Page 114 of Fallacies

I stumble backwards, making it all of two feet before I bump into a wall.

No.

A torso. Someone’s chest.

Before I can whirl around, a hand comes up over my mouth, covering the whole lower half of my face.

Instinct has me clawing at the arm holding me in place, nails breaking smooth skin.

Something dark sweeps down the aisle, barreling straight for me, and when it reaches my feet, sweeping up my body, all the fight drains out of me.

The dungeon, the cages before me—everything fades away.

But I don’t see black when my consciousness slips.

I see blue.

28

Lucina

Iweigh a thousand pounds.

My limbs, my chest, my organs—they’re all heavy and impossible to move. It’s a miracle that I’m able to open my eyes.

My hands—Alesi’s hands—grip the armrests of a chair. How I was able to maintain my illusion in the midst of whatever just happened is beyond my comprehension at the moment.

The first breath I take is like pulling something sticky through my lungs, but I’m instantly rewarded when oxygen goes straight to my brain, sharpening my senses a fraction.

I lift my heavy head to survey my surroundings⁠—

And I freeze.

Judging by the dreary opulence and dim lighting of the room I’m in, I’m still somewhere in the Estate, but that isn’t what makes my blood run cold.

A man is leaning against the door.

He stands with arms crossed, head tilted, and most of his face is hidden in a shadow.

Even at an incline, he’s tall enough that he nearly reaches the doorframe, and I know he’s breathing because I watch his chest rise and fall more than a few times before he straightens, arms falling to his sides.

“Man,” he drawls, and I flinch at the foreign cadence to his voice. An accent I’ve never heard before. “That could have been really bad, huh?”

I rush to get to my feet, but my body isn’t as ready for that movement as my brain is, and I stumble backwards, catching myself against the wall behind the chair.

The man pushes off the door, taking a graceful stride forward. Then another. And on his third step towards, he moves into a beam of moonlight shining through the window beside me, and it fully illuminates his face.

I stiffen, flat as a board against the wall.

He isn’t Sol. He isn’t Rogue. He isn’t…human. The symmetry of his face is too perfect—like it was sculpted this way. Intentional. Custom. But his flawless ivory skin isn’t what gives him away as a species I don’t recognize. It’s the vivid, cerulean of his irises. A swirling mass of glittering crystal fractures that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Clad in a dark suit, the same shade as his neatly styled jet-black hair, he carries himself like he’s much older than he looks, and I’d have to be blind not to think he was beautiful. But he’s striking in a deadly way—like a pretty pattern on a venomous snake or soft petals on a poisonous flower.

Lovely on the outside and lethal everywhere else.

I know it deep in my bones. Like the instinct of prey to know when they are in the presence of a predator.

And there’s no hiding the tremble of fear in my voice. “Who…are you?”