His eyes darkened, a storm gathering just behind them.“Secrets.”
“Yes,” I whispered, my voice trembling like a fraying thread.“Do you remember the night we conceived our sons?The night you told me your story—how you came from Solaris, how your realm was destroyed when Isabelle separated the blades?”
He nodded once, warily, his expression guarded.
“And I told you about my mother...Isolde Ravencroft.”
His eyes flickered, the name igniting a spark of recognition, a shadow of memory that hadn’t meant much to him—until now.
“You said you didn’t know her,” I whispered, the words barely forming as my throat tightened.“That she was just a Timehealer.”
Amir’s gaze didn’t waver.His voice was low, cautious.“Yes.I remember that night.”
I felt the weight of it then—the chasm between us, whittled by years of half-truths and omissions.My breath came shallow, and still, I pushed forward.
“Well...that night, when you opened up, when you told me about Solaris...about the Shadow Lords, Salvatore, and Lazarus, and how Isabelle shattered the realm by separating the blades...”I paused, my chest constricting.“I already knew who they were.I already knew everything.Because my mother and I—” My voice broke.“We spent years trying to perfect the Noctyss flower.Years...trying to neutralize their power.”
His jaw tightened, the fury in his eyes rising like a tide.“Tell me, Elizabeth,” he growled.“How is your mother connected to Salvatore?”
A piercing ache bloomed in my chest.There was no easy way to say it—only the truth.
“Long before I was born,” I said slowly, “before she lost herself in this world...my mother belonged to Salvatore.”
His expression twisted in disbelief.“Belonged to him?”
I forced the words out, every syllable tasting like blood.“She was his sex slave, Amir.In Solaris.”
His eyes ignited, blazing fury crackling through him like lightning.“What?”
“He used her,” I whispered, my hands shaking.“Her body, her mind, her soul.He fed on her suffering—drained her of everything she was to fuel his power.She was his, Amir.Until Isabelle found her...saved her.Brought her back to safety.”
I saw it then—the battle in his eyes, the collision of past and present.He knew the realm I spoke of.He had lived there.
“You had to know,” I said, voice cracking.“You lived in that realm—you must have heard something.”
Amir shook his head slowly, rage simmering beneath the surface.“Elizabeth, during the chaos...the battles...the days leading up to the blades being separated, everything collapsed.My job was to train the army of darkness, to keep Solaris from crumbling.I didn’t have the luxury to...indulge in what was happening beyond the war front.”
I swallowed hard, blinking back tears.
Amir’s voice was tight, laced with disbelief and barely restrained fury.“Tell me, Elizabeth...if everyone’s memories were wiped, if no one remembers what happened, then how the hell did your mother know?How did she remember?”
“She didn’t have her memories,” I said, stepping closer.“Not until she found the note.In the alchemy book, you discovered...my mother had written herself a message, a desperate attempt to piece the fragments together.A message to herself to remember.To finish what she started.”
I could see his heart breaking in his eyes.But I couldn’t stop.
“When Isabelle saved her, they tried to find a way to destroy him.But Salvatore was impossible to kill—is impossible to kill.There’s no way to destroy a Shadow Lord.So they searched for another way to weaken and sever his power.”
I took a trembling breath.“That’s when Morgrath Severen came to them.He told them of a rare flower.The Noctyss flower.It could neutralize a Shadow Lord’s power, strip them of what made them invincible.”
Amir didn’t speak.He didn’t move.He was stone.
“My mother and I traveled to the Carpathian Mountains.We found the book.We found the flower.And we began to craft the poison together.We worked side by side for months—until the day it killed her.”
A tear slipped down my cheek.I didn’t wipe it away.
“She was going to test it on my father’s Timehunter Society,” I whispered, my voice hollow with the memory.“But it failed.”
Amir’s face shattered—grief and fury tearing through him like a storm unleashed.His breath caught, ragged.“And you continued?”
