Chapter 151

Chapter 151
“You really want to see it?” she asked cautiously.

Arin gave a faint, crooked smile. “I trust you to be my guide. Who else could I rely on not to let me be devoured by your… machines?” His tone was teasing, but his eyes told a different story. He was serious.

Henriette rose and motioned for him to follow. “It won’t be easy, but I can take you there. Not for long, though. The longer you stay, the more dangerous it becomes. My world isn’t made for kings like you.”

“Then I’ll go as a man,” Arin answered without hesitation.

She led him into her bathing chamber, where a wide porcelain tub gleamed in the dim torchlight. Steam still lingered faintly over the surface. Arin raised a brow, unimpressed. “You mean to tell me this… basin… leads to another world?”

Henriette chuckled. “You wanted me to show you, didn’t you? The gateways are often hidden in plain sight. Watch.” She dipped her hand into the water, and the surface shimmered unnaturally. The reflection bent like molten glass, no longer water but something alive.

Arin leaned closer, his disbelief melting into awe. “It changes,” he murmured. “Like glass that breathes.”

She extended her hand. “Do you trust me?”

His fingers wrapped around hers, steady and strong. “Always.”

Together they stepped into the tub. Water closed around them, and the world folded in on itself. A rushing sound roared in their ears as light streamed past like falling stars. Arin’s grip tightened, his jaw clenched, fighting the urge to resist.

When the spinning ceased, they stood dripping wet in a chamber that looked eerily familiar yet shockingly different. The stones of the castle walls were gone—replaced by smooth, gleaming surfaces of pale marble and polished wood. Instead of torches, brilliant lights blazed overhead, glowing without flame.

Arin staggered back, his eyes darting across the vast hall. “This… is your castle?” he breathed, bewildered.

Henriette smiled faintly. “Yes. This is the same castle—only in my time. Centuries have passed. What you knew as stone and fire is now glass and light.”

He reached out, running his hand over a column so perfectly carved it seemed unnatural. “No tool left its mark. No mason’s hand. It is too flawless… as if the gods themselves shaped it.”

She guided him through a tall doorway, revealing long corridors lined with paintings and chandeliers that glowed like captured stars. Arin froze again at the sight of a glowing red panel on the wall.

“It speaks,” he said warily, pointing.

Henriette bit back laughter. “It doesn’t speak, it only tells the time.”

Arin frowned. “Then why does it glow as though alive?”

Step by step, she led him deeper through the modern castle, showing him how light could be summoned at the flick of a switch, how strange devices hummed with hidden power, how glass doors opened at the touch of a hand.

Through it all, Arin asked questions with the intensity of a warrior dissecting a battlefield. Wonder filled his eyes, but beneath it Henriette saw something else, a quiet vulnerability, as though he feared being out of place in her world.

“Henriette,” he said finally, turning to her with a grave expression, “your world may not bow to kings or crowns, but I see why it holds your heart. It is vast… alive in ways I cannot explain. Thank you for showing me.”

Her throat tightened. She had wanted him to understand. And now, seeing him stand tall in this strange, gleaming reflection of their castle, a man of the past humbled by the future, she realized something she hadn’t dared to before, she wanted him to stay, even if only for a little while.
Arin walked beside her through the gleaming corridor, his boots echoing faintly against the polished floor. His sharp eyes missed nothing, every light, every strange device, every smooth edge that lacked the marks of hammer or chisel. Yet the wariness he’d carried at first had softened into something else. He no longer looked like a king scouting enemy territory; he looked like a man simply walking with a woman he trusted.

Henriette slowed her steps and glanced at him. “You’re adapting quicker than I thought you would.”

He smirked. “A king adapts, or he dies. That rule doesn’t change, no matter the world.” His gaze drifted upward to the electric chandeliers blazing overhead. “Still, I cannot help but wonder how your people live without fear of fire, famine, or siege. It feels… peaceful.”

Henriette gave a faint laugh. “Peaceful, yes. But also complicated. We trade swords and shields for laws and machines, yet somehow life is still just as hard. Different battles, that’s all.”

They paused in one of the castle’s grand halls, where once there had been a long feasting table and roaring hearth, now there was polished stone, modern décor, and light flooding in from vast windows of glass. Arin rested his hand on the windowsill, staring out at the world beyond. Cars moved like insects below, and towers of steel pierced the sky in the distance.

“It is strange,” he murmured. “I should feel like an intruder here, but instead I feel… as though I am standing inside your memory.”

Henriette’s heart ached at his words. She folded her arms, hugging herself for courage. “Roberto once made me feel that way too. Like I was part of something larger than myself. He… he was a great love.” Her voice trembled, but she forced herself to go on. “I won’t deny it. He changed me. But what you don’t know is that, before him, there was a time, just a moment, when you held my heart.”

Arin’s head snapped toward her, his eyes narrowing. “Me?”

“Yes,” she said softly, meeting his gaze. “When I first stumbled into your ancient world, by accident… before I even knew who you were. You didn’t know me, yet you treated me like someone who mattered. You challenged me, frightened me, even angered me, but for a fleeting heartbeat, I felt something I didn’t think I would ever feel again.”

Arin straightened, his jaw tightening as if bracing against a blow. “And yet you gave that heart to Roberto.”

Henriette lowered her gaze. “I did. Because love doesn’t follow rules. It doesn’t wait for us to make sense of it. Roberto claimed me in a way that swept me off my feet. But that doesn’t erase the truth, that once, in another time, another life, you touched me too. And maybe that’s why, even now, I can’t stop trusting you.”

For a long moment, silence stretched between them, heavy and fragile. Then Arin let out a slow breath, his features softening. “Henriette, I am no stranger to loss. But to know I held even a fragment of your heart… that is more than I ever thought I’d be given.”

She looked up at him, surprised by the gentleness in his tone. “So… we are friends then?”

His lips curved into a rare smile. “Friends. Though you should know, in my world, friendships are forged in blood and battle. Here, it seems they are forged in truth.”

Henriette smiled back, the ache in her chest easing for the first time in what felt like forever. She slipped her hand into his, not as a lover, but as an equal. “Then let’s forge it properly, Arin. In both our worlds.”

He clasped her hand firmly, nodding. “In both worlds.”

And for the first time since Roberto’s departure, Henriette felt less alone.