“Yes,” I managed, the word catching in my throat.“He is… a comfort.A gift.”My gaze followed his, drawn to the peaceful rise and fall of Roman’s breath.My heart swelled with love so fierce, so profound, it ached.
I reached out as if to steady myself on the world, slipping back into color and life.“Amir...”The name trembled from my lips, a prayer, a plea, a thousand questions wrapped in a single breath.
“I thought I lost you forever,” I said, the words spilling out, broken and desperate.Relief, joy, fear, yearning—I was drowning in them all.My eyes searched his face, for answers, for truth.“How are you here?I thought… I thought you were dead.”
Amir didn’t speak at first.He knelt before me, a man once forged by war, now humbled by fate.He took my trembling hands into his, grounding me.
“I never stopped watching you,” he murmured.His voice—usually clipped, commanding—was now a velvet rasp, raw and vulnerable.“Even when I couldn’t touch you.Even when it broke me.”
He lowered his head, pressing my hands to his lips as though reassuring himself in my reality.“I’ve been in the shadows.Watching.Protecting.Always.”
“All this time… you’ve been watching over me?”I breathed, the truth crashing like a tidal wave—months of longing and loneliness suddenly reframed in the staggering light of his return.
“Yes.”His gaze met mine with an intensity that stilled everything inside me.“I was forbidden to get any closer, but I vowed to keep you safe.”
I sat there, reeling, my world unraveling and stitching itself back together.The time apart, the pain, the fear—it had never been mine alone.Amir had carried it, too, in silence.
He moved beside me on the bed, a grounding force.His hands encased mine, roughened by war and time but tender as they trembled in my grasp.
“Elizabeth,” he said, his voice low, the storm still flickering behind his eyes.“There are things you must know.”
He paused, inhaling deeply, bracing himself—not for his sake, but for mine.
“After the masquerade, Lazarus saved my life.”
My breath caught, his name a blade slicing through memory.Lazarus—the enigma, the legend, the man who had stolen so much and returned Amir to me.
“I was nearly dead,” Amir continued, his voice dipping into the shadows of memory.“For hours, many snakes injected me with their venom to counteract the poison coursing through me.I lay in the serpents’ den, not knowing if I were alive or already gone.Their venom… scorched through my veins.They fought death for me, and I couldn’t even scream.”
The image struck like thunder—Amir, strong and fearless, now a man torn between life and death, writhing in the cold embrace of serpents, saviors of a kind no one would ever expect.
A sob rose in my throat.“Oh, Amir… that must have been awful.”My voice trembled as the horror of his ordeal sank into my bones.I reached for his face, cupping it gently, my thumbs brushing over the strong lines etched by pain and time.“You suffered so much…”
His eyes fluttered closed as he leaned into my touch, seeking absolution, anchoring himself in the present—in me.
“Enduring that pain,” he said, locking his gaze with mine, his voice a low, raw confession, “was better than the thought of never seeing your beautiful face again.”
The intensity behind his words ignited something in my heart—a surge of love so fierce it left me breathless.Embers I feared had long since cooled roared back to life, filling the room with warmth and ache.
For a moment, we breathed—two souls reunited, fragile yet whole.
But then, his expression shifted—urgency shadowing his features.“Lazarus saved your life, too, Elizabeth.”
I frowned, confusion knotting in my chest.The fog of memory closed in, heavy and elusive.“Lazarus saved me?But I thought—Mary—she was the one who took care of me.”
Amir shook his head, tension etching deep lines into his brow.“No—Lazarus saved you from the damage Salvatore inflicted.Mary couldn’t have healed that.Not even with all her skill.And the poison from the masquerade, didn’t affect you because of your Timehealer bloodline.That resilience—it’s in your blood.”
His words hung in the air, peeling away the truths I’d clung to.I stared at him, stunned, my breath caught.
“After the masquerade,” Amir continued, his voice low and weighted with memory, “Lazarus took us to his underground palace in Anatolia.He healed you there.”
Anatolia.
The word echoed like a tolling bell through my mind, stirring something ancient and buried.Images flickered at the edges of my vision—stone walls, cold air, the scent of herbs.My hands trembled.
“I remember…” I whispered, the memories clawing their way to the surface.“I thought I saw an old man… I thought it was a dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream.
