There was a brief pause before he answered. “Years.”
“Years?” The word struck harder than I expected—not because I doubted it, but because somewhere deep within me, I already knew it to be true.
He nodded. “Ever since the kingdom fell under the sleeping curse.”
Just as the Evander from the dream had told me…only now, I understood. That had been the real Evander, and the man standing before me…was the one who belonged to the dream. The realization settled uneasily in my chest. It still felt impossible that the world I had believed to be real was the illusion—while the one I had dismissed as merely a dream was the truth.
“Everyone is trapped,” I said slowly. “Except you.”
For a moment, he looked genuinely surprised. “How did you—” He stopped, something sharpening behind his eyes. “I see. Each time you fell asleep, you crossed over to the real world and spent time withhim.”
There was no teasing in his voice now, no easy charm, only something darker—a flicker of what might have been jealousy. But the emotion faded almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced with a deep sadness that seemed to reach inside of me.
“He warned you about me.” It wasn’t a question so much as a quiet certainty.
My heart sank. “Was he right to do so?” I asked, hesitant, uncertain I really wanted the answer.
He said nothing for a long moment, avoiding my eyes. “No one knows myself—or what I’m capable of—better than I do.”
It was all the answer I needed. And yet, even with that admission, I still couldn’t bring myself to distrust him.
Silence stretched between us, heavy with everything I could not yet process, until at last I drew in a slow breath and turned away. My thoughts pulled me instinctively towards the one place in the castle where everything had begun to unravel…and where the answers I sought might be waiting.
My hand lifted again, almost unconsciously, hovering between us as though drawn towards something I couldn’t quitename. I stopped myself just before I could close the distance. I felt his gaze drop to the movement, following it with a stillness that didn’t belong to the man who had once met every interaction with wit and ease.
For a fleeting, fragile instant, something flickered in his expression—not charm or calculation, but something far more uncertain, like a door closing just before it could be opened too far. For the first time since I had known him, I saw something that had nothing to do with control:fear.
His breath caught and he stepped back, the distance snapping sharply back into place between us. “This is…a dangerous development.”
The mask had returned. But now that I had seen beneath it, I couldn’t forget it.
“I need to see the mural again,” I murmured. “Will you take me there?”
Evander hesitated. “Are you truly certain?” he asked. “Some choices, once made, can never be taken back.”
I hesitated a faltering moment, unsure if I was brave enough to face what would likely be revealed. I had wanted to uncover his secrets for far too long to turn away now—but for once, I wasn’t driven by curiosity alone, or by the hollow need to fill the emptiness left by everything I had lost.
This time, I wanted to know for his sake. Even if I didn’t like what I saw, it would still be part ofhim—the man who had tested me, bested me, and stirred something in my heart that no one else ever had.
My insistent curiosity had waited too long to be denied any longer, demanding to be answered at last. I gathered my composure and nodded.
He released a quiet, resigned sigh, then fell into step beside me as I made my way through the corridors. Neither of us spoke as we walked, though I could feel his watchful gaze on me morethan once, as though he were trying to read something in my silence that I was not yet ready to voice.
It wasn’t long before the familiar doors of the mural room came into view. I slowed, a strange, unspoken tension tightening my chest as I approached them—whether born from anticipation or instinct, I could not say. The last time I had stood here, I had sensed something lay hidden beneath the surface that I had not yet been ready to uncover.
Evander lifted a hand as though to stop me as I reached for the doorknob. But now the pull was unmistakable, stronger than curiosity and even caution; I ducked under his arm. This was where the truth waited to finally be revealed. With a steadying breath, I stepped inside.
The mural stretched across the far wall exactly as I remembered, its painted surface depicting the twin castles separated by the mirror-like lake—one bathed in golden light, the other steeped in shadow.
And yet, as I approached it now, I could see what I had missed before—not a flaw in the artistry, but a subtle shift in the way the image held itself, as though it were less a painting than something pretending to be one. As if it might change, if given reason to.
“Now that you know the truth about the nature of this world you once believed to be real, you feel it, don’t you?” Evander said quietly from behind me.
I didn’t turn. “It isn’t just a mural.”
“No,” he agreed. “It never was.”
Something in his tone should have warned me—not the words themselves, but the careful way they were offered, as though he were guiding me towards a conclusion he had already reached. And yet, even as the thought brushed against my mind, I did not pull away.
