Fall - Prequel

08. Dangerous Liaisons

Prince dragged me down a flight of stairs haphazardly, being sure to keep his head down toward the ground to avoid any possible scrutiny from me.

He wouldn't even give me the luxury of looking me in the eyes. He seemed ashamed, maybe even remorseful, but I knew none of it was real. It was all just a hoax to keep me at ease.

He was great at mimicking human emotion, and for a moment, I almost believed him. If he hadn't admitted to being a complete and total sociopath, I might have fallen for his classless act. He was good at lying, but what he didn't know is that I was better.

I'd spent the majority of my teenage years lying to myself and others. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I pretended to love the reflection staring back at me. When I asked people how their day was, I acted like I genuinely wanted to know. I didn't. When my mother put me on this weird no-carb diet, I lied to her about what I ate. When my first boyfriend told me that he loved me, I said I that I loved him too. It wasn't true. I wasn't in love with him... I was afraid of him.

I'd spent so much time lying that I had to be pretty damn good at it.

I pulled back from him, planting my feet into the carpeted stairs. My small act of defiance landed me an odd frown from Prince but nothing more. He kept walking. I crossed my arms over my chest, jetting out my bottom lip. It trembled along with every other muscle and nerve in my body.

"Can we stop for a minute? I need to catch my breath." I placed my right hand over my heart, feeling it thump against the inside of my palm. It was beating so fast that I thought it might jump out of my chest and land right in the center of my hand. It wasn't the physical pursuit of walking or running that left me feeling completely breathless. It was something else entirely. "I'm... scared to death."

My sudden admission of terror finally seemed to pique his interest. He stopped midstride to look back at me, his unruly eyebrows drawn together. Tapping his fingers against his side, he waited patiently for me to explain myself. I didn't know what else to say to him. All I knew how to do was prolong the inevitable. I didn't want to go inside that dungeon. I knew if I did, there was a chance I'd never come back out again. I was killing time before they killed me. That's all I was doing.

"I'm really scared."  I repeated timidly, keeping my head down to avoid his scrutiny. Just like Everet, his harsh judgement was too much to bare sometimes.

"I don't believe you."

Out of all the things Prince could have said to me in that exact moment, that was the very last thing I expected to hear from him. He didn't believe me? Why?

"I know what real fear is." He squinted his eyes at me, making me shrink beneath his intimidating gaze and stature. "I've seen it in the eyes of all the men I've ever killed. It's the moment right before they take their last breath; the moment right before their eyes begin to gloss over. I've heard it in the beat of their hearts right before the blade touches their throat, silencing their last scream for help."

He stopped to take a step toward me, making me lean away from him. The small of my back was pressed against the stairway railing. One small push and I could've fallen three stories to my death. I swallowed hard, tightening my hold on the banister. If I wasn't scared before, I sure as hell was now. The closer he got, the harder my back arched against the hard railing. If we hadn't been up so high, I might've tried jumping over the banister just to get away from him.

"How can you be scared to death when you're still standing here alive?" He brought his palm to the base of my throat where he could feel my pulse radiate against his smooth fingertips. I expected him to choke me or hit me or something, but his fingers never tightened into a fist. He didn't have to raise a hand to frighten me. He was intimidating enough on his own. He knew that too. He didn't have to try to scare me. It came naturally to him and that's what terrified me the most.