Page 223 of Damsel in Disguise

I leaked just enough truth to every faction that suspicion would finish the work bullets can’t. A frightened organization always destroys itself more efficiently than any outside enemy.

A small smile finds its way across my face despite the war steadily advancing towards us.

A strange feeling settles somewhere beneath my ribs. I’ve encountered this exact unknown feeling the day I found Ariella asleep in my faculty office. She exhausted herself trying to meet impossible expectations I set for her.

People have an unfortunate tendency to fall asleep where they believe they are safe. That annoyed me the most. I thought she felt safe around me because she didn’t know me.

But the more she did, the more darkness she saw in me, the deeper her fascination grew for me.

Back then, I didn’t know what she wanted from me. And that not-knowing was the most unsettling part, more than anything.

The feeling slowly dissolves, changing the equation with The Crown’s deafening calm exterior.

My brain starts recalculating.

Again.

And again.

The numbers refuse to cooperate.

His attention is still weirdly fixed upon the handgun in his hand, until finally he speaks, more like mutters to himself. “If the Dominion survives today, it survives without weakness,” and points the gun towards us.

Ariella goes completely still as I release my grip from her, ready to push her away. My eyes never leave him.

The laboratory doors groan under another impact.

Metal bends. Shouts echo from the corridor beyond.

Her brothers are inches away.

Good. Everything is still under control.

He looks at me one last time. My stomach drops for having no idea what he’s about to do—who he’s going to shoot.

Then he says the only thing I never accounted for. “If I cannot control the variable, I’ll simply remove it.”

For the first time in my life, my calculations fail me—right as the gun fires toward Ariella.

61. BULLET

ariella

For a fraction of a second, everything pauses.

The compound is screaming, sirens tearing through steel corridors, gunfire folding into itself somewhere far beyond this room.

But inside me, there’s a strange, suspended silence. Like the world has paused just long enough for me to understand what’s about to happen.

Alistair’s father, the Crown of the Triarch Dominion, I assume, just shot a bullet in my direction.

I don’t make any attempt to move.

There’s no calculation left in me. No escape route. No argument with probability. Just a single, absurdly calm acceptance that this is where all of it was meant to go.

If I walked into the darkness of Alistair’s world willingly, then I’ve no right to fear what awaits me inside it.

Maybe this was always the price of falling for the devil.