Chapter 21 #3
Desperately, I longed to feel joy again—to be wrapped in the warmth I once knew with Zara and our daughters.
I had dared to believe that Alina might return that bliss to me, that perhaps she could resurrect the light I’d buried with the dead.
But instead, she’d torn my heart to ribbons.
She’d fed me poison cloaked as love and left me bleeding in a sea of sorrow without end.
The air inside the house was thick, musty with disuse and rot.
I dragged my feet through the drawing room, past the once-proud mahogany panels and tall velvet drapes, across thick carpets dulled by time.
I collapsed onto the dust-covered sofa, releasing a cloud of grime that made me cough.
I threw an arm over my eyes, as if blocking out the world could erase the torment inside me.
Then, a touch—soft and familiar startled me.
My arm dropped. My eyes snapped open.
Zara stood over me.
Her ghostly form shimmered like smoke in the dim light. My breath caught in my throat.
“No…” I rasped, my voice raw with disbelief. “No more. Leave me, spirit. Stop these hauntings. Stop tormenting me.”
But she didn’t move. She remained—elegant, haunting, heartbreakingly unchanged.
“Balthazar, my love,” she said, her voice like a breeze through brittle leaves. “Stop this madness. Your suffering tears through me.”
She reached for me, fingers like cold silk trailing along my jaw.
I screamed. A guttural cry torn from the depths of my soul.
“Stop this!” I shouted. “You don’t exist! You died! I saw you slain before my very eyes!”
My body trembled. A tortured sob ripped free. “Why won’t you let me go? Why must you keep returning to shred what’s left of me?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, scorching hot against my chilled skin.
“My love for you was eternal,” I whispered, barely audible. “And still you left me—for him. You abandoned our daughters. They died screaming, Zara. Five innocent souls… slaughtered while you were gone.”
My voice faltered, raw and broken.
“Now everything is gone. First, the girls. Then my heart, when you betrayed me for Mathias. And now Alina… she’s abandoned me too. Is there no end to my misery?”
Hot tears streamed down my cheeks as the ghost before me shattered into a thousand shards of light and vanished. My heart pounded savagely, my body trembling with an unbearable revelation.
“This… this is what happens when I take too much life,” I whispered, voice ragged. My vision blurred, blood roaring in my ears until I saw a crimson haze.
A scream tore from my throat—an unholy mix of agony and loathing. I was the one who fucked it all up. I had laid down with Alina like a goddamn fool, thinking I could find love again. Thinking this time would be different.
Instead, I lost everything.
I stumbled to my feet, staggering across the cold, tiled floor. I howled, my voice echoing off the stone walls of my once-proud estate.
“No one is loyal to me!” I roared, spit flying from my lips. “Zara betrayed me! Mathias and Amir stabbed me in the fucking back! Malik turned on me like the weak bastard he is! And the Timehunters—those fucking parasites—slaughtered my family without a second thought!”
My throat burned. My fists ached from clenching too hard. “And Alina… I let her in. I let her in. And she twisted her lies so tight around my neck I didn’t even realize I was choking until it was too late.”
Rage boiled inside me. I’d been blind—blinded by lust, by the fantasy of redemption, of starting over. How pathetic.
Then, without warning, Zara reappeared—her ghostly form more radiant, more devastatingly beautiful than ever.
Knives of grief twisted in my chest.
“No!” I cried, stumbling backward, crashing to the floor in a heap of fury and brokenness.
“Stop haunting me!” I clawed at my scalp, tearing at my hair like I could rip the madness from my skull. “Just fucking stop!”
“Balthazar!” her voice rang out—Zara, or what remained of her in my mind. “What has happened to you? You were never like this before. Century by century, you’ve grown angrier… twisted. You carry so much pain. But to what end?”
“Shut up!” I slapped my palms against my ears, desperate to block out her voice. “You’re not real! You’re a lie—nothing but the last remnants of my decaying sanity!”
But Zara—this phantom I couldn’t exorcise—knelt beside me. Her touch felt real. Too real. Her fingers peeled mine away from my ears, gentle but firm, like she still loved me. Like she still believed I was worth saving. She wrapped her arms around me and leaned in to kiss me.
I shoved her back with a snarl. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare pretend you’re still mine.”
“Balthazar, look at me,” she said softly. “Please. My love…”
“No!” I screamed again, pressing my eyelids shut so tightly I saw stars. “You’re not real. You’re a fucking ghost in my head, stitched from memories and guilt and things I can never have back!”
And then her voice dropped to a whisper. “I heard you murdered Raul’s son.”
My eyes flew open, my entire body going still. My stare sliced through the room like a predator spotting prey in the dark. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“How could you know about that?” My voice dropped into a rasp. “Of course you know. You know everything, don’t you? You’re in my fucking head—you see all my sins.”
A manic, unhinged laugh escaped me. It didn’t even sound human. Not anymore.
“Why did you kill him?” Zara asked.
“Why?” I repeated, pacing in erratic circles, my hands twitching like birds trapped in a storm. “Why? Because his kind—his people—slaughtered my daughters. My children. Because you—” I jabbed a finger at her. “You left me. You chose Mathias over me. You betrayed me.”
Rage and heartbreak collided in my throat, raw and thunderous. “I’ve been abandoned over and over again. I loved you. I loved Alina. I trusted you both. And what did I get?”
I turned toward her, wild-eyed, breathless. “A curse. That’s what I got. And now you haunt me like a penance I’ll never finish paying.”
Zara’s ghost didn’t retreat. She leaned in, her breath warm against my face. Real. Too real.
“Your anger so consumed you,” she whispered, “that you forgot I was grieving, too. I lost them, too. I reached for you repeatedly, and all I got was your blame.”
With fury and heartbreak, she spoke, “Your words were knives, Balthazar. Every time I came to you, you turned away. You became a monster, not just to the world… but to me. And when one man offered me a shred of kindness, you destroyed him.”
I let out a guttural, feral scream that shook the walls. “Enough! Shut up! Cease your lies and leave me be! He led them, Zara! He led those fucking Timehunters to slaughter our girls!”
Then—laughter.
Soft. Innocent.
Terrifying.
It bounced off the walls—bright little giggles echoing like bells through a crypt. My heart seized. I turned in a frenzy, eyes scanning, desperate.
“Freya? Astrid?”
Their voices—so pure, so sweet—wrapped around me like smoke.
“Tove? Revna? Meya?” I choked out their names like prayer and poison all at once.
I reached, heart thundering in my chest… but nothing. Just air. Just grief.
“Freya,” I whispered, voice breaking into a sing-song melody. “Revna, where are my precious girls?”
I tiptoed toward the portraits on the wall, eyes wide with a manic gleam. “Astrid. Meya. Are you playing hide and seek with Daddy?”
Then—laughter, louder now—from behind the understairs closet.
I pressed a finger to my lips. “Shh…” I whispered, like a game. “I found you…”
I flung the door open.
Cobwebs. Dust. Empty.
A scream of heartbreak tore from my throat. I clawed at my scalp, shrieking as if the pain in my head could drown the pain in my heart. My daughters were gone. All of them. Their laughter now a cruel mockery looping inside my skull, getting louder, darker, until it was a twisted symphony of agony.
“You’re gone!” I howled, collapsing to my knees. “All of you! Gone!”
I slammed my fists into the cold stone floor, again and again, until the skin split and blood smeared across the tiles. I just wanted to feel something. Anything.
Before I became… this.
Just a man with nothing left but ghosts.
“Stop making me relive it!” I screamed at the air, at the spirits, at myself. “I don’t want to feel this again! I don’t want to remember!”
Dragging my broken body across the room, I made my way to the liquor cabinet. I grabbed the nearest dusty bottle with shaking hands, ripped out the cork, and drank deep. The burn of the whiskey down my throat was a welcomed punishment—blazing, brutal, numbing.
Better.
I staggered upright and turned—only to find myself face to face with him.
Mathias Alastair.
I let out a bark of laughter, wild and bitter. “Look at you, old man. Look at what you are! Pathetic!” I stabbed the air in front of him with my finger. “You’re not real. A shade. A figment. Just like all the others.”
I stepped forward, slurring with fury. “But that doesn’t matter. You’ll always be the one who betrayed me. I know it was you who sent those fucking Timehunters. You murdered my daughters. You butchered my family. And you—you—will pay.”
My voice dropped. “I will finish what I started. I will erase your bloodline from existence. Alina, your precious daughter, will beg for mercy before I gut her. Every child she bears—gone. I will find the Sun and Moon Daggers. I will rip this world apart, and when it burns, I will sit on an ash throne.”
I rubbed my hands together, grinning with unhinged delight. “This land will tremble beneath me. My victory will be absolute.”
Mathias’ expression darkened. He didn’t cower. He didn’t vanish. He only stared, hollow-eyed and wounded.
“Oh, Balthazar,” he said quietly. “You still think I am the root of all this? After everything I taught you. After everything I gave? You blind yourself with rage and call it justice.”
His voice thundered through the room, echoing like a final curse as his body dissolved into vapor, sorrow and fury spiraling into a whirlwind of memory and loss, until all that remained was the stench of regret.
I let out a roar and collapsed against the cabinet. Bottles shattered, glass rained down like crystal hail. I pressed my palms to my face, blood and whiskey mingling at my chin. My mind burned with revenge. Alina. The daggers. The power.
I would have it all.
She would kneel before me, powerless. Broken. Begging.
And I would rise again.
The Sun and Moon Daggers would be mine.