He shook his head. “Not fully, only fragments. It began with a sense that I needed you, that you were the key to something I couldn’t quite reach.” His gaze dropped, his expression tightening. “It wasn’t until you brought me here and touched the mural again…that everything came back.”
Anticipation cinched my chest, but I could no longer turn away from the truth I’d been seeking.
“When the curse first took hold and before it had a chance to claim you, you asked me to do it,” he continued. “Even then you understood what I could not accept, and possessed a strength beyond my own.”
My heart began to race. “Accept what?”
His hand tightened slightly against mine. “That only one of us could leave this land of dreams.”
The world seemed to tilt beneath me as the words settled into the space between us, quiet and devastating. “No,” I whispered, though I did not yet know what I was denying.
He nodded, expression miserable.
“You saw it before I did, you always did. While I refused to see anything beyond what I wanted, you realized what it would take to break it. You made me promise that when the time came,I wouldn’t hesitate. But now—” A hollow sound escaped him, a laugh without any trace of humor. “—now I remember what it will cost.”
His arms tightened around me again, as though he could anchor me there and keep me from slipping away before he was ready. I stood numbly within the circle of his arms, unable to react as I struggled to process his words.
“I thought I could do it.” His voice faltered. “I told myself it was my duty, that saving my kingdom mattered more than anything.” His hand came up, fingers brushing lightly against my cheek, his touch unsteady in a way I had never felt from him before. “But I was wrong. I’m not strong enough.”
“Strong enough for what, exactly?” My voice was a ragged whisper; I didn’t want to hear the answer even as I needed to know.
Evander drew a shuddering breath. “To sacrifice you.” He finally met my eyes. “It was never my idea, but you were adamant that it was the only way to save the kingdom, since you were the only one able to activate the portal.”
I frowned. “But I’ve traveled between the worlds many times now. I always come back here when I wake up. Why would this trip be any different?” I eyed the mural hesitantly.
His jaw worked for a moment before he opened his mouth. “You haven’t been traveling through the portal,” he said. “Your magic has allowed you to move back and forth, but when someone goes through the portal, that will end.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “I touched this mural last time, and woke up in the dream—well, in the other world. And then I came back here.”
“You didn’t go through the portal,” Evander explained. “The magic was so strong this close to it that you traveled back to the real world temporarily. But the entire mural isn’t a portal; it’sjust that one turret window that holds the key. If you touch it you’ll go through…permanently.”
“What happens to you—to your two halves—if I go through?” I asked.
“The plan wasn’t for you to go through,” he said, compressing his lips. “Just to…open it.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed, as took in his words. “Can’t we go…together?”
He shook his head grimly. “You’re so brilliant, so brave. You figured out that the portal would only allow one to pass before sealing this world, this illusion of reality, off from the true world.”
“But everyone here…your parents?”
“They’re not really here. This is just a dream for them; they don’t even remember me in this world. I’m the only one who is trapped awake here.”
Silence fell between us, heavy with everything he had not done, and everything he still might. Eventually he broke the fragile stillness.
“Why did your curiosity have to lead you here?” he asked, the words rough with something dangerously close to pain. “It’s one of the traits I admire most about you that I wouldn’t change for anything. And yet it’s placed you directly in danger.” His gaze lifted to mine at last, and there was nothing guarded left in it. “You never should have gotten involved with me.”
I wanted to assure him that for all my mistakes and imperfections, I could never regret meeting him. But before I could find the words, he drew me closer, one hand settling at my back as though to steady me—though whether it was for my sake or his own, I couldn’t tell.
For a moment, he simply held me. Within his arms, somewhere deep beneath the confusion and fear, something inme understood—this was a goodbye he had not yet found the strength to carry through.
He pulled away just enough for his eyes to return to mine. Whatever he saw there seemed to undo him completely.
“I can’t,” he murmured, the words low and unsteady. “I told myself I could lose you for the sake of the kingdom. But beneath every attempt to charm you…I was the one being charmed instead.”
The admission settled between us, fragile and irreversible. For a moment, neither of us moved. Then he stepped closer. The distance between us closed not with the ease of flirtation, nor with the practiced confidence I had come to expect, but with something far more deliberate, as though each step required a choice he had not expected to make.
His hand lifted, hesitating only a fraction before it came to rest against my cheek with a gentleness almost foreign for everything that had brought us here.
