Wendy
Ipull the heavy oak door shut behind me, the sound echoing like a finality through the corridor.
Clara’s words are a toxin in my blood, making my skin feel too tight, my heart too loud.
I’m walking fast, my bare feet slapping against the cold stone, heading toward the central staircase.
I tell myself I’m looking for Peter to scream at him, to slap the smug, smirk off his face, but my hands are shaking with a different kind of urgency.
I turn the corner into the gallery, and a shadow detaches itself from the darkness of a recessed archway.
I gasp, stumbling back, my hand flying to the bite mark on my neck as if to hide it.
Vane stands there, his massive frame silhouetted against a stained-glass window that depicts some ancient, martyred saint.
He’s cleaning a long, curved blade with a piece of black silk, his movements methodical and eerie.
He doesn’t have Peter’s theatrical flair; he’s the cold, sharpened edge of the Hale legacy.
“He’s in the strategy room,” Vane says, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates in the floorboards. He doesn’t look up from his work. “But I wouldn’t go in there. He’s in a foul mood. The North End took out two of our couriers near the docks.”
“I don’t care about his mood,” I snap, trying to find the fire that used to come so easily. “I want to know when this ends. I want to know why I’m still being held in this fucking mausoleum.”
Vane stops. He slowly lowers the blade, his pale, predatory eyes finally fixing on mine. He looks at me for a long time—not with Peter’s obsession, but with a clinical, chilling curiosity.
“You think he chose you because you’re beautiful,” Vane says. It isn’t a question. “You think he saw a pretty girl in the rain and decided to add a new specimen to the collection.”
“Isn’t that what he does?” I retort, my voice rising. “He’s a collector. He told me himself.”
Vane lets out a sound that might have been a laugh if it weren’t so devoid of humour. He steps out of the shadows, the light catching the jagged scars on his knuckles.
“Peter doesn’t collect ‘pretty,’” Vane whispers, leaning in close enough that I can smell the gun oil and winter air on his coat. “He collects mirrors. He didn’t pick you because of the way you look, Wendy. He picked you because of what happened twelve years ago at the Saint Jude’s fire.”
My breath hitches. My stomach drops into a cold, dark abyss. “How do you… nobody knows about that. The records were lost.”
“Peter found them,” Vane continues, his voice devoid of pity.
“He watched the footage of you walking out of that burning building while everyone else was screaming, your clothes charred to your skin, not a single tear in your eyes. He saw the way you looked at the bodies. You didn’t feel horror. You felt recognition.”
He steps back, sheathing his blade with a sharp, metallic snick.
“He didn’t bring you here to break you, Wendy. He brought you here because you’re the only person he’s ever found who was born with the same hollow space where a soul should be. He didn’t create the monster in you. He just recognised his own reflection.”
He turns to walk away, but stops, looking back over his shoulder with a chilling finality.
“He didn’t choose you to be his queen. He chose you because he was tired of being the only person who enjoyed the smell of the smoke. He’s not waiting for you to love him. He’s waiting for you to admit you’re the one who started the fire.”
I stand frozen in the hallway, the air suddenly freezing in my lungs. My mind flashes back to the fire—the heat, the orange glow, and the strange, terrifying calm that had settled over me as I watched the world turn to ash.
I thought I’d buried it. I thought I’d built a life on top of the soot.
But Peter Hale didn’t just find me. He found the girl who stood in the flames and smiled.
I don’t charge into the strategy room. I don’t have the strength to be the storm anymore.
Instead, I drift. I move through the house like a ghost haunting its own grave, my feet leaden, my mind a fractured loop of Vane’s voice and the smell of burning wood.
By the time I reach the heavy mahogany doors of the strategy room, I feel small—so small I could slip through the cracks in the floorboards and disappear.
I push the door open, but I don’t storm in. I linger in the threshold, my fingers curled around the edge of the wood for support.
The room is a cavern of maps and cold light.
Peter is standing over a sprawling table, his sleeves rolled up, his hands braced against the edge.
He looks like a god deciding which part of the world to break next.
When he hears the door, he doesn’t snap.
He doesn’t growl. He just turns, and for a heartbeat, his face softens into that terrifying, tenderness that ruins me.
But I don’t feel the heat this time. I feel the ice.
“Wendy,” he breathes, his eyes traveling over me, searching for the mark he left, seeking the connection he thinks we share.
“You only want me because of what you think you saw,” I whisper. My voice is thin, a fragile thread of sound that barely reaches him. “Vane told me. The fire. Saint Jude’s.”
Peter freezes. The masks he wears—the wit, the mockery, the king—all of them slip for a fraction of a second, leaving nothing but the raw, pulsing obsession beneath.
“You think I’m like you,” I sob, the tears finally breaking, hot and devastating. I’m shaking so hard I have to lean against the doorframe. “You think you found your mirror. But it’s all a lie, Peter. Your entire obsession… it’s built on a fucking lie.”
He walks toward me, his boots silent on the heavy rug. He doesn’t stop until he’s looming over me, his shadow swallowing me whole. He reaches out, his fingers ghosting over my cheek, but I flinch away.
“You saw a traumatised girl who couldn’t scream because she was in shock,” I choke out, looking up at him through a blur of salt and grief.
“I wasn’t smiling at the flames. I was dying.
And you… you took that pain and you called it a soulmate.
You’re a fucking psychopath, and you’ve spent months stalking a ghost of your own making. ”
“Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night?” he murmurs, his voice a low, guttural vibration that makes my bones ache.
He doesn’t look angry. He looks… enthralled.
“That it was just shock? I saw your eyes, Wendy. I’ve watched that footage a thousand times.
I’ve memorised the way you walked out of that hell while the world melted around you.
You weren’t dying. You were being born.”
“No!” I scream, my hands coming up to push at his chest, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. “I’m not like you! I don’t want to watch the world burn! I just want to go home!”
He grabs my wrists, his grip firm but not bruising, forcing me to look at him.
“You are home,” he whispers, his face inches from mine. “You’re just terrified because the mirror finally looked back. You hate me because I know the truth you’ve been hiding from yourself for twelve years. You didn’t feel horror that day. You felt free.”
“I hate you,” I sob, my forehead dropping against his bloody shirt. “I fucking hate you for thinking you know me.”
“Hate me then,” he growls, his hand sliding into my hair, tilting my head back so he can see the ruin of my face. “But don’t lie to me. Not here. Not when we’re finally standing in the smoke together.”
I look at him, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping moment, I see it. Not the monster. Not the king. But the man who saw my darkest, most shameful secret and decided it was the only thing worth loving. And that is the most devastating blow of all.
I wait for the explosion. I wait for him to laugh, to mock my weakness, to remind me that I’m a bird in a cage he built with his own blood-stained hands.
Instead, the iron grip on my wrists vanishes.
He doesn’t pull me closer to hurt me. He doesn’t growl.
His hands move with a slow, agonisingly soft deliberation, cupping my face as if I’m made of the thinnest, most expensive glass in his collection.
He brushes the hair from my forehead, his thumbs wiping away the salt of my tears with a touch so light it’s almost not there.
“It’s okay,” he whispers.
The words are a knife. He doesn’t sound like a King. He sounds like a man who has spent a lifetime wandering in the cold and has finally found a fire.
“You don’t have to be the girl from the fire today, Wendy,” he murmurs, his voice a low, soothing vibration that settles deep in my marrow. “You can just be broken. You can be small. I’ll hold the world back while you do.”
I let out a jagged, broken breath. I want to fight him. I want to tell him his kindness is just another leash, another trick to make me stay. But as he leans down and presses his forehead against mine, I feel the steady, rhythmic thump of his heart against my chest—a heart he told me didn’t exist.
“You’re wrong about me,” I gasp, my hands clutching his forearms, my knuckles white. “I’m not… I’m not a monster, Peter. I’m not like you.”
“I know,” he says, and the honesty in his voice is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard.
“You’re better. You’re the part of me I thought I burnt out a long time ago.
You think I saw a reflection of my darkness?
Maybe. But what I really saw was the only person who could look at the dark and not blink.
You’re the only person who can see me, Wendy.
Truly see me. And you’re still breathing. ”
He doesn’t try to kiss me. He doesn’t try to take. He just holds me, his large, warm hands steadying my trembling frame, his scent—expensive tobacco and a hint of the winter rain—wrapping around me like a shroud.
“I’m so tired,” I whisper into the fabric of his shirt, my knees finally giving out.
He catches me before I hit the floor, lifting me into his arms with a graceful, effortless strength.
He walks to the oversized leather chair in the corner of the room, sitting down and pulling me into his lap, tucking my head into the hollow of his neck.
He rocks me slightly, a slow, hypnotic motion that makes the world outside the room—the war, the fire, the blood—feel like a dream I’m finally waking up from.
“I know, Darling,” he says, his lips brushing my temple. “Sleep. The monsters are all on the outside now. I’ve got the door.”
I sob once more, a final, exhausting release, and close my eyes. I hate that I’m safe here. I hate that the man who stole my life is the only one who knows how to hold the pieces together.
But as the darkness pulls at me, all I can feel is the warmth of his skin and the terrifying, beautiful realisation that I don’t want to be anywhere else.