Chapter 3 #3
“I hate it,” he said, voice low and ragged.
“Every month I tell myself I am stronger than whatever filth runs in my veins. I was raised to be decent, Max. My father drilled duty into me. But still, five nights out of every thirty, I become a monster with no sense of duty or morals. And the full moon phase has just begun.”
Max rested a heavy hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “Four years since ye first changed, m’lord. Four years and this is the first time the locks have failed us. One slip in four dozen moons is not the same as defeat. We were careless last night, both of us. We’ll not be careless again.”
Lucien briefly squeezed Max’s forearm. The movement was hard, momentary, the way men do when words feel too small. “Thank you.”
Lucien sighed heavily, then closed his eyes for a few seconds. “For the crofter … pray God he only wandered off drunk.” His eyebrows knotted together. “I slip once, and that is all it takes for a man to die.”
“Aye,” Max said quietly. “But I’ll see to it. I will. Because if ye’re lost, the whole lot of us are lost without an heir. And yer family’s the only one daft enough to pay this fool a wage worth having.”
Lucien managed a faint chuckle. “You have been saying that since we were boys and I still believed wolves were only in storybooks.”
“Ye’ve been pulling me out of scrapes since ye were ten and I thought I could ride that half-broken stallion bareback.” Max gave a bitter laugh that scraped his throat. “Remember? I landed in the nettles and swore I’d never sit on a horse again.”
“I remember I carried you on my back,” Lucien said, the memory easing his stress. “You were already built like an oak back then. You were quite a burden.”
Max only huffed a soft laugh in response.
When that faded, they stood in silence for a moment, the weight of the unspoken pressing on them both.
Then, Lucien drew a steadying breath, and began to strip.
Each garment was folded and set neatly on the old sea-chest that served as a bench.
The cold bit hard now, raising gooseflesh across his shoulders and chest. When he was down to his linen drawers he shivered violently, arms crossed over his bare torso.
The ritual of the chains was almost comforting in its familiarity.
Max brought them out, iron first. These had been made by a blacksmith, the links double-welded and proofed against sledgehammer blows. Max tested each one, laying them gently around Lucien’s wrists and ankles.
When the iron was in place, Max produced the silver. The silver links were lighter, but they burned wherever they touched bare skin.
Lucien gritted his teeth as Max secured them above the iron, wrists first, then neck. A faint hiss, like hot fat on a griddle, rose from the contact, and the skin beneath turned red, then white. Max worked quickly, his expression set and careful.
When it was done, Max covered Lucien with a wool blanket, tucking it around his feet and shoulders as if he were a feverish child.
Lucien pulled against the chains, testing. The chains answered with a dull, immovable clink. No give, no weakness. He let his arms drop.
“Solid,” he said, voice rough. “Good work, Max.”
“Try to rest, m’lord,” Max said quietly.
Lucien managed the ghost of a smile. “Good night, old friend.”
Max quietly withdrew and Lucien listened as the door clicked shut.
Alone, he reached for the single bookshelf bolted to the wall.
There were books, chosen for their power to distract while he awaited the inevitable.
He reached for one and flicked it open with deliberate calm, forcing his eyes to focus on the words on the page, though his thoughts were preoccupied with the same relentless question.
Was it selfish, was it monstrous, to go on drawing breath when it meant he was threatening to unleash a killer upon the world?
But Max had spoken true, and since the night the old earl’s blood soaked the woods, Blackfen had known no further horror. It had been four years since discovering the purpose of this cellar, of locking himself up in chains, four years of waking whole and unmarked.
Perhaps the crofter’s blood was only a fox’s work, spilled far from the path the beast had run.
After all, Lucien had awakened miles distant, naked, freezing, but clean.
No crimson beneath his nails, no copper tang on his tongue.
And the hunger that morning had been the usual hollow, clawing thing, as though the creature had stalked all night yet taken nothing.
The thought should have comforted him. Instead, it coiled cold in his gut. There was the possibility that the monster inside was learning restraint … or simply biding its time.
Outside, the moon cleared the fells. He felt it like a hook behind his breastbone.
The book slipped from his fingers and struck the flagstones with a dull thud.
The first crack was small, the delicate bones of his left hand shifting.
Then another, louder, in his spine. Pain lanced white-hot through every joint.
He arched against the chains, a strangled sound tearing from his throat.
The last human thought to flicker through the haze was a desperate prayer that the locks would hold. Then even that was gone, swallowed by the beast.