Page 116 of Fallacies

Sweat gathers at my lower back, my real voice breaking through Alesi’s accent, “He wouldn’t have killed me.”

The blue in his eyes flares, and for half a second I think he’s going to call attention to the change in my voice.

Instead, the man’s expression shifts into something far more serious. “No,” he shakes his head. “What he wanted to do to Alesi was much worse.”

The breath I inhale gets trapped in my lungs, burning my throat. Something slick drips over my skin in the wake of his statement, slippery like oil, and I can’t help but picture the hungry look on the guard’s face when he finally got his hands on me.

“As I said,” the man sighs, sweeping his gaze down my rigid stance, “she’s not doing you any favors.”

Despite my odds, I take the risk anyway, darting around him and pushing off the wall.

“Nope.”

He grabs my arm and yanks me right back like it’s nothing. Like I’m a mouse he’s just pawed back into the corner.

His fingers stay wrapped around my bicep, squeezing hard enough to keep me in place, and my heart pounds—from fear and from the sheer amount of energy it’s taking to stay upright and keep a solid grip on my magic.

“I have a proposition for you,” he confesses, and my eyes meet his.

For one curious moment. A selfish moment.

There isn’t a single inch of this man that screams trustworthy. Sure, he saved me, but I have no idea what his motivations were for doing so. He hasn’t killed or tried to hurt me, but he won’t tell me who he is, and he won’t let me leave.

My gaze drops to the hold he has on my arm, the illusion flickering in and out around it.

A proposition?

I draw in a deep breath and narrow my eyes on his. Entertaining it could reveal his motives. “What kind of proposition?”

For a moment, he just stares back at me, bright blue irises burning into mine. Then he shakes his head. Slow. Moonlight shifting over his jaw. “I have a proposition for Lucina.”

My hands curl into fists.

I hate that he knows my name, but I hate even more how comfortable he is with saying it. How easily he speaks it and how foreign it sounds in his accent.

“Why?” I challenge.

“Be more specific.”

I shake my head. “No.”

The man’s head tilts, lips twitching ever so slightly. “No?”

A tingling sensation sweeps me from head to toe, and the longer he looks at me, awaiting my response, the more I want to crawl out of my own skin.

“Let me ask you this,” he starts, a stone thrown into the taut silence. “Why, when a hundred of your people are suffering beneath us, are you refusing to explore the only help you’ve been offered? Why, knowing the conditions that they are suffering in every minute of every day, are you too stubborn to entertain an ally? Even a stranger? Are they not worth that risk?”

I swallow, maintaining his eye contact even though I want nothing more than to avoid it.

“Why,” he lowers his voice, “are you fearless sneaking around this Estate, brave enough to step foot inside it, yet terrified to drop this charade and face me as⁠—”

It’s a relief to sever the connection to my magic.

It flees the second I give it permission to, burying itself at the base of my spine, and he watches the illusion fade, trailing it down my frame as it dissolves—all the way to my boots.

He doesn’t finish his sentence, dragging his gaze back up my body, and as soon as he gets to my face, I expel a rush of power, enough to shove him backwards.

I should have given up my illusion earlier—the extra strength provides much more protection than Alesi’s disguise.