Page 33 of Sweet Venom Of Time (Blade of Shadows #6)

My voice cut through the silence, edged with accusation, echoing off the cold stone walls of his study. “Stop lying to me, Amir. I know you are the masked man.”

His eyes darkened, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

“My father never told you about my cottage… because you already knew. You were the one who captured me there. You and your men.”

The air grew thick, pressing against me like an invisible force. My hands trembled, but I held my ground, bracing for the truth that could shatter everything I thought I knew about him.

I sucked in a sharp breath, forcing the words past the knot in my throat.

“I was in your dungeon, Amir. It’s the exact same place you took me.”

His expression remained unreadable, but something flickered behind his eyes—a storm.

I pressed forward. “And the mask I found in your dungeon… it’s yours, not the mask maker’s. Stop hiding. Tell me the truth.”

I took another step toward him, my heartbeat thundering against my ribs. His eyes blazed, dark irises smoldering like embers fanned by an obstinate wind.

Then—

“The truth?”

His voice was low and dangerous, resonating with a slow-burning intensity that sent a chill down my spine.

“You want the truth?”

A step closer.

“The truth is dangerous.”

The air between us crackled, heavy with unspoken things.

“Tell me,” my voice was a plea wrapped in steel. “Tell me who you really are.”

I stood before him, my emotions a volatile storm, simmering beneath the surface, threatening to spill over. Confusion. Frustration. A tangled mess of feelings I could no longer ignore.

“Why do I feel this way when I’m around you?” The words tumbled out before I could stop them, desperate. “Despite your rejection and distance, I cannot stay away from you. This pull between us, dragging me toward you even as you push me away.”

My breath hitched, my chest tightening. Tears threatened, but I refused to let them fall.

I just needed him to say something.

Amir’s shoulders tensed, his entire body rigid, as if bracing for impact.

“You won’t understand what I am.” His voice was steel wrapped in gravel, rough, restrained.

“Make me understand,” I pushed, my voice softer now but no less determined. “I care for you, Amir.”

Something in him snapped.

A growl rumbled deep within his chest—low, visceral, tormented.

“You don’t know what I am.” His voice was harsh, breaking at the edges. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, Elizabeth. I am no hero. I am a monster.”

“No.” My voice didn’t waver. “You are not the monster. The real monsters are Lord Winston and my father.”

His jaw tightened, his fists clenched at his sides.

“I am darkness, Elizabeth,” Amir said, his voice thick with barely restrained emotion. “Stay away, or it will consume you too. I kill to survive. I destroy everything I touch. You… you’re light. And you don’t belong in my world.”

He meant to scare me. To drive me away.

But instead of fear—fire ignited within me.

I stepped closer, bridging the space between us until only inches remained. My heart pounded against my ribs, but I didn’t retreat.

“You’re wrong,” I whispered, my breath mingling with his.

His gaze burned into me, filled with something I couldn’t yet name.

“You’re not a monster,” I declared, my determination hardening like forged steel.

His throat bobbed, his breath shallow.

“You have no idea what I’ve done,” he murmured, voice stripped bare, the weight of untold sins pressing down on his broad shoulders.

His next words were quieter, almost as if he feared saying them aloud.

“Or who I am.”

I didn’t move, didn’t flinch. My pulse roared in my ears. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving until I know the truth.”

The words spilled from me recklessly, binding me to him in ways I couldn’t yet comprehend. “I understand enough. You push me away because you think you’re protecting me. But you’re not. I’m already in this, Amir. We both are.”

His gaze locked onto mine, unwavering, endless.

“You want to see who I really am, Elizabeth?” he murmured, his voice laced with a terrible promise—as he stepped back, once again creating distance between us.

Then, before my eyes, he changed.

The air thickened, dark wisps curling around him, shadows swallowing the room’s warmth. The edges of his form blurred and twisted, warping the space around him.

And then?—

His flesh began to crack.

Thin fractures spiderwebbed across his face, splitting open like dry, decaying wood. Chunks of skin sloughed off, curling at the edges as they peeled away, revealing raw muscle beneath—wet, glistening, rotting.

I froze, horror rooting me in place.

Gods, his eyes sank into hollow sockets, leaving behind swirling pools of sickly green light, a ghostly, unearthly glow where life should have been.

I wanted to scream, but the sound caught in my throat as his lips peeled back—blackening, rotting—before his teeth crumbled away in jagged, decayed shards.

His body convulsed as if something was draining the life from him in real-time. His frame collapsed inward, his shoulders caving, his form shrinking, shriveling, until he was barely more than a wraith of himself.

His hands?—

No longer human.

Elongated. Skeletal. Twisted. The flesh clung tightly over bone, splitting at the knuckles, leaking foul, black ooze that splattered onto the floor in thick, nauseating drops.

Then the stench hit me.

Rot. Mold. Decay.

A putrid wave so strong I gagged, my hand flying to my mouth, my stomach lurching violently.

His hair thinned in patches, falling away in brittle clumps, revealing a blistered, oozing scalp.

He stood before me, no longer a man but something caught between life and death, a walking corpse suspended in an eternal state of rot.

I had never seen anything so horrifying.

Yet—I couldn’t move.

I was trapped in that moment, watching as the last shreds of humanity peeled away from him, layer by layer, until only the nightmare remained.

My hands flew to my mouth, stifling the gasp that threatened to escape. But not out of fear.

No—fear had no place here.

Not when my father was the real monster. Not when Lord Winston embodied cruelty in its purest form.

Amir, this man before me… he was not a monster.

His dark form loomed, a specter of every nightmare, yet all I saw was the pain carved into the lines of his being—a soul suffering beneath the weight of his darkness, mistaken for the thing it feared becoming.

His shadowed figure trembled, the air thick with the suffocating manifestation of the curse that clung to him.

“Look at me!” His command shattered the silence, raw and jagged, his voice laced with bitter self-loathing. “This is what I am.”

His voice was a rasp, a confession, an executioner’s final verdict.

“I destroy everything I touch. I am no better than the monsters you despise.”

My heart twisted at the torment in his voice. This was not the voice of a monster—this was the voice of a man drowning in suffering.

Slowly, I stepped forward. Closing the distance between us.

Between light and dark.

“No.” My voice was soft but resolute. “You’re wrong.”

His eyes simmered like dying embers. “You should hate me.” His tone hardened, daring me—begging me—to turn away.

And yet—I didn’t.

Leeches clung to his decaying skin, feasting on the rot. Carrion beetles skittered along his exposed bones, antennae twitching as they burrowed deeper, seeking nourishment from the remains of a man who breathed.

I should have been repulsed. Horrified. Sick with fear.

But revulsion was the furthest thing from what I felt.

“I don’t,” I whispered.

Slowly, intently, I reached out, my fingertips grazing the contours of his face—the hollow ridges where the flesh had withered, the cool, spectral skin beneath.

“I love you, Amir Hassan.”

His breath hitched.

“You are my beautiful monster.”

He flinched at my touch as if my acceptance wounded more than rejection ever could.

“You can’t mean that, Elizabeth,” he grated. “You barely know me.”

I stepped closer, our bodies separated only by the veil of shadows clinging to him.

“I know enough to trust my own heart.”

Our breaths mingled—my warmth seeking his chill, refusing to be repelled.

“We are the same, you and I,” I whispered against the hollow of his cheek.

Then, as if sealing a vow I could not take back, I kissed the darkened flesh there.

His silence was a plea, an unspoken cry for something he did not dare name.

So I kissed him.

What was left of his mouth?

A seal over the bond that had formed between us despite—or because of—the shadows.

I pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, dark whirlpools of agony and disbelief.

“I understand why you hide your true identity,” I said, lifting a hand to cup his cheek and turning his face back toward mine. “But I also know that you’re not a monster, Amir. You have a good heart.”

His gaze searched mine, desperate, uncertain—scouring me for the smallest sign of deception, of disgust.

But he found none.

He shuddered, a breath escaping him like a man who had spent a lifetime drowning and had finally broken the surface.

Then, slowly, he leaned forward.

His forehead pressed against mine—moist with exposed muscle and blood, raw and real.

“Even in this nightmare form… Do you still love me? You still desire me?” His voice trembled like the edge of a blade, poised between longing and disbelief.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

His body trembled, and then—it changed.

Bones knit together, muscles and sinew stretching, reforming.

A layer of smooth, unbroken skin replaced the tattered remains.

His teeth reformed—perfect, whole, gleaming white.

His thinning hair darkened and thickened, cascading to his shoulders in rich, silken waves.

And in the flickering lamplight, he stood before me whole.

Still him.

Still mine.

“I love you, Amir,” I whispered, my lips grazing his, teasing, taunting. “I desire you. Every part of you.”

His breath hitched, his body tensing as though my words had shattered something inside him.