Page 35 of Revert
I had no response. Silence had always been the quiet chaperone between us—but this time, it seemed to unsettle him. He studied me, as if searching for something he was desperate to find, before exhaling softly. “I hoped that would at least earn the hint of a smile.”
I frowned, a rebellious flicker sparking within me, determined to spite him at every opportunity. “When have I ever smiled in your presence?”
“It’s…been a long time,” he murmured, almost to himself. “So long it feels almost like a dream.”
He spoke of something I was certain could never have happened, not when he was the last man I could imagine coaxing a smile from me.
Not for the first time, I worried that the time reversal that had spared me from death hadn’t simply pulled me back to an earlier point—but had dropped me into a fractured past whose memories didn’t quite align. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine a version of the prince who had ever given me reason to smile. Another puzzle I couldn’t solve.
Yet the way he looked at me now…
A quiet, strained sound escaped him. “You don’t know how hard this is. You’re going to be the death of me.” The words barely reached me, a broken confession slipping through the cracks in his careful mask.
What could he possibly mean by that? The only death that would result from this interaction would be my own—for once not because he took my life, but because of how his nearness made my heart beat right out of my chest.
Before I could speak, he lifted his hand almost absently. His thumb brushed lightly along my lower lip, feather-soft, as though testing the shape of a memory I couldn’t give him back.
Time seemed to lose all meaning in this captured stillness; he seemed content to linger indefinitely, as if hypnotized. The fear of being trapped with no way of escape receded as our gazes met, the only sound the softness of our breath. All at once, he leaned in, just a fraction.
My breath caught. He was so close, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. For one suspended, trembling moment, the world narrowed to the space between us—to the unbearable pull of something I couldn’t name, yet felt burrowing into my rapidly pounding heart.
Instinct should have told me to pull away. Instead, I leaned in, drawn by a sense of familiar rightness I couldn’t explain, as if my soul recognized something my mind had long forgotten. His breath mingled with mine, and for the briefest flicker of time, I could almost remember something warm yet lost. A feeling like déjà vu shimmered between us, fragile and fleeting, leaving my heart aching, as though it knew a story my memory did not.
His breath hitched and he stilled. A war of conflicting emotions raged in his eyes, longing and restraint locked in a silent battle I couldn’t begin to read. With a sharp breath, his shoulders stiffened and he slowly pulled back, the walls slamming into place as if to seal away whatever had nearly broken through.
Almost reluctantly, his hand fell away. The moment his touch left, I noticed its absence.
“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have—” He didn’t finish, as if part of him still lingered in the stolen moment he had just ended.
My thoughts and feelings tangled in chaotic turmoil, impossible to unravel when I was still reeling from the realization that should have horrified me: that the man I’d believed to be indifferent had appeared to want tokissme. And worse, I had nearly welcomed it. I tried to excuse it, telling myself that anything the prince wanted was as good as an order. But there had been no command in that moment, no coercion…only my own inexplicable desires.
“What was that?” I whispered, breathless. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer, lest I be forced to confront the dangerous shifting feelings I wasn’t at all prepared for.
He released a slow, exhausted breath. “That…was something shouldn’t have happened.” Yet he didn’t look away, his usually unreadable gaze lingering on my mouth with a rawness that made my heart clench.
He drew back further, setting a careful distance between us, as if to remove himself from the path of temptation. “You need to be careful, Bernice.”
“Because you know firsthand how dangerous the one I’m trapped here with is?”
Like shutters closing, the light in his expression dimmed. “Not everything in this court is as it seems…including me.”
My heart thudded. “Castiel?—”
“I’m warning you.” His voice hardened. “Don’t push into shadows you’re not ready to see the end of.”
And just like that, the moment between us was gone. For one fragile heartbeat, it had felt almost real…and then like always, he slipped away.
His jaw tightened as he averted his gaze, as if afraid to keep looking at me. But then, as if unable to resist, he stole a fleeting glance. His hand curled into a fist at his side, a visible effort toanchor himself. “It would be best to get away from temptation,” he said quietly, his voice strained. “We should leave before we’re missed.”
It was astonishing how quickly warmth could turn to ice. “What do you mean?” I asked carefully. “How can we leave when we’re still trapped?”
That was when I saw it—the faint, telling crack in his composure. His mouth parted, as if scrambling for an explanation, but after a moment, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He slowly withdrew a single key from his pocket.
For a moment, I could only stare, my arms folded tightly across my chest in a vain attempt to hold myself together as my mind spun.
Then, in a single breathless moment, it clicked. The confusing pieces I hadn’t been able to fit: his insistence we run when his own men approached, conveniently leading us to the one room he supposedly couldn’t get out of when the crown prince should have known every escape route in the palace, his sudden urge to disregard his usual silence to talk.
This entire time, he’d had the key to escape. What I had mistaken for a moment of closeness now twisted, manipulation as sharp as betrayal.
