Chapter 15 #3
“I—uh—let me get my tools,” she muttered as she checked the nearby tables and noted the sharpest objects and how far away they were from his reach.
A hook blade lay on the desk next to her stack of errant notebooks.
As quickly as possible, she moved to grab it.
He didn’t like fire? Was that why the flame of his brain apparatus had such strange reactions?
The familiar clank of chains sang through the air.
When Victoria turned back around, the man was latching the second cuff around his wrist, pressing it against his hard stomach until it clicked shut. The chain clanked against the cold stone floor as he held both his wrists out to her, awaiting the key.
Victoria gaped as he stepped closer to her with outstretched arms.
“You needn’t trick me. You are my creator—my god. Anything you ask of me, I will do willingly,” he rasped.
He looked like a fallen angel. She pulled her eyes away and searched for the skeleton key with three ornate rings at the top.
“Is this needed?”
Her head craned to look at the man now holding the iron skeleton key in his cuffed hand.
Air gulped into her lungs as she stared. Of course he had the key. That’s how he escaped before.
She moved for it and felt fully incompetent taking the key from the prisoner.
When she was close enough to grab it from his outstretched palm, his arm tucked closer to his body so she was forced to move closer to him to collect it, not in a mocking way, but in an almost desperate, hungered move to get her close.
Unable to meet his imperious stare, she swiped her stiff fingers over his palm and collected the key before bumbling away from his presence.
A low sound, not angry, but deeply displeased, left his throat. “You are frightened of me.”
Her fingers curled around the key until the iron dug into her palm painfully. She welcomed the feel of something real. “No,” she lied, not wanting to show weakness.
His dark brows pulled together.
She swallowed and instinctively took a step back, until her back hit the wall in front of the stairs.
She wasn’t sure if she was imagining the power that rolled off him.
Though seemingly controlled, it felt suffocating and haunting.
She followed the chains from his arms and legs to the short length of chain bolted on the stone wall, reassuring herself that he was tethered and unable to reach her.
He noticed and took several slow, drawn-out steps toward her, stopping only a breath in front of her when she heard a small crack come from his foot and the chains clanked taut at his ankles.
Victoria’s entire body trembled and shook as he towered over her slight frame.
“I thought you wished to see if I was all right,” he drawled.
“You seem fine,” Victoria returned with heavy breath.
He nodded slowly as if seeing something she didn’t.
The fabric at her back snagged on the stone as she slid along the wall toward the stairs. “Stay here—please. Do not leave the laboratory,” she said, unsure that he would listen.
“You’re leaving me?”
“I have to go,” she mumbled incoherently and tried to control her arms and legs enough to begin the climb up the stairs.
“God,” he whispered, and she realized he was speaking to her.
“Don’t—don’t call me that.” God was already punishing her; she didn’t need him to be more furious with her.
“What shall I call you?” His question caused her to pause at the foot of the stairs, just over the stained patch of stone.
She shook her head violently, more to the dried puddle of memories than to his question.
“You need not call me anything,” she snapped.
The weird connection between them was already too odd—too much.
If he knew her name, it would only make things worse when she had to kill him tomorrow.
There were a thousand things she wished she could hear from his mouth, her name being only one of them, but if she felt the way the syllables of her name sounded from the man she was already in love with, she would not be able to stop herself from loving him with every fiber of her being.
“What will you call me then?” he asked, arms now at his sides, his chains stretched with no slack.
Victoria turned to him, overwhelmed with grief and sadness.
“I will call you nothing, because I have no need of ever calling for you. Stay here.” The harshness that filled her voice only tore into her tender insides.
The dichotomy of the situation was nearly unbearable.
How long she had waited for love, and now that it stared back at her, she had to let it go, barely even having held it in her grip at all.
He looked as if he wanted to snap back at her but didn’t. Instead, he held his arms out straight as she climbed the stairs. “What if you’ve forgotten to lock my clasps? What should I call you then?”
She froze before retreating down the stairs and reluctantly walking to him. Once in front of him again, she searched the folds of the tablecloth, her hands growing frantic when she found no key. It had been in her left palm; she knew it. Had it fallen—
The key appeared in front of her face, dwarfed between the man’s two large fingers as he held it out.
Victoria looked up, amazed. His arms fell to his sides as all amusement faded from his expression, and he studied her. Uncomfortable with the intimate examination, Victoria waved her fingers, signaling for him to give her his wrists as she held the key ready in her other hand.
“What will you call me? My former name is a shadow in a storm of memories I cannot touch,” he muttered.
“You have no name,” she answered as she reached out and grabbed one of his wrists. The moment her fingers touched his skin, she wished she didn’t have to let go.
“But you do,” he challenged gently. Despite his proclaimed devotion, there was a devilish look in his eyes.
She hurried to lock the cuff on his wrist and quickly moved to grab the other. He held it so close to his body that she was forced to step close to turn it. She felt the warmth of his skin, so different from when she held his same arm before tonight.
“Give me your ankle, please,” she said, doing her best not to be a trembling, shaking mess. He had no idea how much his pulse flickering beneath her fingertips affected her. This was all she had wanted for so long.
“Give me your name,” he returned.
She refused to utter a single syllable, her knees cracking the only sound as she crouched to grab ahold of his ankle.
“What if I were to escape?” he whispered…and it almost sounded like a threat.
Her eyes snapped to meet his.
“Would you call for me then?” he asked with a quirk of his handsome mouth.
Victoria stumbled back, clutching her sheet.
There was restraint in his stillness.
She said nothing but could not bring herself to take her eyes from the masterpiece she had created. Despite the situation, she felt the warmth of pride at this…this thing that had been beaten and destroyed in the most horrific of ways. This thing that now held her father’s heart.
“I won’t leave if you wish me to stay.”
Unsure what she was feeling, let alone what to say, she turned to leave.
She felt the heavy weight of his gaze as she climbed the stairs.
She had the unmistakable sense that he could have easily stopped her had he really wanted.
Her cold hands struggled to open the door, but once she got on the other side, she locked it securely and held the skeleton key tightly as she slid down to the floor and cried until her soft pants lulled her to sleep with her back pressed against the cold iron door.
Later in the night, she swore she felt the soft warmth of a hand release from her own as she rolled away from the laboratory door and the gap beneath it, but when she looked under the door, there was only darkness.