Istirred in my husband’s arms, my body tense as chaos erupted around us.
“You’re here,” I whispered, a dry sob catching in my throat. I clung to him, trying to shut out the pandemonium surrounding us.
“I’m here.” Roman’s voice was a lifeline, his fierce gaze burning with a thousand untamed fires.
A monstrous howl shattered the room.
Balthazar.
The sheer force of his rage rattled the very foundations of the earth, a sound so pained, so filled with fury and agony that it sent shivers racing through my bones. It was more than a scream—an elemental force crashing through our souls.
“You killed my son!” he roared, his eyes ablaze with unearthly fire. His chest heaved, muscles taut with unspent wrath. A single tear—glimmering and foreign—tracked down his cheek.
“Another one of my children—gone!” His voice cracked with a mix of anguish and rage, his emotions radiating off him in waves so violent they threatened to drown us all.
I choked out an incredulous laugh. After all the torment he’d inflicted, now he mourned?
But beneath the wretched spectacle of his grief, another truth was revealed?—
Tristan was dead.
Beheaded.
The man I had once loved. The man I had once slept with.
A shudder randown my spine.
Little Leo’s cries pierced the air. Emily clutched him beneath the covers, shielding him from the horrors unraveling before us.
Roman helped me sit upright, his hands strong and steady. But my attention snapped to Mathias as his voice boomed through the chamber, ancient scripture rolling from his lips in a cadence that sent ice trickling down my spine.
The words were old. Older than any mortal tongue, reverberating with a power that prickled across my scalp.
And in his grip?—
A blade.
Its tip gleamed as it pointed at Balthazar.
For the first time, true silence crept into the room.
Balthazar’s face slackened.
Tristan’s severed head slipped from his grip, landing with a dull, lifeless thud at his feet.
Mathias did not hesitate.
With the grace of a swordsman practicing in a university gymnasium, he lunged?—
And drove the dagger straight into Balthazar’s heart.
Balthazar let out a silent scream—his mouth open in a soundless wail—before he, Mathias, and all remnants of Tristan vanished into a swirling cloud of black smoke.
And then?—
Nothing.
No blood. No bodies. No trace of the horrors that had just unfolded before us.
