A crooked smile slithered across her face. “I amZara. Balthazar’sonlylove. His first. His last. The rest?” She curled her lip. “Pale imitations.”
Then she laughed—high and brutal. It rang through the trees like breaking glass, like every vengeful ghost had found its voice through her mouth.
Zara.
The name carved itself into my brain like a curse.
But—she was supposed to bedead.
My father hadkilledher.
Panic exploded in my chest. I writhed, twisted, and kicked. Finally, one of the boulders shifted with a splash, and I scrambled upright, half-falling onto the slick rocks.
I tried to run.
But my foot, swollen and raw, couldn’t grip the riverbed. My soaked shoes slipped uselessly, and my scream sliced the morning air as she grabbed me by the hair and ripped me backward.
I flew like a ragdoll. Water exploded around us.
My head hit the stones with a wet smack. Dizzy. Cold. Drowning in pain.
Zara stood over me, her eyes gleaming with murderous delight.
“You brought unspeakable suffering to Layla,” she snarled. “You broke Malik’s soul. You ruined lives with your poison. Now—now, I will unmake yours.”
She wrenched me up by the hair again, and I screamed as her voice split the sky in two—pure fury, pure vengeance, unholy and divine.
“I will turn your days into torment. Your nights into damnation. You wanted power?” she spat. “Youwillhave it—but only the kind that devours you from the inside out.”
She hurled me through the air like I weighed nothing—just a plaything in her hands.
I slammed into the creek with a sickening thud, my bones jarred, my flesh torn. Pain ripped through me. My breath hitched. Blood mingled with water. I lay broken, shuddering, half-drowned in cold and shame.
The sobs that tore from my throat weren’t theatrical this time.
They werereal.
“Balthazar will protect me!” I shrieked, my voice warbling with desperation. “He’ll find and save me; you’ll benothing!”
Zara threw back her head and howled with laughter—loud, merciless, unhinged. “Youjustcalled him a monster, you dumb, spineless little whore! And now you think he’s going to ride in and rescue you? After all your lies, your betrayal? After youfuckedanother man behind his back?”
I curled in on myself in the streambed, the current dragging at my limbs as if nature wanted to pull me under and be done with me. My head spun with panic.
Could I get away?
Would Balthazar evenwantto save me if he knew the truth? If he knew Zara had returned?
Probably not.
I was so fuckingscrewed.
I dragged myself from the water, my clothes heavy with shame and frost, my body shaking with pain. I thought—hoped—she might have had enough.
I was wrong.
Zara’s voice cut through the trees like a thunderclap of damnation.
She screamed the names of the men I’d seduced, used, and destroyed.Davide. Tomaso.She bellowed them like a death sentence. She painted my sins in detail—my lies to Balthazar, the betrayal in my voice, the way I gasped Raul’s name during every goddamned orgasm.
