Page 159 of City of Ruin

How is this happening?

I let my gaze travel over the man’s unmarked and beautiful torso as he looms over me, and at last, I think I know what has happened. I can’t explain it. But I know. The how will have to be a discovery, and that terrifies me. And yet, even though assuredness fills me, I still pray to Loria that I’m somehow wrong.

He squats before me, and I think about the first time our gazes ever met: the night of the attack. I think of the way those green eyes felt like they could see into my soul, like he was prying through my mind.

But it was more than that, wasn’t it? It was a look borne of recognition. Even if he couldn’t remember why, his soul knew mine, even if mine didn’t yet know his. I saw that same look in Fleurie’s eyes. She knew me. Even if Alexus had forgotten me, she had not.

Gods don’t forget.

“Have you any notion how much trouble you’re in?” he says to me.

I can only shake my head with disbelief. Because I do know. With every passing second, realization deepens like a boulder sinking in the middle of an endless sea.

As he walks from my cell, shuts the door, and locks it with the iron key hanging around his neck, I feel a hammer drop across time, making me tremble so hard my teeth chatter, and I struggle to breathe.

Because this man is not my Alexus Thibault. He’s the villain the man I love warned me about.

He’s Alexi of Ghent.

Un Drallag, the Gatherer.

I crawl backward and press my spine to the stone wall, trying to breathe as he vanishes through the door, leaving me alone down here.

My gods. My gods. Fia warned me. And I didn’t listen.

I didn’t travel across space and time to Quezira. What happened with Fleurie… it sent me back in time to Quezira.

Three. Hundred. Years.

To be continued…