Chapter 16 #2
“I—I know what it’s like to have the only person you care about die in your arms—because of something you did.” Emotion tightened his throat. His eyes fell on the flame nearest them.
Victoria’s eyes fell closed at the pain she heard in his voice.
He did still have his memories—at least some of them. It didn’t sound like it was a good thing, though.
“Excessive opium,” she stated, finally making the decision. “It will be painless.” Simple and not violent.
His eyes flared before they caught hers in quiet understanding. “I bet you know a lot of ways to kill someone, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “Mostly how to bring them back—or stop them from dying in the first place.” She took in the warm amber yellow of his eyes as she recalled what her father had told her about the Wraith of Serbia. “You know a lot of ways to kill someone, though.”
A muscle in his jaw flared. “None painless.”
A shiver crawled up her spine. Victoria’s pulse picked up. Nervously. Excitedly. Shamefully. “Why aren’t you trying to hurt me? You could escape right now and be free.”
He pulled back. “I would never hurt you, only hurt for you. You are the reason I hold breath in my lungs again. I am your Adam. There is no escaping you, only torture when I am away from you.”
Victoria recoiled at his intimate words. She hated how they crawled into her vacant, cold chest, heating it. “I am not your Eve.”
“No,” he returned. “You are my god.”
A heavy tension filled the space between them for a moment before a ringing sound filled the distance. Victoria’s heart slammed in her chest.
The bell.
It tolled again.
“What is that?” Innominatus said, standing from the table.
“The bell at the gate. A patient is here to see my father.” The timing could not have been worse. Now she was faced with decisions she was not ready to make yet.
“Victoria.”
“Stop saying my name!” she shouted. She pushed her hands against his stomach and felt the hardness of his muscles. “Put your shackles back on and do not leave them again.”
“But why? I won’t—”
“Do it! I command it!” she yelled. “You mustn’t speak. You mustn’t be seen or heard. Do you understand me?” She had no choice but to pray that he did as she asked.
With great effort, she stepped into the darkness of the tunnel, crossing through it quickly and then out into the fresh air. This was it. This was how everything unraveled. Like an apparition, Victoria moved to the closed gate.
The sight of the carriage caused her stomach to clench and her head to lighten—it was the baron’s.
“I’m sorry, but the doctor isn’t—” she began but was cut off when a middle-aged woman got out of the carriage holding a small boy, no older than six or seven, in her arms. It was Wilhelm’s youngest brother, the baron’s youngest child.
“Please, Franz must see the doctor!” the woman shouted. “He cannot breathe!”
Victoria hesitated, unsure of what to do. But the pain in the woman’s face confirmed that, no matter what would happen to her, Victoria could not send them away.
“Please! We need to see Dr. Frankenstein!” she cried.
She hesitated for only a second. “Give the boy to me; I’ll take him to my father. You may wait outside. Do not enter the second door, no matter what,” Victoria said, as she took hold of the small boy and ran back toward the lab.
The child was awake but barely.
“Look at me, sweetheart. Don’t look away, everything will be okay,” she said.
As she brought him in, she worried about having to explain the startling sight of Innominatus locked in the corner, but the chains were once again empty.
She didn’t have time to worry about where he had gone. She needed to save the child.
She inspected his tiny chest and found nothing out of the ordinary, so she quickly moved to grab forceps.
“Open your mouth real wide, okay? Just like that. As wide as you can.” Victoria quickly grabbed a nearby lamp and held it close to the boy’s little face.
His pale blond hair glittered gold in the light, reminding her of a cherub.
When she spotted something out of the ordinary, she nearly screamed with excitement.
“Hold really still for me, this might hurt a little,” she said, doing her best to be gentle as she pulled the round, purple sugarplum from the boy’s throat.
He began coughing and gasping for air immediately.
Victoria had never heard a more pleasant sound.
Her shoulders slumped, and she could have fallen over with relief.
The boy immediately began to cry. She left him on the table to grab a chamomile tincture to soothe his throat.
His cries increased, sending alarm bells off in her tired system.
She turned—the creature was moving toward the child with an odd look in his eye.
“Stop! Stay away from him,” she called out, which only seemed to make the child cry louder. She couldn’t imagine what his poor mother thought if she heard him outside of the doors.
But the creature didn’t stop until he was in front of the child. Victoria ran to embrace the boy and move him away from the creature, but she stopped when the child fell silent as he looked upon Innominatus.
He had grabbed a button out of a small jar on one of her shelves and was rolling it across the tops of his fingers.
He flipped his hand over to hand it to the child, and when he held out his empty palm, the child’s eyes widened as a smile pulled at his mouth.
Innominatus closed his palm and repeated the action, rolling the little brown button smoothly across his knuckles.
Victoria found herself mesmerized. The man gave a half grin and held the button out for the boy, who grabbed it and inspected it once more.
“Impressive,” Victoria muttered, catching Innominatus’s eye.
“I was going to say the same thing to you,” he said.
Victoria cleared her throat and held up a small cup of murky yellow liquid for the boy. After he swallowed it, she lifted the boy into her arms and left the laboratory, returning the child to an anxious mother.
When she returned to the tunnel, she caught sight of a reflective flash of yellow eyes in front of her. She pressed her body against the outside door, blocking his escape. No matter what happened, he could never leave the castle.
“I told you to stay in the lab.”
She felt the creature’s presence grow near, but in the dark could see nothing. She had the sense that he could see in the dark, so she stepped to the left a few feet, away from where she felt him.
“I came to check on you,” he said.
There was something beneath the words, a weight carried in his voice that brushed against Victoria’s already frayed nerves and set them burning.
“Do not leave the laboratory. Ever,” she said.
She moved quickly across the length of the tunnel, her hand skimming the stone until it found the handle to the laboratory door. As it swung inward, candlelight spilled into the corridor, and her breath caught.
He was far closer than she had expected.
Too close.
She froze with the door half open, her pulse roaring in her ears as he stepped past her, so near she felt the disturbance of air against her skin, locking eyes with her as he went.
There was intent in the movement, deliberate and unhurried, as if to make certain she understood that he could have left. That he had chosen not to.
Then came the sound.
A low squirming noise, followed by a wet, unmistakable gurgle.
Her gaze snapped to him as realization struck. “You’re hungry,” she said as she closed the door behind them.
She had not once thought to offer him food or water. The oversight struck her now with quiet horror. She was not even sure it mattered. The twelve-hour mark had already passed. The time her father had spoken of him needing to be dead by so casually loomed heavy in her mind.
“Yes,” he said. Only that. The word sounded almost reluctant, as though asking her for anything at all chafed him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it earlier. I’m not sure it matters now.” The room tilted as she said it, though.
She barely made it to the chair behind her father’s desk before her legs threatened to give way.
She closed her eyes, pressing against the swell of thoughts that crashed in on her.
It had been one thing to pull life back into a body.
But it was another entirely to extinguish it.
To snuff out awareness and continue breathing herself as if nothing had happened, going on with bloodstained hands and the weight of another soul.
She reminded herself that he had always been an experiment, that he was never meant to live a full life.
But when she looked at him, she saw herself reflected back.
Innocent. Lost. Struggling to exist in a world that had shaped him without his consent into something everyone hated.
He had not asked for this body. This fate.
And still, he offered her nothing but restraint. Nothing but patience.
As if sensing the storm inside her, he spoke again. “Perhaps a meal,” he said quietly. “Before you take my life.” His stomach growled again, deeper this time.
Victoria knew she should not agree. But the thought of more time, even minutes with the forbidden man, was irresistible.
She nodded. Her father had been right. She had grown attached to Innominatus. And in her solitude, the idea of companionship had rooted itself deeply and dangerously in a love that was wrong and forbidden.
She ordered him to remain in the laboratory while she retrieved bread and cold stew from the kitchen.
“May I not leave this hole and eat upstairs with you?” he asked.
“No,” she said sharply.
His jaw tightened, but he did not argue.
Back in the laboratory, she placed the meager food on her desk and gestured stiffly. “Please put your chains back on.”
He tilted his head, then turned away from her, lifting her father’s desk and chair with one hand and carrying them across the room and setting them neatly opposite her seat.