Chapter 211: Have You Tried?
Far above the sleeping capital, the King stood alone upon the palace balcony.
The night was moonless. Dark clouds drifted lazily across the sky, leaving the city wrapped in deep shadow. Yet even the darkness could not conceal it.
Something enormous floated above the rooftops.
His fingers slowly tightened around the carved marble balustrade. Stone groaned beneath his grip.
"..."
For a long moment, he simply watched. An entire mass of earth... suspended in the night sky... Moving.
Who...?
His pulse quickened.
Who possesses such overwhelming command over the earth?
Even among the royal court’s finest earth-benders, no one could perform a feat remotely approaching this.
A single face surfaced unbidden in his mind.
Aveline.
His eyes narrowed. "...It should be you." The words escaped almost as a whisper. "It has to be."
Without looking away from the impossible sight, he spoke into the darkness behind him. "Who’s there?"
A figure dropped soundlessly from the palace roof. An air-bender knight immediately knelt beside his king.
"Your Majesty."
The King pointed toward the distant silhouette. "Investigate that."
The knight followed his gaze. His brow furrowed. "I..." He paused. "Who could do that?" he muttered, forgetting he was in the presence of the King.
"No matter. Go."
The knight bowed.
"At once."
He had barely risen to his feet... When the floating land disappeared.
Simply... Vanished.
The knight froze.
The King’s eyes widened.
"..."
For one brief moment, genuine surprise crossed his face.
Then... A slow chuckle escaped him.
"So." The sound was soft, almost amused. "Never mind."
The knight looked at him in confusion. "Your Majesty?"
The King’s smile deepened ever so slightly. "Return to your post."
The knight bowed once more before disappearing into the darkness.
The King remained alone on the balcony. His gaze lingered upon the now-empty sky. He had underestimated his son.
To conceal something that large... Even the Aurelion Veil had been pushed beyond what he believed possible.
His son truly had gone that far.
The thought almost made him proud. Almost.
But then... The smile slowly faded from his face. His expression cooled, because there was another possibility hidden within that revelation.
If Theron had concealed the floating earth... Then Theron was there.
And if the floating earth truly belonged to the person he suspected... Then she was there too.
Together. Again.
His fingers tightened once more against the marble until faint cracks spread beneath them.
"No..." His voice was scarcely more than a breath. "That cannot be allowed."
He turned and walked back into his chamber, the doors closing quietly behind him.
Only the fractured marble remained to testify that, for the first time that night, the King had felt something dangerously close to unease.
-----
Aveline felt another wave of light wash over the floating mass beneath her feet. The cloak of shimmering radiance spread across the enormous piece of earth carrying the warehouse, concealing it from the night sky.
She followed Theron’s gaze toward the distant horizon.
"Is that the palace?" she asked.
Theron cleared his throat without taking his eyes off it. "My father... he might have noticed."
Aveline groaned.
"So what?"
Only then did he look at her.
Of course she would say that.
She had never feared the King.
Theron, on the other hand, knew exactly what his father was capable of. Every instinct in him screamed that remaining in the open sky any longer was inviting disaster.
"I can’t keep the Aurelion Veil over something this large forever," he admitted.
Aveline shifted her weight, her arms already beginning to tremble from the impossible burden she was carrying.
"I can’t do this forever either," she said, glancing sideways at him. "Can you offer a hand?"
She genuinely didn’t understand why he was simply watching.
She hadn’t known she could move an entire underground warehouse until a few moments ago. She hadn’t learned this from a book. She hadn’t practiced it.
She had simply... tried.
Why wasn’t he?
Theron’s lips twitched helplessly.
"I can only bend light, Aveline," he said. "Not earth."
She released a slow breath.
"Have you tried?"
He blinked.
"...What?"
"Have you actually tried?"
Theron stared at her as though she had asked whether fish could fly.
"That’s the wrong question," he said. "No one can bend more than one—"
"Who decided that?"
He fell silent.
"I can," she said simply. "I never believed I couldn’t. I bend more than one element."
She looked at him with complete conviction, as though the answer were obvious.
"So can you... if you decide you can."
Theron let out a quiet laugh, shaking his head.
Everything he had learned since childhood told him she was wrong.
Every lesson.
Every scholar.
Every master.
Every history book.
Yet this infuriating woman had spent the entire night proving impossible things were merely things no one had attempted before.
"You can because you’re from Aurelmont," he began. "I’m—"
His words died abruptly.
The floating land lurched.
Aveline had removed her hand from the earth.
The massive platform immediately began its descent.
Wind roared past them as thousands of tons of stone and cotton plunged toward the mountains below.
"Aveline!"
She merely stretched her sore shoulders.
Then she smiled.
"Try."
Theron’s heart nearly stopped.
"This woman..."
Was she completely insane?
There was an entire warehouse beneath them. An entire warehouse!
Without another thought, he dropped to one knee and slammed his palm against the stone.
Nothing.
"It isn’t working!" he shouted.
Aveline folded her arms, watching him with far more patience than the situation deserved. "Imagine lifting it."
"I’m trying!"
"No, you’re panicking."
"It is falling!"
"It’ll be fine."
"It most certainly will not be fine!"
The ground continued rushing toward the mountain. Theron’s pulse pounded in his ears. He had fought assassins. He had stood before armies. He had faced his own father.
None of those experiences compared to watching Aveline casually drop an entire floating warehouse because she wanted him to experiment.
She really was impossible.
And somehow... He trusted her anyway. The thought startled him almost as much as the rapidly approaching ground.
Still kneeling, he shut out everything except the stone beneath his hand.
Lift it.
Just...
Lift it.
For the briefest instant, something answered. A faint warmth spread from his palm into the earth below.
The descent slowed. Only slightly.
His eyes widened. "...Did I..."
Hope flared inside him. Then he turned.
Aveline was already kneeling again, one hand resting lightly upon the stone, her shoulders trembling with the effort.
The warehouse came to a complete stop. She looked at him with a smug little smile that made him both want to laugh and sigh.
"I was told I can’t do a lot. And I refused to believe it. You were told you can do certain things. Maybe that’s your handicap."
Theron let out a long breath before laughing despite himself. This woman! Why does she make sense all the time?
"I hate you a little."
"No, you don’t."
"...No, I don’t."
She grinned. The tension dissolved as quickly as it had appeared.
"So," she asked, "where do you want your warehouse?"
"My... warehouse?"
"The cotton."
She gestured toward the floating island beneath them as though she were discussing where to park a carriage.
Theron looked across the surrounding landscape before pointing toward a secluded mountainside.
"There."
Aveline nodded.
The enormous platform drifted silently through the air until it reached the rocky slope. With careful precision, she guided the massive block of earth into the mountainside itself. Stone flowed around stone, the mountain embracing the underground chamber until it became almost indistinguishable from the surrounding cliffs.
Only a broad opening remained, hidden within the rocks, enough to retrieve the cotton later.
Satisfied, Aveline lifted both hands. The last stone slabs settled neatly into place over the chamber.
Only then did she release a long, exhausted breath before allowing herself to collapse backward onto the cool stone.
The eastern horizon had begun to pale. Night was quietly surrendering to dawn.
Without saying a word, Theron lay beside her.
For several moments, neither of them spoke. They simply watched the sky gradually deepen from black to indigo, the first hints of blue spreading across the heavens.
Theron turned his head.
Aveline’s face looked almost luminous beneath the soft light of approaching morning. She had gone pale from exhaustion, and tiny droplets of perspiration clung to her forehead despite the cool mountain air.
He shifted onto one elbow without thinking.
His fingers brushed gently across her brow, wiping away the beads of sweat.
She didn’t pull away.
She simply looked back at him.
Something inside him softened.
Before he realized what he was doing, he rolled over, bracing himself above her without letting his weight rest upon her. One arm supported him while the other remained beside her head, his face now only a breath away from hers.
His dark eyes searched hers with quiet wonder.
"You really did it, Aveline."
His voice was almost reverent.
"You got me the cotton."
A slow, satisfied smile spread across her lips.
"I did."
She held his gaze for another heartbeat before her eyes drifted, almost unconsciously, to his lips.
"So..." she murmured, amusement dancing in her tired eyes.
"How are you going to reward me?"