Page 75 of Sweet Venom Of Time (Blade of Shadows #6)

Chapter Thirty-One

ELIZABETH

P erched on the edge of Amir’s bed, my hands trembled, unable to still the storm within me.

The room was quiet—too quiet—and its opulence was a stark contrast to the chaos that had become my life.

The crisp lines, the polished wood, the heavy curtains…

it all felt unreal, like a place I no longer belonged to.

Tear tracks cooled on my cheeks, but fresh ones welled up unbidden, hot against my skin.

Across the room, Amir moved with reverence, tenderly laying our sleeping baby, Roman, on a bundle of blankets nestled in the corner. The sight of him—this warrior, this ghost made flesh again—handling our son with such care and awe was enough to cleave my heart in two.

Amir straightened, the dim light from the window casting shadows across his face and illuminating the chiseled lines of his Mediterranean features. His eyes—dark, fathomless orbs—landed on Roman with quiet wonder, as though seeing him was a miracle he scarcely dared to believe in.

He stepped toward me, the rigid stoicism he once wore like armor now stripped away, leaving only the man beneath.

“Our child is so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears.

“Yes,” I managed, the word catching in my throat. “He is… a comfort. A gift.” My gaze followed his, drawn to the peaceful rise and fall of Roman’s breath. My heart swelled with love so fierce, so profound, it ached.

I reached out as if to steady myself on the world, slipping back into color and life. “Amir...” The name trembled from my lips, a prayer, a plea, a thousand questions wrapped in a single breath.

“I thought I lost you forever,” I said, the words spilling out, broken and desperate. Relief, joy, fear, yearning—I was drowning in them all. My eyes searched his face, for answers, for truth. “How are you here? I thought… I thought you were dead.”

Amir didn’t speak at first. He knelt before me, a man once forged by war, now humbled by fate. He took my trembling hands into his, grounding me.

“I never stopped watching you,” he murmured. His voice—usually clipped, commanding—was now a velvet rasp, raw and vulnerable. “Even when I couldn’t touch you. Even when it broke me.”

He lowered his head, pressing my hands to his lips as though reassuring himself in my reality. “I’ve been in the shadows. Watching. Protecting. Always.”

“All this time… you’ve been watching over me?” I breathed, the truth crashing like a tidal wave—months of longing and loneliness suddenly reframed in the staggering light of his return.

“Yes.” His gaze met mine with an intensity that stilled everything inside me. “I was forbidden to get any closer, but I vowed to keep you safe.”

I sat there, reeling, my world unraveling and stitching itself back together. The time apart, the pain, the fear—it had never been mine alone. Amir had carried it, too, in silence.

He moved beside me on the bed, a grounding force. His hands encased mine, roughened by war and time but tender as they trembled in my grasp.

“Elizabeth,” he said, his voice low, the storm still flickering behind his eyes. “There are things you must know.”

He paused, inhaling deeply, bracing himself—not for his sake, but for mine.

“After the masquerade, Lazarus saved my life.”

My breath caught, his name a blade slicing through memory. Lazarus—the enigma, the legend, the man who had stolen so much and returned Amir to me.

“I was nearly dead,” Amir continued, his voice dipping into the shadows of memory.

“For hours, many snakes injected me with their venom to counteract the poison coursing through me. I lay in the serpents’ den, not knowing if I were alive or already gone.

Their venom… scorched through my veins. They fought death for me, and I couldn’t even scream. ”

The image struck like thunder—Amir, strong and fearless, now a man torn between life and death, writhing in the cold embrace of serpents, saviors of a kind no one would ever expect.

A sob rose in my throat. “Oh, Amir… that must have been awful.” My voice trembled as the horror of his ordeal sank into my bones. I reached for his face, cupping it gently, my thumbs brushing over the strong lines etched by pain and time. “You suffered so much…”

His eyes fluttered closed as he leaned into my touch, seeking absolution, anchoring himself in the present—in me.

“Enduring that pain,” he said, locking his gaze with mine, his voice a low, raw confession, “was better than the thought of never seeing your beautiful face again.”

The intensity behind his words ignited something in my heart—a surge of love so fierce it left me breathless. Embers I feared had long since cooled roared back to life, filling the room with warmth and ache.

For a moment, we breathed—two souls reunited, fragile yet whole.

But then, his expression shifted—urgency shadowing his features. “Lazarus saved your life, too, Elizabeth.”

I frowned, confusion knotting in my chest. The fog of memory closed in, heavy and elusive. “Lazarus saved me? But I thought—Mary—she was the one who took care of me.”

Amir shook his head, tension etching deep lines into his brow.

“No—Lazarus saved you from the damage Salvatore inflicted. Mary couldn’t have healed that.

Not even with all her skill. And the poison from the masquerade, didn’t affect you because of your Timehealer bloodline. That resilience—it’s in your blood.”

His words hung in the air, peeling away the truths I’d clung to. I stared at him, stunned, my breath caught.

“After the masquerade,” Amir continued, his voice low and weighted with memory, “Lazarus took us to his underground palace in Anatolia. He healed you there.”

Anatolia.

The word echoed like a tolling bell through my mind, stirring something ancient and buried. Images flickered at the edges of my vision—stone walls, cold air, the scent of herbs. My hands trembled.

“I remember…” I whispered, the memories clawing their way to the surface. “I thought I saw an old man… I thought it was a dream.”

But it wasn’t a dream.

Images crashed over me—vivid, fragmented, real.

Lazarus hovered over me in a darkened chamber, his hands moving with a ritual. A sudden sting, the warmth of blood trickling down my skin. Ancient, red, faintly glowing symbols etched onto my flesh, then fading into nothingness, like whispers lost to the wind.

“There were symbols…” My voice broke, the memory crawling from the shadows. “He marked me—with blood. On my arms… my chest. And then it was gone.”

“Blood runes,” Amir said quietly, as if naming them carried weight. “A rare healing rite. Ancient. Forbidden. Lazarus used them to save you—at a great cost.”

I pressed a hand to my chest, fingers trembling as if I could still feel the symbols beneath my skin, branded into my soul.

“Mary said I never left home…” I whispered, my voice cracking beneath the weight of betrayal. “She swore it.”

“Magic distorts memory,” Amir murmured, his grip on my hand tightening, anchoring me in the truth I had never known I needed. “He altered what you saw. How he put you back… made you believe you were there the entire time.”

The pieces of my past shifted like sand, slipping through the fingers of a woman who didn’t recognize the life she’d lived. Each memory fractured, realigned, leaving a tapestry I couldn’t decipher.

The revelation hung heavy in the room, a storm pressing against the walls, each word a leaden weight that tethered me to a reality I scarcely understood.

Amir’s eyes locked with mine, obsidian reflecting a sorrow older than time. “It was all Lazarus’ doing. He made you forget to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” The question slipped from my lips, born of fear and the ache of confusion.

Amir’s gaze darkened. “From Salvatore.”

The name fell like a stone, echoing in the silence.

A shroud of dread wrapped around me, and I shivered, a cold finger tracing the length of my spine.

A memory flashed—Salvatore in my father’s study, his malevolent gaze locked with Father’s, both men ensnared in a dance of power and deceit.

The room. The tension. The promise of danger.

My hand flew to my mouth, stifling the gasp that clawed its way up. “Oh gods.”

Amir’s expression hardened, the protector awakening in him like fire stoked from embers. The lines of his face, carved by war and loss, now bore the fury of love’s vow.

“You’re safe, my love,” he said, his voice firm, a fortress built in sound. “Salvatore is hunting the person who crafted the Noctyss poison.”

He paused long enough for the truth to settle like ice in my veins.

“But he doesn’t know it’s you.”

His declaration sliced through the silence, ferocity forged into every syllable. It wasn’t just a truth—a shield, a ward against the darkness that still hunted us. It was as if by naming it aloud, Amir could make it permanent, forever locking the threat away.

“Lazarus cloaked your blood,” he continued, his voice low and unwavering. “To Salvatore, you are dead. It’s like you don’t exist.”

His words painted a stark image—me, a ghost in the eyes of a predator. Unseen. Untouched. Unreachable.

“You wouldn’t be seen as that person—the one who crafted the poison.

” He searched my eyes, his dark gaze filled with something I couldn’t name—hope, fear, perhaps guilt.

Maybe he was asking forgiveness for the life he was begging me to live—a life in hiding, wrapped in shadows, stripped of everything I had once been.

“But still… you must be careful.” His voice was a bell tolling in the night, its warning clear. “Danger is never far, Elizabeth. It prowls at the edges, watching. Waiting.”

I nodded, the truth of his words sinking deep into the marrow of my bones. Safety was a fragile illusion, a breath held in trembling silence. And I was the fulcrum, balanced precariously between peace and peril.

A shiver coursed through me, Amir’s revelations a heavy cloak draped over my shoulders.