The Mysterious Knight 🏹 🔞 |Harry Styles AU| COMPLETED ✔

Chapter 18

It hadn’t really changed. Not much, anyway.

On the other hand, nothing seemed truly familiar, either.

Standing in the courtyard of Castle Dart and staring up at the massive front doors to the great hall, Harry felt as though he were walking through some kind of dream, as though everything surrounding him might at any moment waver and dissolve.

Only one thing anchored him to reality at present, and that was Rosaline .

She seemed more nervous and tense than he, and she was holding one of his hands, squeezing and patting it by turns.

Whenever he began to feel overwhelmed by where he was and what lay before him, he would glance at Rosaline and feel, of all things to feel at such a time, rather amused at the fierce expression on her face.

She looked as if she were preparing for a battle, as if she would protect him from whatever evils might come spewing forth from the doors that she was fairly close to glaring at with those beautiful eyes of hers.

Of course, Harry told himself, he neither needed nor wanted her to mother or protect him.

He hated being mothered and protected by well-meaning females. Hated it. Despised it.

And he was only letting her get away with it because of the strangeness of the circumstances. And deep down he knew that was exactly what he needed at the time.

Later, when Alex and Lillis had either welcomed them in or sent them away, he would make it clear to Rosaline that she wasn’t to behave in such a manner with him ever again.

Anyway, he couldn’t tell her to quit it now because he wasn’t able to make his voice work, a fact that worried him somewhat, along with the trembling he appeared to have no control over, and which he desperately hoped Rosaline wasn’t feeling.

That and the sweating, though how she could avoid knowing that he was sweating like fresh cheese left out in the sun when she was holding his hand the way she was seemed impossible to him.

But in a way he way grateful that Marcel wasn't there to witness his weakness.

The monk had left only minutes ago to attend some important "business" he had with one of Darts vassals.

But not before pulling him down for a fierce hug and patting him on his shoulders.

He whispered him some words of encouragement and left.

Harry knew his twin wasn't telling the truth but let it slide for the moment. He'll question the monk later.

“He’s not Uncle Marcel.”

Harry's spine straightened, and Rosaline stopped patting his hand midair.

“He looks like Uncle Marcel.”

“But he’s not Uncle Marcel.”

Two tall, lanky boys walked from behind Rosaline and Harry to stand in front of them.

They were dark-haired and possessed of stunning light blue eyes. They were somewhere around nine or ten years of age. They were twins.

“But he looks like Uncle Marcel,” one of the boys repeated, gazing into Harry's face without the least bit of wariness.

“But he’s not Uncle Marcel,” the other boy insisted. “Are you, sir?”

Harry tried to speak, to say that, no, he was not their Uncle Marcel, he was their Uncle Harry, but his voice still wouldn’t work.
Too overwhelmed.