Silence settled over us, thick and suffocating. I stared into the flames, momentarily lost in the nightmares.
“What happened next?” Olivia’s voice was gentle, yet it carried an urgency I could not ignore.
I turned to her, feeling hollow, feeling dead. “Balthazar captured Layla.”
The words felt like shards of glass slicing through my throat.
“He tortured her.” My voice wavered, but I forced myself to continue. “Drained the life from her.” I could still hear her screams, still see the way her bright, fearless eyes dulled into lifelessness.
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “He imprisoned me. And then he unleashed the Timehunters upon me.”
I exhaled, the air burning in my lungs. “I was caged, poisoned, left to rot. The toxins they used were slow and insidious. They stole my strength piece by piece, unraveling me until I was nothing but a shell.”
My mind drifted back to the endless nights, the madness creeping in like a specter. “I lived in torment, caught in an unending spiral of hallucinations and insanity. Days, weeks, months—maybe years—I lost all concept of time. The pain never ceased. The poison ate at my very essence, stripping me of my power, my mind, my will to exist.”
I turned my haunted gaze to Olivia. “Our daggers are powerful. They can weaken us. Control us. The Sun and Moon Daggers can cure our hunger, grant us eternity… or end us forever. But the Timehunters’ poison?” I shook my head. “It’s something else entirely. It seeps into our bones, merciless, until we wither away to nothing. It immobilizes us, renders us incapable of killing, of moving, of even breathing without agony.”
A shuddering breath left me. “And so we die—not swiftly, not cleanly—but in agony. A suffering so profound and unrelenting that even surviving it leaves something irreparably broken in you.”
Silence hung between us like a heavy shroud.
“Malik…” Olivia whispered, her voice barely audible. She rolled her lips between her teeth, her expression unreadable.
I looked away, once again lost in the darkness of my nightmares. “I thought I was done for. I had accepted my fate.”
A breath shuddered through me before I forced myself to continue. “Then they brought Layla to me.”
My voice faltered, the memory as fresh as it had happened yesterday. “She was skeletal, barely clinging to life. She looked like the walking dead. But for the briefest moments, hope—foolish, desperate hope—bloomed in my heart. I thought we could make it. I thought our love was strong enough to pull us through, that somehow, together, we would escape.”
My eyes narrowed to slits, rage curling in my gut like smoldering embers. “And that’s when Balthazar drove his blade through her heart.”
Silence. Suffocating. Unforgiving.
“He killed her.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I couldn’t even catch her as she fell. I was bound in chains, too weak to move. I could only watch.”
The pain of that moment was seared into my soul. My vision blurred. The fire before me became nothing but a haze of flaming light.
“The ringing in my ears… the sting in my eyes… every bone in my body felt like it was burning alive.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I lay there and watched her die. And then I watched as her body decayed, as the days blurred together into an endless hell.”
A hollow laugh escaped me, brittle and broken. “I lost my mind.”
I could still hear my voice from those long, agonizing days. “I spoke to her incessantly, murmuring words of love and whispering promises I could no longer keep. Then I raged against her.” My voice cracked. “I screamed, ‘Why can’t you get up and free me?’ I begged her to wake up.” I closed my eyes. “But she never did.”
A strangled silence filled the room.
When I opened my eyes again, Olivia’s gaze was glassy with unshed tears. Roman held her tightly, his arm wrapped protectively around her.
I forced myself to continue.
“Alina came to me during that time.” The words emerged in a hoarse whisper. “I told her to find John James—one of the scholars who knew the secrets of the Timebornes.” I inhaled shakily. “And then I bid her goodbye, hoping death would claim me soon. I had nothing left to live for.”
My brow furrowed as the next recollection surfaced, a memory so distant and surreal that it still felt like a fever dream.
“But then… something remarkable happened.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, my mind sifting through the hazy details. “A man sneaked into Balthazar’s dungeons. He freed me from my chains, from my living nightmare.”
