Chapter 25
Innominatus sat across from Victoria in the darkened carriage, his gaze fixed on her as the silver wash of moonlight traced the worry etched across her face.
The glow softened her features, caught along her lashes, carved quiet shadows beneath her eyes, and for a moment he felt as though he were witnessing something sacred.
The night had been incredible, overwhelming in the way sudden vision might strike a man long deprived of sight.
To be dressed in fine clothes, to move among others, to hear music and laughter and voices not filtered through stone walls, had reminded him of everything he had been denied.
Seeing the world beyond the laboratory’s walls made him realize how deeply the lonely darkness had begun to seep into him, how subtly it had altered the shape of his thoughts.
At his lowest, he had begun to believe the lie that he was a monster and not a man.
Tonight had undone that belief.
Tonight had reminded him that he was not yet lost. Not entirely.
And he was certain, absolutely certain, that he had reminded Victoria of it too.
She could no longer lie to him. She could no longer deny what lived between them.
Over the course of the evening, he had seen it again and again.
In the quiet brush of their skin. In the way her gaze lingered a breath too long before she pulled it away.
In the way her body had slowly, unconsciously stopped retreating from his presence.
Their bond had been unmistakable, something taut and unbreakable, and he had watched her resistance fray with every passing hour until she was no longer truly fighting it at all.
He sat in silence, his hands folded neatly, attempting and failing to suppress the faint, pride-filled smile that kept tugging at his mouth.
He had done it.
He had proven himself. He had shown her that she could trust him, that he could be good, that he could behave—he was capable of control.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the room where he would sleep tonight—he was certain tonight meant he was no longer a prisoner in the dungeon.
He wondered idly what color the walls might be, what warmth it might hold.
It hardly mattered, so long as they were not black, not bare stone slick with damp like the cellar.
He could already imagine the softness of a mattress beneath his body, the cool cleanliness of fresh linens, the comforting weight of blankets.
He did not sleep, not truly, but the idea of occupying a space meant for rest rather than confinement thrilled him all the same.
A place filled with light and life. It would not be Victoria’s room, not yet.
He understood that boundary and accepted it.
Still, anything was better than the laboratory.
He knew, with a clarity that unsettled him, that he could not have endured that place much longer.
It felt like weakness to admit it, but the truth pressed heavily against him.
The darkness had come dangerously close to breaking him, to bending him toward acts he did not want to commit.
Acts that would have destroyed any hope of winning her favor, like slaughtering every single person she knew in order to get her attention.
Pride swelled behind his ribs, warm and heady.
He had been patient. He had been good. And in this new life, his goodness had been rewarded.
The ball itself, though infinitely more stimulating than the laboratory, had still felt dull when measured against his former existence.
The people were all the same, merely stripped of intrigue because he was not hunting any of them.
They were men bloated with wealth and power, convinced of their own invincibility.
Being among them stirred old memories, recollections that clung to the edges of his consciousness like shadows just beyond sight.
He imagined himself sitting in a small boat surrounded by ropes, their frayed ends jutting from the water, some already coiled within reach, others lurking beneath the surface.
Each rope was a memory. If he reached for one, it would haul itself into his grasp, dragging the past with it.
Some already had. Several he wished had not.
Once held, they could never be released. So he had learned not to reach.
Victoria’s use of the jar of insects had startled him, though it had also pleased him in a way he did not fully understand.
It felt delightfully out of character for his goddess.
Throughout the night he had kept himself tightly reined, even when every instinct urged him to intervene.
She had told him not to. And he had obeyed.
He had remained in the background as commanded, though the urge to punish and kill burned fiercely within him.
Several men had earned his wrath with careless words and disrespectful glances cast in her direction.
Had it not been for his need to prove himself, to show that he could follow her will without question, blood would have been spilled.
The desire still ached inside him—he would not forget those men. If ever he were given the smallest opening, the faintest permission, they were already marked. Their punishment was merely delayed.
They had dared to disrespect Victoria Frankenstein, a punishment that would not go unnoticed.
His Victoria Frankenstein.
Among the many changes wrought by the evening had been her response to him.
All it had taken was her leaning into his side.
That single, unguarded movement had struck him like prophecy.
In that moment, he had known this was his fate.
His only regret was the dance he had been denied.
It was the moment he had anticipated most, the one thing he had allowed himself to want, and it had been stolen from him by the baron’s sudden, theatrical death.
He would dance with her one day. Even if the world burned down around them, he would dance in its flames with her.
His gaze drifted to her arms resting in her lap, pale and still, and a smile touched his mouth.
She did love him. Of that, he was certain.
She was everything. His savior. His creator.
His lord. The axis upon which his existence turned.
He would do anything for her, not merely because she had given him a second chance at life.
In truth, he was not sure he would have chosen to return at all.
But she had cared for him when no one else would.
His first life had been a long corridor of pain and guilt, of isolation so profound few could comprehend it.
She could. She understood him. And though she had resisted it, fought against it with every moral and spiritual weapon she possessed, tonight she had finally accepted him.
Yet since they had entered the carriage, something had been wrong. Victoria sat tense beside him, drawn tight as a wire, and he could not understand the shift.
“Tell me what it is that troubles you, and I will fix it,” he said quietly.
She dragged her hand over her temple and into her hair, loosening the careful structure she had spent an hour building.
“I never meant to hurt anyone. I only meant for them to eat a few maggots,” she whispered, her voice thick and unsteady.
“This entire night has only made things worse.” She tipped her head forward, her silver-lit palms catching the faint glow of the lantern as they pressed together.
He watched her in silence as something knotted painfully inside him. Unable to take her distress another moment, he moved to her bench and placed his hand against her back. The simple contact steadied him, anchored him. When she leaned into his touch, he felt dangerously close to breaking.
“You did not kill the baron,” he said softly. “You offered to save him, and he refused. His pride and stubbornness ended his life, not you.”
The carriage jolted suddenly, pitching them together. Her delicate hands landed against his chest to steady herself, and Innominatus had to fight the instinct to close his eyes and drown in the sensation.
“Wilhelm is baron now,” she said, her voice trembling.
He wrapped his arms around her without thinking, and when she did not pull away, he breathed in the scent of rose clinging to her hair, the warmth of her body pressed against his. “He will not hurt you now that I am here, Victoria.”
“He knows I have practiced medicine, and because he is jealous of you, he has begun to pursue me again. It will not end well. Fate somehow spared me once from him, but with his new title…he will ruin me far worse than he ever could have before. My father’s legacy.
Everything we have worked for.” She rested her head against his shoulder, her eyes closing as though surrendering to the weight of his presence.
“As I said, he will not bother you,” Innominatus replied, lowering his cheek to the crown of her head. He savored the way her hair brushed his skin, the intimacy of it. “The people tonight believe we are involved. I was asked several times and confirmed it.”
She looked at him, surprised, and then shook her head.
“Wilhelm would not care,” she said bitterly.
“It would only make me more desirable to him. He told me he would come for me this week.” Her body pressed just a fraction closer to his, a movement so slight he doubted she was aware of it herself. “I cannot endure that again. I cannot.”
“Shh.” He adjusted his hold, tucking her fully against his chest. “If he comes, I will deal with him. You will not even know he was there. I promise you, after I…speak to him, he will never trouble you again.” Speak to him.
There would be no speaking. “Do you understand?” His hand rose to cradle her face, his thumb brushing her cheek.
For a fleeting moment, her eyes mirrored his own, dark and distant with something like longing.