I turn the page, my heart pounding so loud I'm certain the guards outside must hear it.
The healers have confirmed what I suspected. I'm with child. His child. The news should bring joy — we've dreamed of this, whispered about it in the dark hours when hope still seemed possible. But instead, all I feel is fear. Because I know, with a certainty that goes beyond reason, that this pregnancy is making everything worse. His shadows react to me differently now. More intensely. More violently. As if they sense the new life growing inside me and see it as a threat.
My hand moves to my stomach without conscious thought.
I know what I have to do. He won't stop trying to save me, even if it destroys him. Even if it turns him into the monster his father wants him to be. He would sacrifice everything — his sanity, his soul, his very existence — to keep me alive. That's not love. That's a prison built from devotion, and I refuse to be the bars that cage him.
The only way to break the cycle is to break myself out of it.
The next page is blank. And the next. And the next.
The final entry is three words, written in a hand so shaky it's barely legible:
Forgive me, beloved.
The journal ends there.
I close it slowly, pressing my palm against the worn leather cover as if I could somehow reach through time to the woman who wrote these words. I tuck the journal into my clothing. Ivy hovers beside me, silent, as we slip back through the corridors to my chambers. My assassin's training guides us on instinct while my mind churns with questions that have no answers.
Once safely inside my chambers, I sink onto my bed, the journal pressed against my chest like a talisman. Ivy lands on the bedpost, watching me with worried eyes.
"I don't know exactly how she died," I say quietly. "From what I read, I know she was sick — something to do with a curse connected to his father. Malakai was trying to save her, but the harder he tried, the worse he got. His shadows were unstable, violent."
Ivy's face pales, her wings drooping. "Oh, Sera..."
"But it didn't work." I look up at her, fear crystallizing into cold certainty. "Whatever curse she was trying to end — it's still in him. And it's responding to me. To the baby."
"You don't know that for certain?—"
"His shadows cut me today. Without his control, without his intention." My voice breaks slightly, and I hate the weakness in it. "She wrote that the same thing happened with her. That he nearly killed people without meaning to. That the pregnancy made everything worse."
Silence stretches between us, heavy with implications neither of us wants to voice.
"What are you going to do?" Ivy finally asks.
I close my eyes, one hand pressing against my stomach where new life grows, oblivious to the danger surrounding it.
"I don't know," I whisper. "I need to understand more. I need to know if this pregnancy will trigger the same spiral. I need to know if loving him is going to kill me too."
"And if it is?"
The question hangs in the air, unanswerable.
Because even now, even knowing what I know, I can't imagine leaving him. Can't imagine choosing safety over the bond that hums between us, over the man who created shadow butterflies for orphaned children, over the future I glimpsed before his darkness shattered it.
But I can't ignore the truth either.
Julia loved him too. Julia thought she could save him through sacrifice.
And Julia is dead.
Forgive me, beloved.
I won't make her choice. I won't let this curse claim me or my child. But I also won't run — not until I understand what I'm truly facing.
Tomorrow, I'll watch him more carefully. I'll pay attention to his shadows, to his reactions, to any sign that the instability is growing. I'll search for more information about this curse, about Erlik, about whatever dark magic has poisoned the man I love.
And I'll protect my child, no matter what that requires.
