“I saw it,” I gasped, the horror of that moment still vivid in my mind. “How did you recover?”
The silence between us held a weight of years, of buried secrets and truths too dangerous to speak aloud. My heart hammered against my ribcage, demanding the closure I had been denied for over a decade. Alina’s eyes never left mine, reflecting the pain we both carried.
“Recover,” she said softly, almost to herself, “is perhaps not the right word. There was, in fact, no killing. But I can understand why you thought that. Instead, I was whisked away byTimehunters.”
She reached across the table, stopping short of touching my hand. Her fingers hovered there, trembling with the dread of her own story—a tale I knew would unravel the last threads of the life I thought I understood.
My heart pounded against my chest, and each beat resounded like the toll of a funeral bell as I waited for her to speak.
“Olivia,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I thought I was dead and wished I was because the pain, torture, and suffering I went through was unbearable. I woke up in a dark room, chained to the wall, beaten, and starved nearly to death. I was in the unforgiving grasp of Salvatore.”
I flinched at her words, feeling the cold, feeling the cold bite of the metal around her wrists, the sting of starvation that had gnawed at her once vibrant spirit.
“Salvatore?” I echoed, the unfamiliar name bitter on my tongue. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Few have,” she replied, her eyes distant as if peering into that shadowy abyss again. “He was watching me when we went to get ice cream. He’s very powerful, more powerful than anyone I have ever met. After Balthazar... after that monster stabbed me, Salvatore took me. He made me his prisoner.”
I struggled to draw a breath, to understand how this specter named Salvatore fit into the puzzle of our shattered lives.
“Prisoner?” I managed to ask, the word tasting of fear and confusion.
“Ruthless,” she confirmed with a nod, haunted. “He had been watching us, waiting for an opportunity. I pleaded with everything I had. I lied to him, told him I had no children—that you were the child of a friend, and I looked after you.”
The child of a friend… The phrase seemed so cold, devoid of the illusion of warmth I’d clutched to my chest as a child.
The air seemed to thin, and I gasped, trying to fill my lungs with something other than the dread that seeped from every word she spoke. How many nights had I cried myself to sleep, thinking my mother was dead? And all along, she had been enduring tortures unimaginable.
“Mom...” My voice trailed off, leaving a silence filled with the echoes of chains and the ghostly touch of unseen watchers.
“He’s been the Timehunter leader all this time,” she said, her gaze piercing mine with the ferocity of one who had stared down evil itself. “And the creator of Timebornes.”
“A Timehunter leader and a creator of Timebornes?” Confusion swirled within me like a vortex. “But Dad said that if a baby was born during a solar eclipse during that exact moment of darkness, it creates Timebornes. You’re telling me some man named Salvatore created us instead?”
Mom shook her head. “Salvatore claims he orchestrated the Eclipsarum Obscura, which means he created the power during the solar eclipse to create Timebornes and bring darkness within the dagger.”
“Created us?” I repeated, feeling the ground of reality shift beneath my feet. Every truth I had held onto was being peeled away, layer by layer, revealing a core of uncertainty and fear.
“Olivia,” she said, reaching across the void between us, her hand trembling like a leaf poised to fall. “There is so much you do not know hidden from you.”
And at that moment, amidst the glinting cutlery and the brooding portraits of ancestors long gone, I understood that the path to truth would be as treacherous as any darkened labyrinth, with a Minotaur called Salvatore lurking at its heart.
The chandelier above cast a somber glow over the dining table, its candlelight shifting with the tension in the air.
I leaned forward, my hands clasped together to still their shaking.
“How did you live? How did you survive? More importantly, how did you get away?” The questions escaped me, raw and desperate.
My mother’s eyes held a distant fire that had been kindled in the darkest places.
“Calm down, honey,” she said, though her voice quivered with suppressed anguish. “I survived. I... I served him as his whore all these years. It was survival, nothing more. Salvatore is a formidable figure, known in certain circles as a Shadow Lord. His mastery of dark magic is unparalleled, and he can manipulate darkness, travel through time with ease, and hunt down his enemies ruthlessly. He is considered by many to be the most fearsome and elusive monster they have ever encountered. After so many years of planning... I finally escaped him.”
A cold shiver ran through me. “How did you escape someone so powerful, so dark? That’s impossible!”
I couldn’t mask the disbelief in my voice.
“You don’t understand,” she replied, her gaze now steady, revealing a hint of the strategic mind that had outwitted a dark sorcerer. “Salvatore’s power has grown weak through time. His minions, who once executed his every whim, now took orders from afar, giving me a sliver of opportunity. So, I bided my time. And when the moment came, I ran to Lee for help.”
“To Lee?” The name felt strange on my lips, an echo from a childhood spent in play, not plots and schemes.
