Her voice echoed in my mind, the blade of her defiance slicing clean through the hypnotic spell of my music.It was her declaration—her vow to become the master chemist of her father’s wretched society.
Such ambition.
Such ignorance.
She had no idea the weight of the path she had chosen, the depth of the abyss she was stepping into.
And worse—she did not understand the flower she now possessed.
The Noctyss.
The very bloom whose poison she had crafted with her own delicate hands.
She had no idea what it could truly do.
The harpsichord’s melody faltered, the once-enchanting notes unraveling as my mind spiraled deeper into the dangers she did not yet comprehend.
“I need to know more,” I muttered, the sound of my voice fracturing the spell that had lingered in the air.
The music was no longer a refuge but a distraction.
I stilled my fingers against the keys, the last note hanging like a specter in the silence, an unfinished whisper lost in the dimly lit room.
Where had she found the flower?
The question gnawed at me.There were layers to this game—pieces shifting in the shadows, invisible hands orchestrating a far more dangerous symphony.
If I intended to protect her—from her father, from Salvatore, from the very horrors she toyed with so naively—I needed to find that bloom before they did.
I leaned back, exhaling through clenched teeth as memories clawed their way to the surface.
Lord Alexander’s torture chambers.
The screams echoing off cold stone.The stench of iron and despair, of bodies broken beyond repair.
Timebornes and Timebounds shackled, their gifts wasted on agony.
My skin crawled with revulsion.I had seen horrors before, had committed them in the name of power, in the name of war—but this was different.
It wasn’t the violence that unsettled me.It was Elizabeth.
Her place amidst that darkness, her peril, her recklessness as she wove herself into a world that would swallow her whole.
“Be cautious, Amir,” I whispered to myself, a warning for no one but the man I had long ceased to recognize.“You cannot betray who you are.Not now.Not when so many lives hang in the balance.”
The stakes had risen.
Elizabeth’s choices could be her downfall.Or worse—mine.
If she discovered my true nature and learned the full extent of my past and the weight of my sins, there would be no going back.
And yet, she had done something far more dangerous than uncovering my secrets.
She had unknowingly mastered the Noctyss poison.
That flower was a curse, a weapon unlike any other.
And if Salvatore or Mathias learned of it, their wrath would be swift, merciless.
