And with every beat of my heart, it murmured a promise.
Find a way.
Find him.
The masquerade loomed over me like a tempest cloud, its preparations an intricate dance of deception and death.
But death required meticulousness.
I unlatched the weathered door to my alchemist’s cottage, slipping inside the only place where I could shed the facade of the dutiful daughter and embrace the monster I was becoming.
Upon the workbench, the Noctyss poison lay in wait in the dim candlelight.
Nearly complete.
All but for one final, crucial ingredient.
The blood of darkness.
A chill ran down my spine.
There was only one way to obtain it.
Mathias was beyond my grasp—a phantom lurking in the periphery of shadows.
But Amir…
Amir was close.
Amir’s blood would serve as the key.
I inhaled, my decision forged in the fire of necessity.
Under the cover of night, I would seek him out.
I would draw forth the darkness from his very veins.
For the poison to be complete—he must bleed.
Days blurred together, an endless tide of orders and arrangements.
And then, my father presented a solution.
A solution as twisted as it was fortuitous.
“We have new hands to assist us, Elizabeth,” Father announced, his voice curling with amusement, his eyes gleaming with something cold, something cruel.
“Lord Winston’s staff will join our ranks.”
A slow, dark smile curled at the edges of my lips.
Perfect.
“Surely, Father, their number is insufficient for grandeur as you envision,” I countered smoothly, feigning concern as my mind sharpened with purpose.
I knew full well what Lord Winston’s servants truly were.
Creatures whittled from the same rotten wood as their master.
