Wendy
The room is cold. That’s the first thing I feel—the absence of the heat he radiates like a dying star.
I reach out, my fingers trembling as they brush the silk sheets where he should be. The bed is vast, a desert of white linen and the lingering, suffocating scent of him. I’m alone. The silence of the room is heavy, pressing down on my chest until every breath feels like I’m inhaling glass.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. My body is a map of yesterday’s sins. I feel the ache in my thighs, the sharp sting of the bite mark on my shoulder, and the heavy, bruised sensation between my legs. I should feel disgusted. I should feel like a victim.
I look at the door. It’s slightly ajar.
The lock isn’t engaged. I could walk out. I could find a window, a servant’s entrance, a way through the shadows and out past the gates.
Rule number one: You do not leave this estate.
His voice is a loop in my skull, echoing with that terrifying, melodic certainty.
I stand up, my knees buckling for a second before I catch myself on the mahogany bedpost. I hate that I’m listening.
I hate that my body instinctively tenses, waiting for his hand to catch my throat, for his teeth to claim my skin.
But the worst part—the part that makes me want to rip my own heart out—is the hollow, aching vacuum in the centre of my chest because he’s gone.
“I hate you,” I whisper to the empty air.
A sob breaks out of me, jagged and ugly.
I sink to the floor, my forehead resting against the cold wood.
Why am I looking for him? Why did my heart skip a beat when I thought I heard his boots in the hallway?
He’s a monster. He’s a butcher who hangs skin like laundry and calls it decor.
He’s a man who broke me until I begged for the ruin.
“I want to kill you,” I gasp, the tears hot and blurring my vision. “I want to watch the light go out of your eyes. I want to carve the loneliness out of you until there’s nothing left.”
I’m crying so hard I’m shaking, my breath coming in short, panicked gulps.
I’m battling a war inside myself where every side is losing.
One half of me is screaming for escape, for the girl who lived a normal life, while the other half—the fractured, dark half he created—is starving for the way he looks at me.
Like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. Like I’m his only anchor in the dark.
I remember what I said to him before I slept. I remember the look on his face—that split-second where the mask cracked and I saw the rotting, hollow core of the man.
“You’re pathetic,” I sob into my hands. “And I’m worse. I’m fucking worse for wanting to stay.”
I want to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until he stops smiling. And in the very same breath, I want him to walk through that door, throw me back onto this bed, and remind me why I don’t have a name anymore.
The door creaks open further.
I freeze, my breath hitching in my throat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I don’t look up. I just stay there on the floor, a broken, sticky mess of honey and lace and salt, waiting to see if the monster has come home, or if the world is finally coming to take me back.
And God help me, I’m praying it’s him.
The door pushes open with a soft, melodic chime of brass against wood. I scramble backward on the floor, my robe catching on the splinters of the mahogany bedpost, my eyes wide and stinging with salt.
It isn’t him.
A woman glides into the room, carrying a heavy silver tray that smells of toasted sourdough and fresh rosemary.
Her name is Sloane. I remember Peter mentioning her once—the only person in the house, he’d joked, who wasn’t afraid of his temper.
She’s stunning, a contrast to the jagged violence of this room.
Her skin is the deep, rich colour of mahogany, and her hair is cropped into a sharp, confident fade that frames a face of terrifying symmetry.
She doesn’t look at the floor where I’m cowering. She doesn’t look at the bite marks on my neck. She moves with a calm, sweet grace, setting the tray down on the vanity with a quiet clink.
“Good morning, Miss Wendy,” she says, her voice a warm, honeyed contralto. She turns to me, her dark eyes reflecting a kindness that feels like a slap. “I’ve brought you some tea. Bergamot and orange. It’s good for the nerves.”
She walks over and offers me a hand. Her grip is firm, steady—the hand of someone who isn’t a prisoner. She helps me up, her touch light as she brushes the dust from my silk robe.
“You should eat,” she murmurs, leading me toward the chair. “The house is quiet today. A rare thing.”
I sit, my legs feeling like they belong to a stranger. I stare at the steam rising from the tea, my hands knotted in my lap. I want to ask her how to get out. I want to ask her for a weapon. I want to tell her to run.
But the words that itch at the back of my throat are a betrayal. My tongue feels heavy with the shame of them. I try to swallow them down, but they’re like glass, cutting me from the inside out.
“Where…” I start, my voice cracking. I clear my throat, looking at the floor. “Where is he?”
The question hangs in the air, pathetic and needy. I hate myself. I want to reach into my chest and squeeze my heart until it stops thumping for a man who stripped a human being in front of me.
Sloane pauses, her hand lingering on the silk napkin she’s unfolding. She doesn’t pity me—not like Elena did. She looks at me with a knowing, weary sort of recognition.
“He is at the North Gate,” she says softly, her eyes moving to the window. “There was… a disturbance last night. He’s seeing to the cleanup.”
“Is he…” I bite my lip, the words slipping out before I can choke them back. “Is he hurt?”
I want the answer to be yes. I want to hear that he’s bleeding out in the dirt. But my pulse is racing with a frantic, sickening worry that makes my stomach flip.
Sloane gives me a small, sad smile—the kind you give a child who’s fallen in love with fire.
“Mr. Hale is many things, Miss Wendy,” she says, her voice as smooth as the marble around us. “But he is rarely the one who ends up bleeding. He’ll be back shortly. He told Vane that he had… unfinished business in this room.”
She leans down, tucking a loose, damp curl behind my ear, her eyes searching mine. “Eat your breakfast. You’ll need your strength. The master doesn’t like it when his things aren’t… resilient.”
She picks up the empty carafe from the nightstand—the one that held the honey—and walks toward the door with that same confident, swaying stride.
“Wait,” I whisper.
She stops, looking back over her shoulder.
“Does he… does he ever talk about her?” I ask, my voice barely audible. “The woman before me?”
Sloane’s expression shifts, a shadow of something dark and ancient crossing her beautiful face. “There was no one before you, Miss Wendy. Not like this. Many women have walked through these halls, but you’re the first one who made him leave the lights on.”
She slips out of the room, the door clicking shut behind her.
I’m alone again. I pick up a piece of the toast, but it tastes like ash. I look at the door, then at the bed, then at the bite mark on my shoulder.
“Come back,” I whisper, the tears starting to fall again, hot and furious. “Come back so I can kill you.”
The toast remains untouched, a dry, crumbling square of wheat that looks like a tombstone on the silver tray. I stare at the closed door, Sloane’s words echoing in the vaulted silence of the room.
No one before you. Not like this.
“Liar,” I hiss, the word wet with the salt of my own tears.
My mind is a jagged mess of broken glass, each shard reflecting a different lie. Not like this. What does that even mean? Does it mean he hasn’t flayed anyone else’s sanity? Does it mean he hasn’t painted anyone else’s skin with honey and salt before?
He’s a collector. That’s what he said. And collectors always find a newer, brighter toy.
“He’s playing with me,” I whisper, my voice cracking as I pull my knees to my chest on the velvet chair. “He’s just waiting. He’s waiting for the moment the fire in my eyes goes out, and then he’ll get bored. He’ll get bored and he’ll reach for that silver scalpel.”
I can see it so clearly. My skin draped over the gold rod in the dining room, next to Mikhail’s. A matching set. The “Hale Collection.” He’d probably laugh while he did it, making some witty, comment about how the black lace of my dress looks better without the girl inside it.
I sob, a violent, racking tremor that makes my ribs ache.
But it’s not just the fear. It’s the rage—the blistering, white-hot fury directed at my own treacherous heart. Why do I care that he’s at the gate? Why did I feel that sickening, oily slide of relief when Sloane said he wasn’t hurt?
“You’re pathetic, Wendy,” I snarl, my fingernails digging into my own palms until I draw blood. “He’s a murderer. He’s a monster who choked the air out of you an hour ago, and you’re sitting here like a fucking widow waiting for him to come home from the wars.”
I hate that I miss the weight of him. I hate that the room feels too large and too cold without his terrifying, suffocating presence. I should be looking for a way out. I should be tying bedsheets together or looking for a heavy lamp to bash his skull in when he walks through that door.
Instead, I’m listening for the sound of his boots.
“Stop it. Fucking stop it!”
I grab the teacup and hurl it at the fireplace. It shatters, the orange-scented liquid spraying across the marble like a weak, pathetic imitation of the blood he spilled.
I want to kill him. I want to be the one to end the Hale line. I want to see him realise, in his final moments, that he couldn’t break me. But as I stand there, chest heaving, staring at the broken porcelain, I know the truth.
I’m already broken.
The pieces are all there, but they’ve been glued back together in his image. I’m a creature of his making now, a girl who finds safety in the arms of a butcher.
I sink back onto the floor, my face buried in my hands, sobbing for the woman I used to be and the monster I’ve become. I’m waiting for him. I’m waiting for the man who destroyed me to come back and tell me that I’m the only thing that matters.
And I hate him for it. But I hate myself more.
I stand up, my movements jerky and fuelled by a frantic, self-loathing energy. If I stay in this room, the walls will swallow me whole.
I push past the heavy double doors, my bare feet silent on the cold marble of the hallway.
The house is a cathedral of stolen wealth.
It’s too quiet—the kind of silence that feels like a bated breath.
I wander past oil paintings of grim-faced ancestors whose eyes follow me with a shared, ancestral cruelty.
The air smells of beeswax, old books, and the faint, lingering metallic tang of last night’s “laundry” downstairs.
I find myself in front of a door made of dark, iron-banded oak. His office. The sanctum where the monster does his math.
The handle is cold, but it turns.
The room is vast, lined with books bound in human-touch leather and maps of a city he treats like a playground. But it’s the wall behind his desk that stops my heart.
It’s not a wall. It’s a shrine.
My breath hitches as I step closer, my skin crawling.
It’s me. Hundreds of photos, some grainy and blurred, taken from the shadows of my old life.
Me at the coffee shop three blocks from my old apartment.
Me laughing with a coworker I haven’t seen in months.
Me sleeping—God, a photo of me sleeping in my own bed, taken from the fire escape.
There are also things. Things I thought I’d lost. My favourite silver earring. A hair tie. A grocery list written in my own frantic scrawl.
And in the centre, a large, charcoal sketch. It’s me, but not me. It’s me as he sees me—covered in his marks, eyes wide and shattered, a crown of thorns and roses around my head. It’s dated six months ago.
He’s been hunting me since before I even knew he existed.
This isn’t love. It’s not even a fetish. It’s a total, systematic consumption. He didn’t just stumble upon me; he curated me. He waited until the perfect moment to pluck me from the world and pin me to his board.
“I’m a ghost,” I whisper, my hand trembling as I touch the sketch. “I’ve been dead for months.”
“You’ve never been more alive, Wendy.”
The voice is a low, vibration that hits me like a physical blow. I spin around, my back slamming into the desk, my heart leaping into my throat.
Peter is leaning against the doorframe. He’s a nightmare in the flesh. He’s covered in soot and dark, dried splatters of blood that look like ink against his white shirt. His hair is a mess, his eyes dark and blown out with the adrenaline of whatever slaughter he just finished at the gate.
He looks at me, and a slow, terrifyingly beautiful smirk spreads across his face.
“Oh, Darling,” he purrs, his voice thick with a dark, mocking delight. “Only day one, and you’ve already broken the fucking rules.”
He walks towards me, his boots heavy and rhythmic on the hardwood. I’m shaking so hard I can hear my teeth chattering, my mind a fractured mess of terror and that sickening, addictive heat that ignites the moment he’s in the room.
“I told you not to leave the room,” he whispers, stopping inches from me.
He smells of gunpowder, expensive gin, and death.
He reaches out, his hand—still stained with the grit of the fight—cupping my jaw.
“But look at you. Drawn to the heart of the web. You wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, didn’t you? ”
He leans in, his eyes darting to the shrine behind me, then back to my face.
“Do you like it?” he asks, his thumb dragging across my lower lip. “It’s my favourite view. The anatomy of my obsession. You’re the only thing in this world that doesn’t bore me, Wendy. And now that you’ve seen the truth, there’s no going back to the lie.”