\\ NIGHT\\ Fantasy AU \ ATEEZ Fanfic

// Chapter 39 \\

"H-how?" I managed to utter as his eyes scanned me.

"What can I say?" San threw his hands casually into the air as he bowed, his handsome yet unsettling smirk never leaving his face, "I'm a good actor."

I stared into his eyes, trying to find an answer to what I saw before me— but those icy blue eyes I knew were different. No, they'd always been that way. He'd just somehow masked the hunger that consumed them along with the eerie cold feeling that a Taker would possess. No, he couldn't entirely. The times we kissed I'd touched his cool lips before they bloomed in warmth. How was it so unnoticeable to me?

"Those skills did pay off: playing the role of a poor yet kind commoner. A commoner whose powers were conveniently taken from him at one of the most prominent Taker attacks in Dawn Court history," San's smile had faded slightly as he picked the dried blood under his nail. He chuckled then, his smile returning. He looked at me, eyes glimmering and crazed, "And yet no one suspected a thing from me."

My lower lip quivered as I shook my head, taking a step back, "I-I read your mind."

"Starlight, Starlight, Starlight," San tsked, "Please, if you could truly dig into a mind, you would've known such things," he tapped his head, "You were easily swayed by the little set up I had laying in there."

If tears could blink into my eyes and fall down my cheeks, they would've. Instead, I sat there choking as I painfully looked into the eyes of someone I thought I knew and loved, "Did I mean nothing?"

San wasn't smiling then as he seriously looked towards me, "You're everything."

There was a long pause between us, only the distant battle cries to be heard and the crackling of nearby fire. San was a Taker. He was the spy. I loved him— or did I still somehow love him? My heart was in a million pieces. He'd manipulated me. He'd betrayed me. I would be nothing towards him. Yet, I somehow still was...

"Everything?" I mumbled quietly as my pain and sorrowful face looked at him for an answer.

But then I heard footsteps clapping on the marble floor from the hall behind me. They were coming this way and they were coming fast. I made the mistake of turning my head at the sound. That's when he ran from behind me, grabbed me by the throat, and slammed me into the ground within a second. Pain erupted from my back as the air was knocked out of me. Then, his dark glare was barely inches from my face as he held me there.

"Of course he would follow you," San spoke in a quiet yet enraged tone.

My eyes widened at his harsh tone before his grip on my throat tightened, causing me to gasp for air. The footsteps had gotten closer, skittering to a halt before me. That's when San looked up with his crazed devilish grin.

"Hello, Captain," San greeted mockingly.

"Star," I could hear Yunho gasp in pain at the sight before him.

San nodded his head, "Yes, it would seem little Starlight found me here."