“Because I will.Tell me what you did, Elizabeth—or I will carve the truth out of you.”
A sob tore from my throat, my entire body racked with terror.
“No!Please!”
I broke, the fight crumbling inside me as tears streamed hot down my cheeks, flaming against the dungeon’s cold.
“I’ll tell you!I’ll tell you everything!”
My plea hung in the air, trembling, fragile, the last remnant of my fading resistance.
He did not move.
But the energy between us changed—a crackling wire of impatience, his frustration, and urgency tangible in the dimly lit cell.
“I am not known for my patience.”
His words slithered over my skin like a live current, waiting, demanding, giving me nothing but the certainty that one wrong move could end me.
His posture was tense, coiled, lethal—a beast poised to strike, and devour every last truth I possessed.
Each second that passed stretched unbearably, the tension between us thick, suffocating, pressing like a knife against my neck before he touched me.
I forced down the sob clogging my throat, grasping for control, for anything to cling to in the face of my unraveling.
“I found the flower...with my mother.”
The words spilled out, raw, fragile, my voice hoarse from the weight of my betrayal.
“It was a long time ago...in the mountains.”
A shuddering breath.
A moment of hesitation.
And then?—
His grip tightened.
“Keep talking!”
The Black Wraith’s patience frayed, his voice cleaving through the thick, suffocating air.
“She learned about the Noctyss flower.The Bloom of Death.”
The words felt foreign on my tongue, memories rising from the depths of my past like corpses from a forgotten grave.
“My mother was fascinated.She spent years studying it.”
My gaze remained fixed on the floor, unable to meet his, my fear twisting with the echoes of a story I had never spoken aloud.
“And how did you create the poison?”
The question landed like a clean, unrelenting blow—as precise as the knife he held in his gloved hand.
I felt my throat tighten, the burden of a truth I had buried strangling me like a noose.
I had never told anyone.
