A scream of heartbreak tore from my throat. I clawed at my scalp, shrieking as if the pain in my head could drown the pain in my heart. My daughters were gone. All of them. Their laughter nowa cruel mockery looping inside my skull, getting louder, darker, until it was a twisted symphony of agony.
“You’re gone!” I howled, collapsing to my knees. “All of you! Gone!”
I slammed my fists into the cold stone floor, again and again, until the skin split and blood smeared across the tiles. I just wanted to feelsomething. Anything.
Before I became…this.
Just a man with nothing left but ghosts.
“Stop making mereliveit!” I screamed at the air, at the spirits, at myself. “I don’t want to feel this again! I don’t want toremember!”
Dragging my broken body across the room, I made my way to the liquor cabinet. I grabbed the nearest dusty bottle with shaking hands, ripped out the cork, and drank deep. The burn of the whiskey down my throat was a welcomed punishment—blazing, brutal, numbing.
Better.
I staggered upright and turned—only to find myself face to face withhim.
Mathias Alastair.
I let out a bark of laughter, wild and bitter. “Look at you, old man. Look at what you are! Pathetic!” I stabbed the air in front of him with my finger. “You’re not real. A shade. A figment. Just like all the others.”
I stepped forward, slurring with fury. “But that doesn’t matter. You’llalwaysbe the one who betrayed me. Iknowit was you who sent those fucking Timehunters. You murdered my daughters. You butchered my family. And you—you—will pay.”
My voice dropped. “I will finish what I started. I will erase your bloodline from existence. Alina, your precious daughter, will beg for mercy before I gut her. Every child she bears—gone. I will find the Sun and Moon Daggers. I will rip this world apart, and when it burns, I will sit on an ash throne.”
I rubbed my hands together, grinning with unhinged delight. “This land will tremble beneath me. My victory will beabsolute.”
Mathias’ expression darkened. He didn’t cower. He didn’t vanish. He only stared, hollow-eyed and wounded.
“Oh, Balthazar,” he said quietly. “You still thinkIam the root of all this? After everything I taught you. After everything I gave? You blind yourself with rage and call it justice.”
His voice thundered through the room, echoing like a final curse as his body dissolved into vapor, sorrow and fury spiraling into a whirlwind of memory and loss, until all that remained was the stench of regret.
I let out a roar and collapsed against the cabinet. Bottles shattered, glass rained down like crystal hail. I pressed my palms to my face, blood and whiskey mingling at my chin. My mind burned with revenge. Alina. The daggers. The power.
I would have it all.
She would kneel before me, powerless. Broken. Begging.
And I would rise again.
The Sun and Moon Daggers would bemine.
Chapter 22
Alina
1785
It had been exactly seven months since I left Balthazar—seven long months of trying to shed the skin of my former self and become something new. Each step forward felt uncertain, the path unfamiliar and fraught with quiet wariness. My days bled into each other, filled with the exhausting task of keeping up a facade for Philip, who seemed to take delight in testing the edges of my restraint.
These months had become a tormenting limbo—less a journey of discovery and more an endless trial of patience and persistence.
I rolled back and forth on the creaky bed I shared with Philip. The mattress sagged beneath us. The walls were splintered, the furnishings dull and threadbare. And Philip—sweet, simple Philip—embodied a life I had once looked down upon. Everything around me was a pale imitation of the luxury I once commanded. If I stayed in this forgotten cabin any longer, I would lose what remained of my mind.
I needed a purpose—a mission.
And I had one—find the man Malik claimed held the key to unlocking the power of the Sun and Moon Daggers—John James.
