Page 48 of Her Creation

“Are you okay?” he asks, knowing he’s quite large.

She nods as she pants. She needs to feel all of him, needs them to be intertwined and connected. Her fingernails press into his back with a low moan as he gently thrusts inside her. His movements are slow at first, and she can feel every vein and ridge thrusting inside of her before he pulls back, and she’s crying out for more. In he goes, and her eyes roll to the back of her head as her body softens around him. His face is above hers, watching with tender eyes as she comes apart. Their rhythms sync together, and they are a symphony of moans and panting. Every nerve in her body catches fire and explodes as they finish together.

Victoria’s eyes fluttered open, taking in the wooden dresser and empty fireplace in her bedroom. She pulled her wet hand from between her legs, still breathing heavily as she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Alone again.

That night, Victoria found herself in the laboratory, uncomfortable with the distance between her and Innominatus. She knew she shouldn’t, but she curled up on the table and lay with him, lit only by the soft amber glow of his machine’s flame, wishing she could feel the return of his touch. All their important moments together would be lost. He wouldn’t even know her. His body was stiff and cold as it pressed against her skin, but Victoria did not move. This might be the last time she got to feel his closeness.

She lay along the narrow table beside him, pressing herself against his side as though warmth might be coaxed from marble if she held it long enough. Her arm tightened across the cadaver’s torso. A tear slipped from her lashes and disappeared into the hollow beneath his collarbone. She couldn’t imagine finally getting to hear his voice, see his eyes, feel his touch, and have to say goodbye.

His skin was the color of old wax. Too still. Too perfect in its silence. She studied the profile of his face, the dark sweep of his lashes against unmoving cheeks, the mouth carved into quiet. She had rebuilt that mouth with her own hands. Sutured it. Smoothed it. Reshaped its edges.

Her fingers trembled as they traced the line of his jaw. The chill of him startled her, yet she did not pull away. Instead, she draped herself across his chest, aligning her breathing with a heart that did not beat.

When he had drawn breath, it had been long ago. Another life. Another woman’s memory. He was far too beautiful to have been without the love of another woman.

Her thumb slid across his lower lip. Cold. Unyielding. The wrongness of it made her pulse quicken. She knew she should recoil. Should rise. Should remember what he was—what she had done to him.

Instead, she leaned closer. Her mind screamed at her to stop.

She closed the final inch.

Her lips met his.

The contact was dreadful in its stillness. No intake of breath. No startled response. No warmth returning her own. Only the hard press of lifeless flesh beneath her mouth.

For a heartbeat she remained there, waiting—absurdly—for him to answer.

The silence struck her like a blow.

She tore herself away with a sharp gasp and nearly fell from the table at the sound of glass breaking. Her hands flew to her mouth as if she could erase the contact, erase the choice, the fact that she had pressed longing into something that could not feel. The glass dome of the cranial apparatus had shattered, and shards of black glass scattered across him and the table.

She stared at the face she had assembled, preserved, claimed. Horror bled slowly into something far more dangerous.

She did not regret it.

Chapter 14

March 1803 Log entry

Recounting events 1773–1795 Location: Unknown

Night leeched into the very bones of the castle, seeping through the highest floors first before the deep rumblings followed, crawling along the stone walls like great lion-throated grumbles. The sound pressed inward, down through corridors and stairwells, until it settled heavily into the bowels of the laboratory itself. Sharp, electric-blue flashes of lightning illuminated distant rooms and leaked beneath the thin crack of the laboratory door, each flare briefly carving the darkness into jagged shapes. The windowless laboratory felt the violence of the storm only indirectly—the sharp, metallic cracks snapping through the stonework, followed by the low, aching groan of thunder that vibrated down through the foundation and into the soles of their feet.

There was a tense sense of doom in the air that night, a living, breathing pressure, as if the castle itself knew the horrors that were soon to proceed and had drawn in a long, uneasy breath in anticipation.

Innominatus had been brought to a state of full repair despite a problem with the heart Alphonse had acquired. It had been far too small to attach properly within the large man’s chest, the proportions entirely wrong, and so another heart had been brought in late. With the chaos of the week compounding upon itself, her father had sent Greta, Rosamond, and everyone else who worked in the castle away with strict instructions not to return before Monday under any circumstances.

The cadaver had been placed upon a plank, his rippling arms stretched wide, strapped along the horizontal board designed to allow the abrupt and violent flow of blood, chemicals, and electricity to move through him in the correct manner. The sight was eerily reminiscent of the old church illustrations Victoria had stared at as a child—Christ nailed to the cross, except here the cross lay flat upon the table. Thick iron chains had been bolted tightly around the specimen’s ankles and wrists, secured to the frame, ensuring that should he wake in a state of heightened adrenaline, which they fully expected, he would not be able to move far enough to cause harm to himself or to them, though Victoria knew in her heart that he would never hurt them.

The edges of the laboratory seemed to darken further as Victoria set her sparking Leyden jars on the table beside where her father had placed his own.

It was time to begin.

A warning growl of thunder pressed hard against the castle walls.

“Are you ready?” Alphonse asked. His tremors were so pronounced now that it looked as though he were shaking his head in answer even as he waited for hers.

Victoria’s gaze lingered on her father’s face, memorizing every line, every shadow, every familiar plane of the man she loved so dearly. She couldn’t wait to be wrapped in Innominatus’s arms and feel him pull her closer. Her loneliness in this world would end tonight. “I am,” she said softly, “if you are.”