"Lyk...os?"
Mio's voice broke, trembling with desperation as she stared at his unmoving figure. Slowly, almost deliberately, the one called Lykos—the man the masked figure had cruelly named a Skinwalker—rose to his feet. With eerie calmness, he turned to face her, a vacant smile blooming softly across his lips.
"Yes, my lady?"
Why did his voice make more blood trickle from her ears?
Why did that gentle smile feel so horrifyingly wrong? Hollow, empty—like a fragile porcelain mask concealing a deep, endless void. And those eyes… they were still as beautiful as ever, mesmerizing in their golden warmth, yet something beneath them felt cloudy and cold, something profoundly unnatural.
Mio choked on the words she tried to say. They caught painfully in her throat.
'It's a lie…'
It had to be.
'Everything from the debutante ceremony until now—I was with Lykos! Not… not with a Skinwalker!'
