Mind game
698 Words
The night was heavier than the air.
I felt it like hands around my neck, cold and unyielding.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t.
I kept wondering what Lucian was doing.
Where he was standing.
Who he was texting.
What he was planning.
But most of all… I wondered why.
Why me?
His face appeared in my mind. Calm. A collectedness that felt too… deliberate.
As if everything he did had a hidden layer, one he revealed only when it was already too late.
In that moment — my phone lit up.
I hadn’t even turned it on.
I looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
Of course.
A message appeared on its own.
**“You’re still listening to someone else’s version of the truth.”**
I shivered.
Him.
He knew I wasn’t sleeping. He knew I was reading.
How?
I swallowed hard.
Another message arrived instantly:
**“Come downstairs.”**
No.
I won’t.
But my heart sped up. The image from earlier surfaced — his stare, the one that wasn’t angry but… coldly interested.
As if he were studying the way my cracks shifted.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.
The third message:
**“If you don’t come, I’ll come up.
And you won’t like the reason why.”**
Ice seeped into my bones.
He didn’t threaten loudly.
He threatened quietly — and that was worse.
I stood up.
Every step on the carpet echoed inside my head.
I went down the stairs feeling like I was stepping into someone else’s skin, not mine.
The lower floor was dim.
And he was sitting there, leaning back on the couch, like he’d been waiting the entire night just for me.
No phone in his hand.
No device anywhere.
So… the messages weren’t accidental.
He wanted me here.
He wanted to make ignoring him impossible.
“Sit.”
A command, not a request.
I did, but at a distance.
He smiled — not the way normal people smile.
More like he was reading something I couldn’t see.
“Tell me… what exactly are you afraid of?”
“You.”
The answer slipped out before I could hide it.
Lucian slowly — very slowly — lifted his gaze from the dark floor and pinned it to me.
As if I fascinated him.
“You’re not afraid of me,” he said softly. “You’re afraid of yourself… when you’re near me.”
I trembled.
Not because he was right…
but because he could even reach that thought.
He leaned closer. Not too close, but close enough that I could feel the shift in the air around him.
His words slid like a blade:
“Your brother thinks he’s protecting you.
But you know he’s the one pushing you toward the fall.”
I clenched my fists. “Don’t talk about Andrei.”
“But I already have,” he said. “You haven’t seen it yet, but you will.”
Everything inside me tightened. “What did you do?”
Lucian leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and his voice dropped to an almost-whisper:
“Nothing. Yet.”
A pause.
“But he doesn’t know how to play this game.
He reacts.
You think.
And that’s why…”
His gaze traced my face, studying every detail.
“…that’s why I find you interesting.”
A flicker of anger rose in me. Not loud, but sharp — and real.
“I’m not a piece in your game.”
Lucian smiled. A real smile this time, but cold.
“Oh, Elara.
In my game… everyone is a piece.”
He stood up. Then added:
“The only difference is that you’re the one who can learn to play.”
He stopped at the stairs and looked back over his shoulder.
“Your brother is coming.
I’ll see you when everything begins.”
He left.
Disappeared into the hallway like a shadow that knows its boundaries — and knows how to move them.
Leaving me alone with one terrifying realization:
This isn’t a war between him and Andrei.
This is a war *for me*.
And I’m no longer sure which one of them I fear belonging to more.
- Writer
