He was my father.
And yet?—
The scars etched across his face, warped and angry, had remade him into a stranger.
A man sculpted by bitterness, loss, and rage.
“Father,” I managed, the word barely a whisper, foreign on my tongue.
Then he exploded.
The words erupted from him like a loud, violent, and lethal volcanic blast.
The sinewy cords of his neck strained, veins bulging with fury.
“I heard Mary say you’re with child!”
Spittle flecked his twisted lips, the sound ripping through the room like a weapon.
“Lord Hassan’s child.”
His legs, as limp as broken branches, hung uselessly beneath him—a grotesque reminder of the power he’d lost.
“You whore!”he thundered, voice cracking with venom and fury.
“How dare you disgrace our house!
“How could you consort with the enemy—the very man who razed our society to the ground!”
He spat Amir’s name as though it charred him, the syllables thick with poison and hate.
I flinched, the barrage of accusations hitting with the force of daggers, each one aimed at my heart.
The man who once made me believe I could touch the stars?—
Whose laughter used to chase away every shadow?—
Now he looked at me with eyes void of warmth?—
Eyes glazed with a cold, inhuman fury.
Eyes I barely recognized.
“Stop it!”I screamed, my hands flying to my ears as if I could block out his venom, his hate, his voice.
“Amir is not the monster you paint him to be!
“It is not him—it is you!
“You are the monster!”
I choked on the bile rising in my throat, every word tearing from me like shrapnel.
“I did what I had to do—to destroy your society.
“I am the alchemist who crafted the poison.
“I brought the French Timehunters to their doom.”
