Amir’s hand rose to cradle my cheek, his touch reverent and grounding, and his eyes dark and unwavering.
“There is only you, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice low, firm, full of truth.“I could never touch another.You are my beginning and my end.You have all of me.Always.”
He kissed me then, slow and deep, not with urgency—but devotion, sealing his vow in the heat of that touch.In the way he held me.The way he trembled slightly, as though the thought of losing me could undo him.
His lips lingered on mine, and the earnestness in his gaze bore into me, a promise etched not only in words but also in the essence of his being.
“I will never betray you,” he vowed again, sealing it with another kiss that spoke every silent word we could not say aloud.
As his lips left mine, a hush fell between us, heavy with the weight of our promises and the reality waiting beyond this fragile peace.
I clung to him, willing time to stop—because somewhere in my bones, I knew it wouldn’t be long before this world shattered again.
Because love like ours?
It was never meant to survive.
And far beyond the city, in the depths of shadow and fire, a man moved across the chessboard of our lives—a hunter with no mercy and a name that hunted my blood.
Salvatore was coming.
And this time, he would not leave without blood.
ChapterThirty-Two
ELIZABETH
1780
The needle dipped and rose steadily, the thread weaving through delicate fabric with practiced ease.Each stitch was a small defiance—a quiet survival.In the stillness of Amir’s townhouse, where the bustle of London was reduced to a distant murmur, I found a semblance of peace—false, fragile, but mine.
My fingers moved nimbly, attaching an intricate lace trim to the hem of Lady Harrington’s dress, a commission that filled my days and allowed me to pretend life was as ordinary as it seemed that I was simply a seamstress.That I was not Elizabeth Hassan, wife of a man the world believed a ghost.
But within these borrowed walls, every corner whispered of his absence.
Eighteen years had passed since I became his.Amir pressed a ring into my hand, kissed me beneath a silvered moon, and vowed that no matter the years or distance, I would always be his.And yet, each moment without him gnawed at me, leaving a hunger unsated.
The ache was constant—a wound that never quite healed—an emptiness that should have been filled by his arms, his voice, him.My husband, my love, bound by duty, secrets, and a world that had never allowed us to be anything but stolen moments and whispered vows.
I paused, lifting the gown to the light, inspecting the neatness of the hem—but my mind was not on stitches or patterns.It was elsewhere, tangled in memory—fleeting touches and stolen kisses, the way his breath would hitch when I touched his jaw, the way his eyes darkened with need, then softened with love.His laughter—rare, precious—was always cut short by the call of duty.
Always gone before dawn.
Only the lingering scent of sandalwood, the faintest echo of his warmth on my skin, was left behind to haunt me.
A soft sigh slipped from my lips.I set the dress down and reached for the bundle of letters hidden in the drawer of my worktable, fingers trembling despite the familiarity of the ritual.Their edges were worn, smoothed by countless readings.Each word was traced by his hand, written in the brief hours he could steal from the darkness.
They were all I had of him.
Letters were sent with no pattern and no warning.Letters that came like lightning at night illuminating everything, only to vanish again.
I pressed the letters to my chest, eyes closing.The ache flared—not just for his touch, but for the life we were never allowed to live.A life not stitched in secrecy, not experienced in stolen nights and shadowed dawns.
As I unfolded the topmost letter with trembling fingers, a question rose like smoke in my mind—heavy, suffocating, impossible to ignore?—
How much longer could love survive in the shadows… before it withered in the light?
“Dearest Elizabeth,” I read aloud, my voice barely a breath.The ink was slightly smudged, his hasty script pressed deep into the parchment.I traced the curve of his letters with my fingertip, imagining his touch on my skin, the calloused pad of his thumb trailing the same path.The paper crackled softly beneath my touch, worn and fragile from how often I unfolded it—a ritual of longing, of reaching across miles and months to find him.
