He tried to sit up but gave up with a grunt, collapsing back against the sofa.
I had no answer, no thoughts, only exhaustion pressing me down like a stone. Sleep dragged me under—dark, merciless. I fell endlessly through vast and shadowed voids, plummeting into nothingness.
A warm, wet touch on my forehead pulled me back. My eyelids fluttered open.
Balthazar knelt before me, dipping a thick cloth into a basin and dabbing my skin. He smiled—soft, almost tender.
What the hell had changed in him?
Something stirred inside me, unfamiliar and unsettling.
“You made me proud today, Marcellious,” he said, his voice lower, almost…fatherly.
I blinked, staring at him as if seeing a stranger—the darkness known as Balthazar was gone, at least for now.
“Thanks to you, we now have the journal.” He squeezed the rag over the basin, water splashing noisily into the pan.
Balthazar wiped my brow, then my neck. “I’m so very proud. You’ve been a good soldier.”
The words sent a strange chill through me.
I glanced around the room. The fire crackled in the hearth, its golden glow casting lambent shadows on the walls. The air carried the warm scent of beeswax candles, starkly contrasting the filth and decay festering in the room beyond.
“I’m glad to hear it, master,” I said, my voice quieter than intended.
Balthazar studied me with a soft expression, so foreign to his usually harsh features, that it tightened my chest. “You’re like my son now. You’re an ally I can count on.”
His unexpected kindness ached in a way I didn’t know how to process.
“Thank you for saying that. You have no idea what it means to me.”
“It’s true.” His rough, callused fingers brushed against my cheek, a fleeting caress that sent a ripple of something unidentifiable through me. “It doesn’t matter that Dahlia is dead. You served her well. You made her last days a blessing instead of a curse.”
He turned, crossing the room in a few strides before returning with the journal.
“Sit up and read it to me.”
I barely had the strength to shift, but Balthazar slid a firm hand behind my back, lifting me out of my slumped position easily.
I took the worn book, fingers brushing over its aged leather cover, and flipped through brittle pages filled with an unfamiliar script. “I can’t read it. It’s in a language I don’t know.”
Balthazar plucked the book from my hands, settling onto the sofa with a thoughtful hum. He turned a few pages, his brows furrowing. “It’s in Italian. That’s where I met her, you know—Italy.”
He smoothed the open book over his lap and began to read aloud.
“July 17th, 1561. Balthazar has been my secret lover for nearly five years now. We meet under the cover of nightfall, coming together with lusty abandon. Thoughts of him consume me. My parents have been pressuring me to marry for some time now…”
His voice wove through the room like a ghost, a past neither of us had been prepared to unearth.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured, bowing his head in reverence. “This is where she bares her heart to her father and confesses what I meant to her.”
His tone had a raw, fractured pain, something deeper than I had ever heard from him. Something dangerous.
Balthazar pressed the journal against his chest, his eyes squeezing shut, his arms tightening around it as if he could hold her memory together through sheer will. “Oh, my dear, sweet Alina. My only true love.”
I watched him. The ruthless darkness, absorbed by grief and longing? The contrast unsettled me. Had Malik’s attack altered something within him? His sudden tenderness, no matter how welcome, felt wrong—like a borrowed mask that didn’t quite fit.
Then, he continued reading—sometimes in English, sometimes in fluid, lyrical Italian. With each passage, his demeanor shifted.
