Because even monsters—even me—could dream of being a hero, if only for a moment.
Elizabeth’s voice cracked the silence like thin ice underfoot.
“I can’t marry him, Amir.I can’t live with someone capable of such evil.I need your help… please, help me escape this.”
Her words hung between us, as heavy as a noose waiting to claim its victim.
I wanted to destroy the society that had birthed such iniquity.To scorch their wicked halls to the ground and scatter their ashes to the wind.To wrap my arms around her and swear that no harm would ever touch her again.
But she was the daughter of my enemy.
And my embrace—my protection—could be just as perilous as the evils she fled from.
The tension coiled around us, thick and suffocating.The only sound was the slow, methodical ticking of the grandfather clock, measuring the seconds of our shared torment.
Then, as though gasping for air after being submerged for too long, Elizabeth lifted her gaze to mine.
Her eyes—raw, pleading—were liquid solace, beckoning me into their depths.
“I can tell you’re not like the men in my father’s society,” she whispered.
The words struck me like a blade, unexpected and unearned.
“Like” them?
I had been forged in the same darkness.Born of the same bloodstained cloth, stitched into a tapestry of monsters.
“What makes you think I’m different?”My voice was rough, edged with something bitter.“What makes you think I’m not a brute like the others?”
Her answer was a breath.Soft.A flicker of faith amidst the gloom.
“I can feel in my heart you’re not a beast.”
She spoke it as if it were truth.As if belief alone could make it so.
But she didn’t know.
She didn’t know what I had done.
She didn’t know what I was capable of doing.
How wrong she was.And how cruel it would be to let her believe otherwise.
“Oh, my dear Elizabeth,” I murmured, my voice a low, weighted thing.“I’m a creature of darkness, too.I do despicable and horrific things.”
The words sat heavily on my tongue, leaden with the truth I carried—the truth she must understand.I had no salvation—no hero lurking beneath the shadowed exterior.
I expected her to recoil, avert her gaze, see me for what I was—and shrink away.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she stood.A flurry of restless energy, her breath quickened, her fingers curling into her skirts as though bracing herself against an unseen wind.
“Forgive me, Lord Hassan,” she said, reverting to my formal title—a calculated shift, like a wall sliding into place.“But I refuse to believe you share the same cruel intentions as my father’s society.”
Her voice wavered, but her conviction did not.
She stepped back, ready to flee, to take the warmth of her body, the trust in her eyes, and the intoxicating scent of her skin away from me.
