"Not here…" Belladoll muttered under her breath, her eyes scanning the region, but the person she was looking for was nowhere to be found.
It wasn't that she was so obsessed with seeing Zarek, but it didn't make sense that he wasn't. And the moment Zarek started acting out of the ordinary, that usually meant problems for everyone else.
Usually.
The issue was that Zarek knew people felt this way about him. There had been more than one time when he did things that didn't make sense on purpose just to throw them off and make them second-guess themselves.
And part of what was so annoying about battling against him was realizing when he was bluffing and when he wasn't. But just the mere fact that you were using up so much brain power on these questions would be exactly why you suffered a loss in the end.
The moment you were trapped in a headspace like that, you had already lost. You were already playing Zarek's game.
The only chance you'd have at that point was to play your own.
