Chapter 12 #4
“You’re lying,” Wilhelm snapped, his voice sharp with panic. “You want her to die.”
Victoria tightened her mouth. She had not cleared the blood. She had not examined the wound properly. In truth, she did not yet know if her assessment was accurate or only an educated gamble. Still, she did not flinch.
“Victoria, you must send for your father!” Johanna cried, her voice bordering on hysteria.
“The old man will not come,” Wilhelm cut in coldly. “He will not leave his castle.” His eyes never left Victoria’s face.
Something strange and electric moved through her then—a flicker of power that shoved aside the frantic swarm of bees buzzing in her stomach.
It steadied her spine. She didn’t bother mentioning that her father was tending to the baron today.
She had just been given the opportunity to do work on a patient all on her own, to see if she could handle it. It would be the first of many.
“Keep them out there,” she said, her voice firm now. “I don’t need a bigger audience.”
She turned away from Wilhelm without waiting for his reply and moved toward Helena and Sophia. A moment later, Wilhelm exited, his voice low as he spoke to the others. The kitchen fell into a heavy, blood-scented quiet.
Helena stopped dabbing at Sophia’s face with a linen when she saw Victoria approach.
Her emerald eyes swept over her friend, surprise flashing briefly before something deeper settled in—recognition, perhaps, or understanding.
She slowly sat back on her heels, her gaze never leaving Victoria, as though the scattered pieces of her friend had abruptly aligned into a shape she could finally see.
“Johanna,” Helena said gently but firmly, “it’s getting crowded. And you look as though you may be ill yourself. Go—be with the others.”
Johanna needed no further urging. She murmured something unintelligible and hurried from the kitchen.
“Could you fetch me fresh linens,” Victoria asked softly, “and a sewing kit?”
Helena rose at once, her eyes accepting now, and hurried to the maid who had been crouched in a corner, weeping. She returned moments later with an expansive sewing kit clutched in her hands.
“Will this do? It’s all I have. My brother does the sewing,” she said, attempting a weak smile.
Victoria nodded and removed what she needed before lowering herself beside Sophia, whose front dress was soaked nearly black with blood.
“Don’t touch me,” Sophia hissed the moment Victoria came into her view.
“Sophia,” Helena said sharply, “let her help you.”
Victoria reached out to clear the blood from Sophia’s face, but Sophia recoiled, hissing again and jerking away. Lacking control of her balance, she fell backward.
“I said don’t touch me. Of all people, you are not the one to try anything. I don’t care who your father is.”
The words were meant to wound, and yet they brought with them an unexpected, grounding calm. Power, again—quiet and steady.
“Let her help you,” Helena repeated, repositioning herself so Sophia’s head rested against her lap, without much choice of leaving.
Victoria worked quickly now, wiping enough blood away to see the cut clearly. She applied pressure, her fingers precise, practiced. She threaded the needle, her movements careful, economical.
“You must know now,” Victoria said quietly, her voice measured, “the secret your husband has held over me: I repaired his wound months back. My reputation lies in both of your hands.”
Her eyes flicked briefly to Helena, whose expression tightened with pain, confirming Victoria’s suspicion that her friend understood all their talks now.
“We will not tell a soul,” Helena said firmly. “Is that correct, Sophia?” Helena squeezed Sophia’s shoulders, her hands already tacky with drying blood. Sophia said nothing.
“I need you to know,” Victoria continued, her voice softer now, “that every moment was torture and against my will.” She shook her head faintly, as though trying to dislodge the words even as she spoke them.
“I hate myself for what I’ve done to you—even unwillingly.
I believe with my whole heart that women are stifled and suppressed enough by men without our help.
It is our responsibility to lift one another up, even if we cannot rise ourselves.
” Self-conscious suddenly, her gaze dropped to the needle poised between her fingers. “Breathe out.”
As Sophia exhaled, Victoria stitched the small, two-inch wound with careful precision.
It took only moments, but for the first time, her hands trembled faintly under the weight of unfamiliar eyes.
When she finished, she cut the thread and instructed Helena to prop Sophia upright. Color had already returned to her face.
“You are a freak,” Sophia spat. “Everyone should know the extent of your oddness. You are a danger to society, partaking in a field you are not smart enough for.”
Victoria held the breath in her chest. This was nothing new, her patients not appreciating her efforts. She had expected nothing else. Sophia loved Wilhelm, truly, and in her eyes, Victoria would always be the other woman, regardless of compliance or stitches.
“Sophia!” Helena snapped. “You will not tell a soul. If you do, I will ensure you never receive another garment from my brother or any of his colleagues. No one will dress you. I will ruin your reputation myself.”
The threat, strange and niche, caught Sophia’s attention. She opened her mouth, closed it, then fixed Victoria with a sharp, icy glare.
“I will not tell your secret,” she said at last, “so long as you never touch Wilhelm again.”
Victoria eagerly nodded. If she could pour alcohol into her brain and burn away the memories of his touch, she would.
Within the hour, Sophia had largely recovered.
Wilhelm, to Victoria’s surprise, was gentle with her—attentive in a way that pierced something raw inside Victoria’s chest. He really did love her.
And despite everything, Victoria found herself aching—not for him but for the idea of being loved at all.
She knew how unlovable she was, but seeing evidence of it stung.
When the others spilled into the kitchen and asked what had happened, Helena’s voice cut cleanly through the murmurs.
“Victoria was able to fetch her father,” she said smoothly. “You just missed him.”
No one questioned it. The group was eager to move on.
As they prepared to leave, Sophia insisted they hang the seed ornaments outside.
“You can take them home,” Johanna said cheerfully. “Hang them when you feel better.”
“I am perfectly fine to hang something now,” Sophia snapped.
They stepped into the glittering side yard, snow crunching softly beneath their boots. The fading sun washed the grounds in tangerine light.
“Oh, it feels lovely,” Sophia said, lifting her chin. “All I needed was fresh air. I’m very resilient.”
As the others decorated the pines, Sophia seated herself near the dry fountain. Johanna, Ida, and Helena scattered the remaining birdseed, laughing as a murder of crows descended in a cacophony of wings.
“Shoo!” Sophia said with a curl of her lip. “Let real birds eat, not these plague-ridden scavengers.”
Victoria kept her eyes on Johanna and Helena, though she felt the icy-blue stare burn against her profile.
“Oh, they’re lovely!” called Ida. She and Helena moved to sit next to Sophia, where they continued to throw seeds and try to get Sophia to join the fun.
“They are not lovely,” Sophia snapped. “They are weird and odd. Notice how no other birds will be near them? How we are now missing out on the beautiful cardinals and jays because these sky rats are here.”
“Are they really so bad just because they’re different? Darker?” Victoria broke her silence. The rest of the group went quiet as the tension pressed into the crisp winter air.
“Yes!” Sophia shouted, as if the last bit of her barely restrained patience had snapped. She picked up a palm-sized rock from the pile that surrounded the fountain and hurled it with unexpected precision, hitting one of the crows with a thud.
Gasps rang out through the group, muffled only by the sound of the fifteen or so crows cawing loudly as they took off from their place on the snow and hid in the trees. All except one. The one who had been hit with the rock.
“Sophia! You’ve killed it!” Helena and Johanna screamed in horror.
Instead of showing even the smallest hint of remorse, Sophia merely turned her head and fixed Victoria with a cold, unflinching glare. “Save it, Frankenstein,” she taunted.
But Victoria was already on her feet. Her knees drove into the cold, wet snow as if pulled there by force, the shock of it barely registering as she bent and lifted the limp crow into her arms. She did not know what she was doing—only that she was doing it.
The bird’s body hung heavy and wrong in her palms, its weight unfamiliar now that all tension had fled from it.
She ran her hand over its back, hearing the rustle of its feathers as she moved its wings.
Shouts erupted from the group behind her.
Johanna’s hands flew into the air as she screamed for Victoria to put the dead bird down.
One of the men laughed and called out something about what a good shot Sophia had been.
The sound reached Victoria as if from a great distance, warped and slow, as though she were submerged beneath water.
Everything in her mind moved sluggishly, stretched thin by the thunder of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Maybe she could save it.
She stared down at the crow, unable to comprehend how easily—how carelessly—Sophia had done it, how quickly life had been extinguished. It took so long to keep something alive, so much effort, so much vigilance, and yet one reckless motion could undo it all in an instant.
Victoria waited, breath held, hoping desperately that the bird had only been stunned.
But then she saw the blood.
She saw the damage to its head, the dark smear where the stone had struck. Hope collapsed inside her chest, folding in on itself.