His face is inches from mine. His mask fills my sight with stark whiteness. It looks soft, almost as if it’s made of suede and yet, somehow more organic. His lips are full, sensuous, even as they turn down in the corners. They’re the only part of his face I can see, but it’s all he needs. He scowls. I’ve never been close enough to see the details. Fine lines. The pale, faded scar to the right of his Cupid’s Bow. Did I gave that to him?
Others, but not that one.
“It would be so easy to do something I’d regret. To be the thing you claim I am.” His lips curve and flow as they form the words. He leans in, his breath fanning across my lips. The nose of his mask nuzzles my cheek, and though I hate to admit it, desire filters into the fear tightening my core.
“The next time you stand in my way, there won’t be enough tiny pieces of you left to fill an envelope. Do we have an understanding, Checkmate? I will shatter you.”
My heart stutters, nausea climbing up my throat, but I nod.
“Good.” I wince as his grip tightens, but he only pushes me away. “Get out of my sight.”
Climbing to my feet on numb legs, I don’t dare to look at him again or speak for fear that he would change his mind. I stumble away, relief pulling at me like a tide, but stronger still is the shame. At the hunger building within me.
I navigate the pallet maze in a daze. I can’t believe what had just happened. What I did. My body is hot and flushed. Growing hotter by the second.
I look up to see a wall of fire reaching for the roof.
Fuck.
My feet slip out from under me as I sprint back. I hit the concrete hard, pain shooting up my elbows. Ignoring it, I vault away from the flames.
No one ever tells you how loud fire is. A roar of consumption whose sole aim is to claim everything in its path. Hot embers rain onto my back and shoulders as I run. I brush off the ones in my reach, but I have no choice but to grit my teeth against the sizzling where other melt my costume to my skin.
“Charade!” I yell, coughing as I inhale ash.
Black smoke fills the air at an alarming rate. I can’t see the lights above me anymore, if they’re even still running. Burning tears stream down my cheeks, the tracks evaporating as quickly as the appear.
I race the flames as they leap and dance with all the grace of a ballerina, searching.
“Chara—” I grunt as something springs out to my right and knocks me aside, stealing the little oxygen I had from my lungs.
Spots dance in front of my eyes. I sputter and choke, smoke scorching its way down my throat. I need to get lower, to escape the black monster roaring around us.
“Youdid this, didn’t you?”
Charade is livid. He shakes my shoulders with the force of a child shaking a doll. I shake my head, but it makes no difference. I mouth words to make him stop, but they won’t come out. Can’t, as my heart and lungs work overtime to try to keep my slowing system moving.
I almost black out as a sharp, intense pain shoots through my left side.
Charade drops his hands as if he were the one burned, and I fall to the floor.
Blessed oxygen! I gulp it down with the fervor of a drowning man thrown a lifesaver.
“You’re hurt.” Someone give this man a sticker.“I thought you were indestructible.”
My power to manipulate energy means that large amounts of it are always coursing through me. Even as I pull it from one source and transfer it to another, bits and pieces speed through my cells, charging and recharging them on infinite loops. So long as the power flows, I maintain some level of extra healing, but I’m still human. Too much power and I risk burning up.
The problem is when I burned that stack of papers, I drew from the well of living energy inside myself, the very essence that kept me alive. Now I’m feeling the effects of it.
“Jesus. You need help.”
He pulls me to my feet and I almost fall to the ground as a wave of nausea and pain roll over me, drowning my headin sticky, sweaty blackness. My elbow had ground into my ribs when Charade tackled me, and now… I don’t want to think about what a bruised rib will mean for our chances of escape, let alone if something is broken.
He prods the area with surprising gentleness. I curse when he finds a tender spot.
There’s a tingle of warm, living electricity. Hot, but not enough to burn. It pulls against my skin.
Energy. Pure, blissful.
