Page 53 of Her Creation

She was going to die the same day as her father. Her creation would be her ultimate undoing.

“I’m so sorry…” she croaked from her dry throat.

“How am I here?”

Victoria’s eyes opened, surprised by the gentleness in his voice. “I—I brought you back.” She lifted her frightened eyes from the floor and forced herself to look at him. He deserved to know. “I—” She wanted to tell him she was sorry again. That it had been an experiment—an obsession fueled by grief and loneliness. That she’d needed someone so badly that she’d built one, and in the process, fell in love with something that wasn’t real. But her throat refused more.

He stood in one smooth motion.

She flinched. “I’m so sorry, I—” Victoria’s chest heaved with a great sob, cutting her off as the giant slowly closed the space between them, pulling something off the table nearby on his way.

Her neck craned as she looked into yellow eyes as he towered over her like a cathedral. The creature bent slightly and his arm shot out. But then…the soft touch of fabric grazed across her shoulders and back before resting over her arms. A featherlight touch wiped away a tear trailing down her cheek.

“I know who you are. I feel you in the making of my soul, not as memory, but as the moment I understood I was alive. You are not a thought I possess, but the axis around which every thought I have now turns. I measure myself by you, in the way a sinner measures time by his confessions; my body learns its knees only by kneeling before you.

“Whoever I might have been before is buried somewhere deep and unworthy, a former life stripped of meaning by your existence. Fragments of it remain—violence, obedience—but they are dull, shadowed things, relics without meaning or purpose. You have given me something more.

“Your blood whispers through my veins like a commandment. The heart you gave me sets the rhythm of my breath, the discipline of my restraint, the shape of my devotion. I did not choose this. It was etched and carved into my ivory bones when my eyes opened and found you standing before me, bare and radiant, marked in terrible, violent blood—my first vision, my true beginning. Want rose in me then with a force that could have shattered stone, but I did not touch you. I will not. To do so would be blasphemy. You are not meant to be taken. You are meant to be revered, worshipped…coveted.

“Do not mistake this reverence for mercy. If you asked it of me, I would burn the world to ash and kneel in the ruin, knowing I would have done right by you. I would call it faith and believe it without doubt. I am capable of terrible, horrible things, and I would commit every one of them rapturously in your name.”

His voice grew somehow even lower. “Call this worship or damnation, but please understand this: I was not brought back to serve the world. I was not remade for forgiveness or absolution. I was brought back to serve you. And nothing short of your denial will ever unmake that truth.”

Her eyes flickered open at his words.

“You’ve cried with me,” he whispered, almost to himself.

Victoria watched as he examined her tear on his finger as if it were a sacred jewel.

Their eyes collided as the thunder cracked overhead.

She studied his face, unnerved by everything he was saying. There was no way he could remember her crying; he’d been dead. Nothing but battered flesh and broken bones. It was impossible.

But then again, so was he.

His expression softened and his arm moved out, slower this time, and grabbed Victoria’s hand. With a sharp inhale, she tried to pull it away, but his grip was already locked, not forceful or harsh, but steady and firm. With a slight tug, he pulled her to stand.

The hairs on Victoria’s arm rose. Without her father here, she would be the one forced to kill the creature now. And then she would be left all alone in the truest sense of the word—she wouldn’t even have this broken man, this stranger who she both knew so well and yet also not at all.

“Please.”

Her eyes snapped back to him as the soft sound of his plea startled her more than if he’d shouted.

She realized that he had never let go of her hand. He kept it in his grip and clasped his other hand over it carefully, as if it were a delicate butterfly that might escape as he kneeled before her.

The whites of Victoria’s eyes flashed, confused and worried as he dropped her hand and lightly—so lightly—wrapped his hands around her calves, pressing the cool, dusty fabric against her skin.

“You are all I know in this life. Please, I beg you.” His voice cracked as it adjusted to the soft words. “Do not run from me.” With warm, yellow eyes, he gazed up at Victoria with as much devotion as she had ever seen from a man of God as he prayed.

Her mouth fell open. He was out of his mind.

“I—I need to examine you again in the laboratory with my tools.” Her voice trembled, but the words had come out. “I just need to make sure that you are okay,” she added as she watched, puzzled by the way he looked at her.

No one had ever looked at her that way. Ever. She doubted any woman had ever been looked at with so much reverence. A thread of power laced the tapestry her mind wove as she struggled to understand what was happening.

“You want to check that I’m okay?” he asked with adoration in his gaze.

Victoria forced her gaping mouth closed, her jaw trembling as she did, but all she could manage was an unsteady nod. The gesture felt useless, fragile, absurdly small. How could this man, this thing so terrifying, so undeniably powerful, be at her feet, occupying the space like a penitent shadow, gazing up at her with the quiet devotion of something faithful and broken? The sight twisted her insides. Though his mind was clearly gone, stripped hollow by whatever violence had unmade him, it was impossible to reconcile that absence with the sharpness of his eyes. They followed her too precisely, too knowingly, dark and alert as if they understood everything she was and everything she feared. It was that contradiction—the emptiness paired with such unnerving awareness—that chilled her most, as though something essential had been removed, yet something else had learned to watch in its place.