Chapter 21
Balthazar
My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton and left to rot. I woke up shivering on the cold floor, my limbs tangled in a discarded fur that lay beside me like a carcass. It looked as if I’d thrashed in my sleep—if you could call whatever I just experienced sleep.
I blinked through the haze, but my eyelids scraped over my eyes like sand across raw stone.
Pain bloomed in every muscle as I forced myself upright.
The room spun, a cruel carousel of shadows and fractured light.
I staggered forward, one hand gripping the edge of the opulent sofa, the other clutching the coffee table as I dragged myself across the threadbare carpet of the living room.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
My thoughts reeled. What the fuck was in that drink? My mouth tasted like poison and regret.
“Alina!” I called out, but it came out hoarse, barely a growl. “Alina!” I tried again, louder this time. “Where are you, bitch?”
My voice ricocheted through the house, echoing like a curse.
Fueled by fury, I stormed from room to room—through the main floor, then upstairs. No sign of her. No whisper of her scent. No trace of her warmth.
Only the silence.
Only the fucking silence.
I tore through the house like a storm unchained.
I upended furniture, ripped open drawers, tore clothing from closets, and flung it across the room.
Jewelry clattered to the floor like shards of betrayal.
I smashed trinkets, shattered glass. I didn’t care.
I wanted to break something. I wanted to see the world burn with me.
“Where are you, Alina?” I snarled, teeth bared. “What did you do?”
Each room was emptier than the last. The walls mocked me. Her absence mocked me.
I ripped open folders, scattered papers, and dug through anything that might tell me where she’d gone. But it was all for nothing. All of it—fucking nothing.
My rage simmered, boiling under my skin like acid. My heart thundered with such force it felt like it might burst. She was gone.
And for the first time in what felt like centuries, I wasn’t sure I’d get her back.
I refused to believe she’d truly left me. But a black, gnawing doubt began to claw its way into my thoughts—feral, relentless.
What if she had?
What if I’d lost her… for good?
I sank to the floor of the master bedroom. The fury drained from my limbs, replaced by a weight I couldn’t name. My fists clenched against the floorboards, the last fragments of wrath fading into numbness.
She had left me.
Not just walked away. No, she had drugged me and poisoned me. Slipped through my fingers with no trail, no scent, no goodbye.
And it obliterated me.
The floor pressed hard into my spine as I stared at the cracked ceiling. I felt every jolt of pain against my skin, but none compared to my ache. A hollow void had torn open where certainty once lived.
I had believed she worshipped me, that I was her god, her obsession, her everything.
But now?
Now I was just a man.
Alone. Betrayed.
Forgotten.
She had sounded the death knell for us, and I hadn’t even heard it ringing.
I lay there for what felt like hours. Time unraveled around me—too slow, too fast, both simultaneously. My body ached, not from wounds, but from the brutal realization that I was no longer needed.
That she had walked away and never looked back.
Eventually, I groaned and rose, every movement a reminder that the world had shifted without me. The room around me was in shambles—just like my heart.
I moved like a ghost through the house, each step heavy, dragging through the rubble of everything we once were. Down the stairs. Across the floor. Toward the place where my final shame waited.
The dungeon.
When I reached the viewing portal of Malik’s cell, I froze.
He was still alive.
Tears stained his bruised face as he held Layla’s body, stiff and pale, in his arms.
My breath hitched.
He hadn’t let her go.
Even now, after everything… he still held her.
As I stared through the glass, an unwelcome stab of compassion pierced my chest like a pitchfork. Malik looked broken—truly broken—and for a moment, I understood. I knew that pain—that hollow ache of loving someone who left you behind.
But then rage surged from the depths, rising fast and violent, drowning whatever pity I had left.
I slammed my fist against the door. “Where’s Alina? Where’s that fucking bitch?”
Malik turned his head toward me. Even that small effort looked like agony. His lips were cracked, his expression pale and gaunt, as if the air he breathed scorched his lungs.
“I imagine she left you,” he rasped. His voice sounded like autumn leaves crumbling in the wind.
My knuckles whitened as I gripped the iron bars. “Why the hell would you think that?”
“I told her to,” he croaked, eyes narrowing with a sliver of satisfaction. “I told her you were using her. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Win people over. Make them believe they matter. Then discard them like scraps the moment they stop being useful.”
The words landed like hammer blows.
I couldn’t speak. My fury rendered me mute, blinding me. I wanted to rip the door off its hinges, storm inside, and tear Malik apart limb by fucking limb. But the poison still lingered in that cell like a ghost. One breath inside, and I’d join him in death.
My hands trembled. I searched the room for something—anything—to destroy. But there was nothing—only cold, silent stone.
So, I screamed. A sound torn straight from my soul, raw and animal. It echoed down the corridor, rattling the bars, vibrating in my bones.
Then I turned away, each step up the stairs soaked in fury. I knew where she was.
Costa.
That snake. That smug little apothecary with his vials and poisons. She had gone to him. She’d fucked him, betrayed me with him, and thought I wouldn’t find out.
But I would. And when I did?
She would beg me for mercy.
She would learn what true darkness was.
Just as soon as the next full moon rose.
Until then… I’d wait. And burn.
The moment the full moon crowned the horizon, I braced myself.
Time to travel.
Adrenaline flooded my veins like liquid fire. I had no idea what I’d find at Costa’s estate in Italy—or what I’d do to him once I arrived. But I knew one thing for certain—he would bleed.
I inhaled deeply, and the pull began.
The world fractured around me, breaking into a kaleidoscope of color and sensation.
Wind tore across my skin, hot and cold all at once.
I floated weightless, suspended between time, as bolts of electricity surged through every nerve.
Memories flickered—mine, and others I didn’t recognize. Faces. Screams. Kisses. Death.
And then—
Silence.
The vortex spat me out, and I landed hard in another time.
The bloated Italian sun hung low and gold in a hazy midday sky.
Dust rose around me as I stormed across the yard, my steps fueled by vengeance.
I didn’t bother knocking—I slammed my fist into Costa’s door with a thunderous boom.
The wood groaned, splintered, and gave way as I barreled into the house like a storm unleashed.
A man’s voice shouted from the rear.
I ran toward it without hesitation.
Costa emerged from a back room, startled, his eyes wide. I crowded him instantly, blocking any escape, backing him into the threshold he’d crossed.
And that’s when I saw him.
A boy, young, maybe fourteen, cowered in the corner of the room beyond, frozen in terror. His wide eyes met mine, full of fear.
I didn’t flinch.
I smiled.
A slow, cruel thing.
My teeth bared like a predator’s.
Let the fear begin.
Costa lunged for the door, trying to slam it shut.
Bang—my palm crashed against the wood, forcing it back open with a jarring thud that echoed through the room like a gunshot. A rush of dread swept in behind me like a tide.
Costa straightened, puffing himself up, trying to intimidate me with his size and aura. His glare was sharp enough to cut steel, but I didn’t blink.
“Lord Balthazar,” he said. “So, we meet at last. If I knew you were coming, I would’ve arranged a banquet worthy of your… temperament.”
I snarled, my voice a guttural rasp. “Shut the fuck up. You Timehunters are all the same—cowards hiding behind titles and poison.”
Costa raised an eyebrow, amused. That infuriating calm—so smug, so superior.
I lunged at him, trying to force my way past into the room. But he held his ground like a fucking mountain, unmoving. A wall of flesh and arrogance.
I took a step back, fists shaking with fury. “Where the fuck is Alina?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
“Alina?” he repeated, mock confusion painting his voice. “I’m afraid I don’t—”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him aside. He crashed against the wall with a grunt as I tore into the room, boots pounding like war drums.
My gaze darted across the space, the bed, the wardrobe, and the shadows.
She had to be here.
The boy shrank into the corner, his back plastered to the wall, shaking like a leaf in a storm.
“Is she in the fucking armoire?” I snarled, ripping the doors open, the hinges groaning in protest. The house quaked beneath my fury, the floorboards creaking as if they, too, feared what was coming.
Someone was going to bleed for this.
The boy whimpered, a sound so shrill it grated. Costa surged forward, throwing himself before the kid, arms out like a shield.
“Where is she?” I roared, eyes wild. “Where the fuck is Alina?”
“I don’t have her!” Costa’s voice broke. “Why would you think she came here?”
With a snarl, I lunged and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, lifting him like he weighed nothing. His boots kicked against the floor, eyes bulging, breath strangled in his throat.
“Put me down! Alfonso, run!”
The boy scrambled away, trying to flee—but I vanished, reappearing in front of the door like a shadow made flesh. I slammed it shut with a deafening crack before he could escape.
Alfonso screamed, high and panicked.