Chapter 29
Log entry
Innominatus and Victoria remained in the rain-soaked grave long after the storm began to loosen its grip on the sky.
The thunder drifted farther away, leaving only the hush of rain threading through broken stone and roots.
He held her as though letting go would mean the world might claim her again, or that she might remember the blade, the bodies, the blood that had led her here.
He curled himself around her, shielding her with his own body as if that might atone for the harm he had already done.
Her breathing slowed against him, and the steady beat of her heart pressed into his chest, every pulse a quiet miracle he knew he did not deserve.
For so long, the only rhythm he had known was the echo of his own steps in the laboratory, the sound of chains, the silence that had hollowed him until his unhinged obsession felt like purpose.
Then there came only her footsteps. Now there was this. Weight. Warmth. Proof.
He had gone into the town to prove something to her, to show her how much restraint he had shown her, how good he had been for her, and how dangerous he really could be.
Instead, it was he who had been shown the truth.
This second life had not changed him, not in the way he had hoped.
Freedom had not softened him to be more human.
It had sharpened what was already monstrous inside of him.
He saw it clearly now, without excuse or deflection.
She had been right to fear him. Right to deny him.
He was a devil asking God to leave the angelic raptures of heaven and sink down into the pits of hell and love him.
Loving her had not redeemed him. It had only revealed how far he was willing to fall.
And yet she lay in his arms, breathing, having finally chosen him.
The knowledge broke something open in his chest that no violence ever had.
He pressed his mouth to her damp hair and let the feeling sink into his bones, as if she were something sacred and fleeting, something the earth itself might reclaim if he loosened his grip even slightly.
He would not ask for forgiveness. He did not believe in it.
He only endured the truth of her nearness and the certainty that loving her would always cost blood, even if it was his own.
Above them, the storm thinned into mist. Below, the grave held them, a melancholy foreshadowing of their future—of what would happen to her, because of the monster that he was.
He was no different in this life. If anything, he was worse.
The first kill in the village had awakened something obscene inside him.
This body was stronger, its senses sharpened to a cruel, merciless acuity, and when he reached for the skills he had once been forced to bury, a dark elation surged through him.
He had forgotten the intimacy of it. The closeness.
The way death responded when summoned with patience and intent.
In this flesh, the thrill came quicker, heavier, sinking into him like a remembered sin finally indulged.
And yet it had not been for himself—it had always been for her.
Victoria did not know it, but every person he had taken had wounded her first, however slightly.
Some had turned from her at the ball, their smiles thin and false, their eyes already measuring her absence.
Others had spoken her name in town with careless cruelty, never suspecting they were confessing their sins aloud.
Some were people she had mentioned to him in passing, slights recounted without bitterness, never knowing he gathered each one like a relic.
Somewhere deep within him, a ledger had formed.
He had not meant to keep it. It had simply grown, line by line, grievance by grievance, until it demanded blood.
Even Helena. Despite her good intentions, she had come close to destroying her beloved friend with loose lips.
When the moment came to punish them, he answered it without hesitation.
The pleasure had been immediate. Exalting. A fevered righteousness that flooded his veins and assured him he was doing what the world had refused to do. He was correcting it. Sanctifying it. Avenging his sweet, blameless goddess in the only language the world had ever respected.
Now that he had begun, the hunger no longer slept.
As he cradled her carefully in one arm and wedged his foot into the slick wall of the grave to lift them free of the earth, the truth struck him with brutal clarity. The true ruin was not the village. It was her, what he had dragged into her life simply by loving her as he did.
Shame constricted his chest as he looked down at Victoria, rain-soaked and fragile in his arms, her hair darkened and clinging to her face. She had been pulled into fear, into death, into filth, because of him. The realization fractured him.
He could scarcely bear that he had touched her as he had the night before. In a grave. In mud and rot and stormwater with her dead mother feet away. His hands trembled faintly at the memory, not with regret, but with a sick reverence.
He shifted her gently and pushed open the door of the abandoned church. It groaned in protest, the sound echoing through the hollow nave like a lament, as he stepped inside. The air was thick with damp stone and neglect, but it was shelter, and it was quiet.
Inno loved Victoria in a way few could love. Not softly. Not cleanly. He loved her with the totality of a man already damned, with an obsession that gnawed and consumed him from the inside out.
He laid her carefully upon a worn wooden pew and slipped off his waistcoat, wrapping it around her slight frame, tucking it close as though cloth alone could shield her from the wretch he’d become. The gesture felt pitiful, almost mocking, but he clung to it all the same.
He would not let what had happened to his sister, Lyudka, happen to Victoria. He could not endure that annihilation again. As he stood over her and watched her breathe, his heart splintered beneath the weight of what he understood he must do.
He would never stop loving her. That was a curse written too deeply into his bones.
But he could not stay.
No matter how many people he would slaughter for her. No matter how far he would descend to keep her safe. He had failed once before. He would not gamble Victoria’s life against his hunger, his obsession, or the violence that lived so easily within him.
Not even for love. Not when there was still one more who had to die for hurting her.
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Victoria woke with a sharp kink in her neck. She groaned softly, raising a hand as pale, dust-specked light spilled through a narrow window to her right. For a heartbeat, the place was unreal, unclaimed. Then the cold stone, the damp air, the faint tang of old earth returned to her senses.
The abandoned church.
Her breath caught. Something was wrong.
She swept her gaze across the small, crumbling interior, heart stuttering as dread pooled low in her stomach. He was not there with her. Inno was gone.
The sound of wheels on gravel made her flinch. She ran to the window and peered out. Three black carriages rolled past, grim and exacting, heading for the castle. Magistrate. Lawmen. Authority. Her blood ran cold, eyes scanning for any hint of him.
What had he done?
As Victoria ran out the church door, crows gathered and swooped, swarming above her as she ran.
They followed her through the winding path of the forest, over the trickling stream and iron-walled bridge until finally the castle came into view.
The carriages had been there at least thirty minutes prior to her panting, exhausted arrival.
A fourth carriage, brown and plain, waited at the castle’s front, silent and still.
Victoria did not pause. She gathered her skirts and ran, lungs burning, breath ragged. By the time she reached the castle, her legs shook beneath her. The black carriages were clustered at the back gate, the brown one before the main entrance.
She slowed at the door. Her chest felt as though it might collapse inward. The front door hung ajar.
Her shoulder struck it as she stumbled inside, heart hammering so violently it made her dizzy. Had someone entered when she had not answered? Panic settled into her bones like ice.
She ran through the empty castle, room after room, until a stench rose up before her: decay, rank and suffocating. It caught in her throat and drove her forward. Faster. Until she burst into the parlor. The laboratory door stood wide, dark, and inviting.
She seized the nearest chair to steady herself a second before bolting down the stairs.
A cry escaped her as the damp hem of her dress slid beneath her heel, her footing slipping, a grim and frightening repetition of her father’s deadly fall.
Her hand clawed at her chest, the other grasping the railing just in time.
She panted as she froze at the bottom, standing where her father’s blood still darkened the stone.
Her gaze lifted.
The tunnel door yawned open. Beyond it, the second door revealed itself, sunlight spilling through to illuminate the gray, murky stone of the passage into the laboratory.
Inside, three men she did not recognize waited.
They stared at her, eyes hard, unforgiving, predatory.
The air thickened, heavy and sharp, pressing against her lungs like stone.
“Who are you?” she breathed, struggling to draw air into her lungs.
Something shifted to her left. She stepped forward, past the stair landing, every nerve taut and raw, until her eyes fell upon the cold-chamber door standing wide open.
Dr. Paranthal, her father’s oldest friend, loomed there like a spectre of grief and fury.
His eyes were rimmed red, tears catching the dust-laden light that spilled through the tall, narrow window in glittering, sharp fragments, shards that pricked the skin like needles.