“Something from her mother’s teachings.We’ll use it on him once he’s captured.Let it rot him slowly—from the inside out.”
Rebellion surged through me, icy and honed, like steel drawn in silence.
“A poison fit to kill a god.”
Alexander’s lips curled in malice.
“The Black Wraith will beg for death long before it comes—and we’ll be there to witness every second.”
A pause.
Then, the final nail in their wretched plan.
“I have also invited Mathias Alistair to witness this event.”
Mathias.
The name hung in the air like a curse.
A slow, bone-deep shiver crept down my spine.
The room felt suddenly smaller.
The walls seemed to inch closer, the weight of his name suffocating.
Mathias’ arrival would complicate matters significantly—a new variable in a game where I was already balancing on a knife’s edge.
I could not afford his attendance.
I could not afford this trap tightening around me.
But before I could fully absorb the gravity of this revelation?—
The door creaked open.
A servant entered, head bowed, shoulders tight with unease.
“Lord Alexander, I have news.”
The quiet tremor in his voice slithered through the chamber, setting every nerve on edge.
Lord Alexander’s gaze snapped toward the messenger, his lips peeling back in a snarl.
“What is it?”
A beat.
Then—
“We have received word that all your hideouts have been destroyed.”
The words dropped like stones into a still lake.
A slow, suffocating silence swallowed the room.
Then—
Lord Alexander’s face twisted, the slow shift from scorn to unbridled fury morphing him into something truly monstrous.
