Then, a touch—soft and familiar startled me.
My arm dropped. My eyes snapped open.
Zara stood over me.
Her ghostly form shimmered like smoke in the dim light. My breath caught in my throat.
“No…” I rasped, my voice raw with disbelief. “No more. Leave me, spirit. Stop these hauntings. Stop tormenting me.”
But she didn’t move. She remained—elegant, haunting, heartbreakingly unchanged.
“Balthazar, my love,” she said, her voice like a breeze through brittle leaves. “Stop this madness. Your suffering tears through me.”
She reached for me, fingers like cold silk trailing along my jaw.
I screamed. A guttural cry torn from the depths of my soul.
“Stop this!” I shouted. “You don’t exist! Youdied!I saw you slain before my very eyes!”
My body trembled. A tortured sob ripped free. “Why won’t you let me go? Why must you keep returning to shred what’s left of me?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, scorching hot against my chilled skin.
“My love for you was eternal,” I whispered, barely audible. “And still you left me—for him. You abandoned our daughters. They died screaming, Zara. Five innocent souls… slaughtered while you were gone.”
My voice faltered, raw and broken.
“Now everything is gone. First, the girls. Then my heart, when you betrayed me for Mathias. And now Alina… she’s abandoned me too. Is there no end to my misery?”
Hot tears streamed down my cheeks as the ghost before me shattered into a thousand shards of light and vanished. My heart pounded savagely, my body trembling with an unbearable revelation.
“This… this is what happens when I take too much life,” I whispered, voice ragged. My vision blurred, blood roaring in my ears until I saw a crimson haze.
A scream tore from my throat—an unholy mix of agony and loathing. I was the one who fucked it all up. I had laid down with Alina like a goddamn fool, thinking I could find love again. Thinking this time would be different.
Instead, I lost everything.
I stumbled to my feet, staggering across the cold, tiled floor. I howled, my voice echoing off the stone walls of my once-proud estate.
“No one is loyal to me!” I roared, spit flying from my lips. “Zara betrayed me! Mathias and Amir stabbed me in the fucking back! Malik turned on me like the weak bastard he is! And the Timehunters—those fucking parasites—slaughtered my family without a second thought!”
My throat burned. My fists ached from clenching too hard. “And Alina… I let her in. I let herin.And she twisted her lies so tight around my neck I didn’t even realize I was choking until it was too late.”
Rage boiled inside me. I’d been blind—blinded by lust, by the fantasy of redemption, of starting over. How pathetic.
Then, without warning, Zara reappeared—her ghostly form more radiant, more devastatingly beautiful than ever.
Knives of grief twisted in my chest.
“No!” I cried, stumbling backward, crashing to the floor in a heap of fury and brokenness.
“Stop haunting me!” I clawed at my scalp, tearing at my hair like I could rip the madness from my skull. “Just fucking stop!”
“Balthazar!” her voice rang out—Zara, or what remained of her in my mind. “What has happened to you? You were never like this before. Century by century, you’ve grown angrier… twisted. You carry so much pain. But to what end?”
“Shut up!” I slapped my palms against my ears, desperate toblock out her voice. “You’re not real! You’re a lie—nothing but the last remnants of my decaying sanity!”
But Zara—this phantom I couldn’t exorcise—knelt beside me. Her touch felt real. Too real. Her fingers peeled mine away from my ears, gentle but firm, like she still loved me. Like she still believed I was worth saving. She wrapped her arms around me and leaned in to kiss me.
