Page 92 of Her Creation

“He can’t step in without the doctor’s approval, or he could lose his position!” another shrieked.

The baron convulsed again, his body twisting, spasming as the flies crawled over his pallid face, wings brushing against the wet sheen of blood and saliva. A rivulet of red dripped from his mouth, the buzzing insects picking over the dark, crusted edges. The guests’ screams blended into a terrifying chorus, some curling on the floor, others vomiting onto gilded rugs, eyes wide with horror. The scent of copper, rot, and fear was thick enough to choke on, clinging to the skin and hair of anyone present.

Victoria stood calm, her hands at her sides, pulse steady despite the horror, every nerve tuned to observation, calculation, control. She could save him would they let her. She waited, watching.

She caught sight of Wilhelm now, his face slack with horror, a howl ripping from his throat as he stumbled forward. His eyes locked on his father—no longer the elegant, commanding man from moments before, but a grotesque figure sprawled on the floor, gasping, purple, blood and foam flecking his face. The insects crawled over him with maddening patience, over lips, into nostrils, across eyes half rolled and glazed in terror. The scene burned itself into Victoria’s mind.

“Father…” Wilhelm’s voice cracked, a shrill wail that seemed to tear the room in two. His hands shook, useless, as he fell to his knees beside the fallen baron. Every guest recoiled from him now. Inno’s presence pressed against her side, grounding her.

Wilhelm’s wails broke into incoherent sobs. “Father! Father!” His hands clawed at the marble, at the air, at the flies crawling like tiny sentinels across his father’s still-warm skin. Victoria could see the life ebbing from the baron in uneven, violent spurts, the red-and-black theater of blood and insects and panic a grotesque mockery of the noble order the man had clung to.

Victoria’s mind went cold. The realization struck her like a hammer: the baron is gone. Not just dead—he was lost to the creeping rot, to the worms and flies. The air itself seemed to press down, heavy with the stink of decay, the chaos of screams, the metallic taste of inevitability.

Wilhelm’s wail twisted into something primal, a raw, human sound, unworthy of the son of a baron, a sound of pure helplessness. He was alone in the face of a terror he could not command.

Inno’s hand tightened on hers subtly. She drew in a long, shuddering breath. She would never forget the weight of this night—the absolute horror of witnessing death and putrefaction in its purest, most grotesque form, while the world refused to recognize her authority, even as she alone could have stopped it.

The air around her thickened, pressing into her lungs, suffocating, suffused with grief and the metallic tang of blood. Wilhelm would inherit nothing but ruin, chaos, and the horrible legacy of his father’s collapse. He was baron now, and the crown sat on his head heavier than any jewel, heavier than any expectation.

Chapter 25

March, 1803 Log entry

Recounting events 1773–1795 Location: Unknown

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.