“I’ve known you since your inception, have I not?” I said, meeting his eyes across the room.
A rhetorical question, but he nodded, nonetheless.
“I molded you,” I continued. “Took you from a wild, indiscriminate killer and turned you into a refined executioner. A connoisseur of death.”
“Indeed, you have.” He exhaled, his lips parting as smoke spilled into the air. “I owe much of who I am to you.”
“So, tell me,” I said softly, lifting the cigar once more, “why is it that now, after everything, you seek a cure from the darkness? Have I misled you? Failed you somehow?”
“Not at all,” Malik said, casually crossing one leg over the other. His smile was tight, contained—too perfect. “But Layla and I?—”
There it was.
That cursed name.
“—have discovered something extraordinary. The original daggers. The first pair—Sun and Moon. Not replicas. Not legends. The blades born from the darkness itself.”
He leaned forward slightly, his voice growing reverent. “Can you imagine what it would mean to possess such relics? To wield that kind of power?”
But I’d stopped listening afterLayla and me.
The words buzzed in my ears like a wasp trapped under glass.
I knew it.
She was the rot in his roots. The softness in his eyes, the tendernesscurled at the edge of his mouth—it wasn’t darkness anymore. It washope. And that hope had a name.
Layla.
She was poisoning him, unmaking him.
I bit down hard on the end of my cigar. The tobacco turned bitter on my tongue, sharp as ash.
“So,” I said coolly, “this wasn’tyouridea... it came from Layla?”
Malik frowned, the lines around his mouth tightening.
“It was the result of our research,” he replied, carefully measured. “Layla knows how unhappy I am being... what I am.” He hesitated. “Don’t you ever want to benormal, Balthazar? To stop killing just to stay alive? Layla believes the Sun and Moon Daggers are the answer.”
I laughed, a harsh, joyless sound. I waved my hand through the smoke-laced air, dismissive. “Do you hear yourself? You’re clinging to fairy tales like a couple of enchanted blades will undo centuries of blood and ruin. It’schildish.”
Malik leaned forward, his eyes alight—not with madness, but hope. Hope was so pure; it looked like treason.
“What’s childish,” he said, “is pretending that what we do isn’t agony. Layla and I weretoldthe daggers could silence the hunger. End it. We could live real lives. Normal lives. Maybe even start families.” His voice cracked on the word.
“Doesn’t that sound divine?” he whispered. “Don’tyouwant that?”
I stiffened.
Ihada family. Long ago. A love. Children. A life full of light that ended in fire and blood. The idea of rebuilding such a thing… clawed at the walls of my heart, somewhere deep and hidden. I’d tasted the joy of raising someone—him. And now he wanted to leave me for some promised light?
Malik’s gaze burned into mine. “Just imagine it, Balthazar. No more feeding. No more shadows. No more agony. Just peace. Freedom.”
I flinched.
The image of myself just hours ago—hunched over, purging the rot of my last kill—hit me with brutal clarity. I could still taste thebile, feel the ache in my bones, the exhaustion in my soul. That moment had stripped away the illusion of power and left only rotting truth.
“I hear you,” I said quietly, voice laced with caution. “But do you even know where these daggers are? Have you seen them with your own eyes? How do you know they’re not myths—another cursed promise meant to unravel us?”
