I forced my lips to move, my voice barely more than a whisper cracked and broken.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Elizabeth ignored me.
With trembling hands, she retrieved a damp cloth from the folds of her skirt, gently dabbing at the blood and bruises marring my skin.Each touch was a whisper of tenderness against the brutality that had carved itself into me.
“Oh, Amir,” she gasped, her voice laced with heartache, tears slipping down her pale cheeks.“I swear on everything I hold dear, I will make my father pay for this.For every wound.For every moment of suffering.”
“Shhh, my love,” I said through my battered lips.“You shouldn’t have come.”
“I had to.”
Her hands cupped my face, light as a feather yet heavy with unspoken promises.“I couldn’t leave you like this.”
I clenched my jaw, mustering what little strength I had left.“Go!Do not stay.”My voice, though weak, held the urgency of a dying man.
This place was no sanctuary for angels; it was a pit for monsters and martyrs.
But Elizabeth—fierce, unrelenting, my light in the dark—refused to yield.
“No!”she snapped, her voice clinging to fury and desperation.“I am here to save you!To heal you!”
My name trembled on her lips, and when she pulled me into her arms, I nearly collapsed against her warmth.
I should have resisted.I should have fought against the comfort she offered.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
“Elizabeth…” My voice wavered a broken plea.“You can’t be here.They will return.Any moment now, they will come back to continue their work.”
Images of them—their twisted faces, their insatiable cruelty—flashed through my mind, burning behind my eyes with merciless force.
I swallowed hard, my breath shuddering.
“I… I am a monster.”
The words spilled from me, raw, tainted with shame.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth.I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from them.”
The words sat heavy on my tongue, laced with guilt, poisonous in their truth.
The weight of my failure crushed down on me, suffocating me.
But she didn’t recoil.
She didn’t flinch.
She only held me tighter.
Her fierce blue eyes burned with an intensity that made the pain momentarily fade—a fire, raging against the darkness that sought to consume us both.
“No.”
The word cut through the air, a command laced with steel.
