17. Sanctuary #2
Wonderful. He had a team. Miles, a hedge witch radiating homicidally protective energy, and a sapient mansion currently vibrating with possessive glee. A regular garden party.
But Miles’s smile was too fixed, his posture so brittle Gabriel feared he might shatter.
He was bleeding out behind that mask of determined competence.
Their future had just been fed to a wyrm.
Gabriel couldn’t let him dissolve into logistics just yet.
He reached out, catching Miles’s elbow before he could pull a clipboard from somewhere in that horrid coat.
“Ladies, if you’ll excuse us? I need a moment to explain to this man exactly how much of his life plans I’ve just set on fire and beg for forgiveness. ”
He pulled Miles out of the attic and onto the narrow landing of the spiral stairs. Gabriel leaned back against the plaster, thrusting his hands into his pockets so Miles wouldn’t see the tremor. “We aren’t going back to Briarleigh.”
Miles didn’t look surprised. Just resigned. “I know.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gabriel whispered. “I want to just walk away. Miles, I want to hand the keys to the first stranger with a coin purse and run until I can’t smell this city anymore. But if I do that... if I leave it to be ruled by fear again...”
“Then you’d be just another master,” Miles finished.
The words hooked into Gabriel’s chest and ripped. “I can’t be him.”
Another master. Another Madaze, using a thing until it broke and then leaving it to rot in the dark. If Gabriel walked away now, he wasn’t escaping his abuser’s shadow. He was stepping right into the man’s footprints.
Abandoning a victim to save his own skin? That was a Madaze move.
No.
The quiet cottage was a dream, but this? This was a fight. And Gabriel Fairfield didn’t lose fights to dead men.
Gabriel met Miles’s eyes. “I won’t be him.”
Miles stepped into his space, crowding out the chill of the house. His hands came up to frame Gabriel’s face, thumbs brushing over the tension in his jaw. There was no anger in his touch, only a profound, heartbreaking understanding.
“I have a ring,” Miles said, his voice thick. “I was going to ask you properly, once we were settled.”
“Miles—”
“I can’t marry Lord Fairfield,” Miles continued, cutting off the apology. “The law is clear. If you keep this title to save the manor, you give up the right to marry me legally.”
“I’ll renounce it. I’ll find a way—”
“You will. We will. But not today.” Miles rested his forehead against Gabriel’s. “You’re choosing the hard thing because it’s the right thing. And that is why I love you. Even if you are stealing my lines again, Gabby. Whatever will I do with you?”
Gabriel closed his eyes, leaning into the warmth. They had lost the cottage. They had lost their wedding. They were stuck in a city that wanted them dead, living in a house that wanted to be parented, hunting a conspiracy that dealt in secret magic .
It was a disaster. It was a prison.
But Miles wasn’t leaving.
He should. None of this was his problem.
Gabriel forced himself to breathe past the tightness in his throat.
“You could still go back. To Briarleigh. Or to your mother in Everhaven. Somewhere safe.” The words scraped out even as his soul begged him to stop speaking.
“I brought you nothing but trouble from the day we met. This isn’t your mess—”
“Stop.” Miles’s grip tightened on his face, forcing Gabriel to meet his eyes. “You didn’t bring me trouble. You brought me you . And yes, sometimes that means assassins and haunted houses and impossible legal tangles, but—” His voice cracked. “Gabriel, I chose this. I chose you . Every single day.”
“Even when it costs you everything?” Gabriel tried to blink back his tears but knew he was on the verge of losing the battle.
“Especially then.” Miles’s composure finally fractured, tears spilling down his cheeks.
“That’s what it would be if we married, wouldn’t it?
Marriage is solving each other’s impossible problems until we drop dead.
That’s the promise. This is just... practice.
That’s all it is. When it’s our time, we’ll be ready. ”
The absurdity of it—the sheer, stubborn devotion—broke something loose in Gabriel’s chest. He pulled Miles close, burying his face against his partner’s shoulder. They stood on the landing, clinging to each other while the house hummed softly around them and tears slid down their faces.
“We’ll find a way,” Miles whispered. “Together. I swear it.”
Gabriel nodded against his throat, letting himself believe it.
Gabriel opened his eyes and pulled back to meet Miles’s gaze. This whole time, he’d been trying to escape being trapped in a monster’s lair, but he’d been wrong. The lair wasn’t a monster, and they weren’t trapped. Trapped happened to victims. Trapped happened to slaves.
Gabriel wasn’t a slave anymore. He was the Lord of the manor, and he’d made that manor an ally who was also a weapon. A massive, stone, people-eating weapon that hated the nobility as much as he did.
“Alright,” Gabriel said, wiping the tears off Miles’s face and then his own. He took several breaths to master himself before speaking. “Well. Then I suppose we deploy the most efficient plan you can muster. Where do we start?”
Miles pulled back and put on his thinking face.
“Right. Plans. What about this ‘new purpose’ then? For Rookgate. Beyond this whole ally in the fight thing? Let’s settle that before we invade the Veil Isles or whatever other nonsense will likely be required.
What do we do with a huge, needy, traumatized house you can’t live in? ”
Trauma.
Gabriel’s thoughts flickered back to the chaotic scene at Gardmore’s, back to Vellast’s victims, terrified and displaced.
“Viz is drowning in refugees,” Gabriel said. “He hasn’t the space, Averdon doesn’t give a fuck, and the Order hasn’t the funds to house them safely.”
Miles’s eyes widened, tracking the thought. “And the manor is enormous. Empty. Desperate to be useful.”
“It’s poetic justice.” The idea took shape like a blade on a whetstone.
A nasty, beautiful shape. “Turning Madaze’s monument of cruelty into a sanctuary for the very people he and Vellast tried to break.
We turn this place into a rehabilitation center.
Can you imagine? Madaze spent decades keeping the ‘riffraff’ out.
He obsessed over the grandeur of this blood-soaked pile of stones.
So, we rip out the ballroom and replace it with bedrooms. We let the street rats sleep in his silk sheets.
We take his precious, exclusive hell and we give it to everyone he thought was garbage. ”
“I like it,” Miles agreed, his voice regaining some of its usual optimistic cadence. “The house won’t be lonely. It will have dozens of people to protect. People who understand what it means to be hurt. And it will have purpose in defending them in turn.”
“Let’s discuss the idea with the ladies and Rookgate and see what they think of it.”
Miles straightened his coat and tipped his chin up. They were standing on the precipice of a ruinous future, armed only with a title Gabriel was ill-equipped to wield and a sapient building, yet looking at Miles, Gabriel felt an absurd sense of invincibility.
“Ready?” Gabriel asked, offering his arm like they were entering a ballroom rather than a conspiracy.
Miles took his elbow and squeezed. “Ready.”
They returned to the attic. At the table, Velma was talking quietly with Genna. Gabriel wondered if they had overheard their weepy conversation, but the women just looked curious as they approached .
Gabriel laid out the plan. “Viz is overrun with the victims of Vellast’s operation,” he concluded. “They need beds, food, and safety. Rookgate needs… something to fuss over.”
The attic walls hummed, a low, resonant vibration that traveled up through the soles of Gabriel’s boots.
The gaslights adjusted from their frantic brightness to a warm, steady glow.
The manor liked the idea of being a shelter.
It liked the idea of people who were broken in the same places it was.
Gabriel could feel it and was glad of its agreement, even if this growing sense of subtle communication with the house still rubbed him the wrong way.
“It solves the immediate logistical nightmare.” Genna leaned back in her chair. “Viz was ready to start stacking refugees in the cold storage room. This is better.”
“It is efficient,” Velma conceded. “However—”
A wooden scrape cut her off. The plain box holding Velma’s card deck skidded three inches across the table, propelled by nothing visible. Velma stared at it. The box skidded again, bumping persistently against her hand like a cat demanding treats.
“It seems,” Velma said, her voice dry as dust, “Rookgate wishes to comment.”
The deck box bumped again. She hesitated, then sighed. “Very well. This is most irregular. But you may touch them.” She opened the lid.
Before she could draw, cards erupted from the box.
They didn’t fly in a chaotic swirl; they snapped together, stacking themselves into a neat pile right in front of Velma who studied them closely as they stacked.
Snap. Snap. Snap. A card from the bottom of the deck yanked itself free and slapped onto the top.
Then another. The motion was too fast for Gabriel to track the imagery, but the urgency was undeniable.
The stack stopped growing. The deck nudged Velma’s finger. Read it.
Velma frowned, her gray eyes scanning the pile.
She sighed again. “Lord Fairfield’s proposal is accepted, with a stipulation regarding personnel.
” She looked up, directing her gaze at Gabriel, then Miles, before settling back on the cards.
“The manor requires a specific steward. A liaison to manage the residents and communicate for it.”
“We can find someone,” Miles said. “The Order has contacts—”
“That won’t do,” Velma interrupted. She pointed a long finger at her own chest. “It wants me.”