Chapter 15 #2
“I’ve never been more myself,” I rasped, closing my hand around her wrist. Her skin was warm beneath my fingers; my heartbeat hammered against hers. “I’ve wanted you for years, Amara. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
For a heartbeat, I saw the boy I had been—the one who ran barefoot through the fields with Lazarus at his side and Amara’s laughter chasing after us.
We had nothing then but sunburnt skin, stolen bread, and the foolish belief that friendship could outlast the world.
I wanted to be him again, just long enough to matter.
Her lips trembled. “Salvatore—”
I leaned in.
She turned her face aside. “No,” she said, her voice cutting clean through the quiet. “You don’t love, Salvatore. You wound. You destroy. That’s why you went to Helena.”
The words stung.
My fingers tightened on her wrist.
“Salvatore—don’t,” she warned, breath unsteady now.
I moved anyway. The air tasted of stone and salt. My mouth brushed her cheek, then her neck; her skin was soft, the memory of nights she’d held me together, when my father would beat me.
“Stop,” she said, struggling. “You were never mine.”
“You’re mine,” I growled. “You were always supposed to be mine.”
Her palm struck my face hard. The sound cracked the air and rolled through the chamber, bouncing from wall to wall until it came back changed, hollow and strange, as if the Dreadhold itself had flinched.
For a single breath, everything froze. The world narrowed to her breathing and the sting burning across my cheek.
Even the air held still, thick and waiting.
The Dreadhold seemed to draw in around us, stone folding tight like a ribcage locking its heart away.
Then she turned to flee, and I caught her.
My hand closed on her arm, rough, desperate, unforgivable. The fabric of her tunic tore under my fingers. Her gasp filled the space between us, sharp enough to cut through the quiet. Her eyes met mine—fear and defiance warring in their depths—and I felt the last of the boy I had been vanish.
The silence that followed was not peace. It was punishment.
The Dreadhold groaned—deep, mournful—as though the stone itself understood what I had done.
Whatever I had once been—friend, ally, son—was gone.
What stood in the infirmary now was something else.
Someone darker.
A villain carved from hunger, pain, and rejection.
The door exploded open, iron shrieking against stone.
Lazarus stumbled inside, half-dragged by guards. His cheek was split, blood soaking his torn tunic, breath coming ragged and shallow. He looked shattered—until his eyes found me.
Found us.
I still held Amara. Her tunic torn, her body was trembling beneath my grip.
Lazarus froze. His gaze locked on us. The silence stretched as thin as wire—until it snapped.
“You fucking hurt her?” His voice was death given shape—ice, thunder, and blade. The veins in his neck stood out, his whole frame shaking with fury. “You fucking hurt her?”
I opened my mouth, but the storm had already broken.
He struck.
The world tilted. Stone slammed into the back of my skull. His fists came down—hard, fast, endless. Each blow cracked through my bones like lightning splitting trees.
“I fought for you!” he roared, his voice shaking with grief and rage, spittle striking my face. “I bled for you! For your honor! And this is what you are? This is what you become?!”
His fists were no longer fists. They were hammers, iron, and wrath. Every strike carved through skin, through reason.
I lashed out, clawing, grabbing, and dragging him down with me. Our bodies hit the stone, slick with our blood. The air filled with grunts, curses, and gasps. The sound of flesh on flesh.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted.
“Then do it!” I spat back. “Do it!”
We were past words—past thought. Only violence remained.
Blood splattered across the walls, streaking the stone like a painter gone mad. Amara’s screams pierced the din, high and sharp, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. The guards’ shouts blurred into the roar of the Dreadhold itself.
The prison lived and breathed around us—the stone humming beneath our feet, the walls pressing closer, drinking our fury like a feast.
Hands seized our arms. Clubs fell in arcs. Pain flared white and hot. Still, we clawed and thrashed, two animals tangled on the floor until no one could tell where one of us ended and the other began.
For that savage instant, we were identical—brothers, enemies, monsters.
“Why do you get to be loved…and not me?” I hissed, blood bubbling wet at my lips.
The question stopped him. His fists hung in the air. In that narrow silence, I saw everything—the way Amara clutched at his arm, the pleading fixed on her face, the fierce, quiet hold she kept on him.
“Stop!” she cried, voice breaking. “Please, Lazarus. He’s not worth it!”
Her words landed like an accusation. Not worth it.
The guards dragged us apart. My arm throbbed beneath his grip. My ribs ached. But none of it mattered.
Because Amara looked at him the way no one had ever looked at me.
Because I knew, with a clarity that hurt worse than any lash, that I would never be loved the way he was.
Not by her. Not by anyone.
So, I chose something else.
I never spoke it aloud. I buried it where only stone and darkness could hear.
If I cannot be loved, then I will take love from them.
I will leave behind the same silence that lives inside me—and they will learn what it means to be empty.
The thoughts burned as they took shape. I felt them sink into the air, into the stone, into me. Something in my chest cracked open—slow, quiet, irreversible.
The pain didn’t fade. It changed.
It twisted into something colder, crueler.
And in that silence, I felt it spreading.
The poison of it.
The beginning of what I would be.