceased to need them.
“How long have I been here?” I asked quietly.
