Layla shrieked, crawling toward Malik. Malik thrashed, trying to reach her—but they were weak, broken things, shells of who they’d been.
And still, they loved.
That was what enraged Balthazar most.
He loomed over Layla, his monstrous face tight with cold finality. “I’ve heard enough of her wailing. This ends now.”
He seized her throat in one monstrous hand. She gasped, eyes bulging, her bloodied fingers scrabbling at his wrist.
With a sickening crack, he snapped her neck like a twig.
Her body crumpled.
Malik’s scream tore through the dungeon, pure grief andhelpless rage as he watched the woman he loved die in front of him, and there was nothing—nothing—he could do.
Balthazar’s laughter echoed off the stone walls as he stumbled from the cell, panting like a beast sated on slaughter. When he reached me, he straightened, his face wild and glistening with sweat.
“Do your worst, my love,” he hissed, a gleam of challenge in his eyes.
I forced myself to look away from the viscera clinging to his skin and dropped to my knees, fingers trembling. The poison jar. It had to be now.
I shoved the jar through the cell’s feeding slot, heart pounding.
But as I pulled my gloved hands back, one caught on the edge—and the jar slipped.
It shattered.
Glass sprayed like crystal rain across the stone floor.
“No!” I shrieked, jerking my bare hands back just as the vapor hissed upward like a demon exhaling its final breath. The slot door slammed shut with a softsnick, sealing the chamber tight—but not the dread curling inside my stomach.
Silence fell.
Heavy. Absolute. Final.
And I could no longer tell if the pounding in my chest was fear… or dark, twisted triumph.
Would Balthazar and I suffer the same fate? Would we rot like the ones we’d sealed in that cell?
I stumbled backward and collided hard into him.
My breath hitched in terror.
His skin, half-shifted into rot and sinew, peeled away at the edges. Maggots writhed from open sores like worms from grave soil, and they spilled onto me, crawling across my neck, jaw, and cheeks. My scream ripped through the hall as I scratched at my flesh, desperate to rid myself of their revolting touch.
Malik’s cries tore through the air inside the cell, raw and ragged. The toxic vapor crept in like a phantom, curling through the stone. He convulsed violently as he cradled Layla, rocking her limp body in his arms. His sobs choked in his throat, swallowed by the poison. Veins bulged along his neck as the last shreds of life clung to hisdying frame. He screamed her name, pounding the floor with his fists, coughing blood, fury, and grief.
But I turned away.
I couldn’t watch anymore.
Not because of horror, but because my lust had returned.
I craved Balthazar’s body again—his grotesque form, half-man, half-monster. Something about his decay only made me burn hotter.
I whirled toward him, breathless. “See?” I said, my voice dripping with pride. “I did the right thing going to Raul. You should be thanking me. We’ve committed the ultimate crime. You and I are bound now—in love, blood, and death.”
I tore at his half-shredded vest, fingers dancing across torn muscle and warm, still-human flesh. Bloody sinew stretched beneath my touch.
