Alina leaned in, voice a conspiratorial whisper.
“And what exactly do you know about Balthazar’s darkness?”
Layla’s eyes gleamed. She lowered her voice.
“Malik’s told me enough. Your lover’s a monster… or didn’t you know?”
Alina laughed. It was a strange sound—light and lilting, but touched with something wicked, somethingferal.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “And I love himbecauseof it.”
I felt her fury pulse across the room like a stormfront. It stirred the air, subtle but electric. But I ignored it. Whatever she suspected, she’d get nothing from me unless I chose to give it.
I turned back to Malik, steering our conversation toward politics and foreign entanglements. My tone remained neutral even as the crackle of Alina and Layla’s words dragged across my nerves.
“Both of our lovers were born from darkness,” Layla said, smiling softly. “But I’ve helped Malik control his urges. He only kills now when he has to—and only those who deserve it.”
Alina sighed. Loud enough to draw attention.
A sigh of disdain, thick with contempt.
I ground my teeth so hard I tasted copper. The truth overpowered Layla’s words—she was reshaping and bending him into something docile. Controlled. Like Cora had done to Mathias. The same righteous poison. The same ruin.
Red-hot fury licked through my veins, but I remained still. It wasn’t time.Yet.
I drained the last of my wine, reached for the silver bell, and gave it a sharp ring.
The maid entered promptly. I gestured toward the empty glasses.
“More Madeira. For everyone.”
She refilled each glass with grace and retreated.
To fill the silence, I spoke of Queen Victoria—her rise, her symbolic power, the global expansion of her empire. I barely heard my own voice. I was listening—waiting—for Alina to play her part again.
And she didn’t disappoint.
“So,” she said, swirling her glass, eyes locked on Layla, “what wouldyoudo, darling, if you found these miraculous daggers?”
Her tone was syrupy. But beneath it lay a viper.
Layla straightened in her seat, rising to the occasion like she’d stepped onto a stage. Her voice rang with conviction.
“I would make the world a better place,” she said. “I would help Malik live a life free from slaughter, free from the hunger that eats at his soul. He’s tired of killing—tired of being what he was born to be. We want to get married. Have children. But we can’t while the father of those children is still… a monster.”
She took a measured sip of her wine, her gaze distant, wistful.
“I love him more than life itself. My greatest wish is to free him from the curse of his existence… to stop the cycle of killing and consumption, or else lose him to it forever.”
That was it. The confirmation I’d been waiting for.
Layla was no different than Cora. Just another sweet-tongued savior eager to “fix” the dark. And Malik—he was sliding fast. Soon, he’d be nothing but another simpering fool like Mathias, stripped of his teeth, his edge dulled by love and mercy.
Or worse—he’d turn on me. Try to come out on top.
Layla’s eyes wandered the room, then settled again on Alina.
“My father,” she said, “is a Timehunter. He’s spent his entire life studying the Sun and Moon Daggers in Anatolia. He believes they hold the key to controlling time… and rewriting fate itself.”
