I’m drowning in her, my face wet with her nectar and the blood still dripping from my throat. It’s a baptism of sin.
I feel the shift in her—the way her muscles turn from liquid to stone, the way her breath catches in a sharp, panicked wheeze. She’s not just cumming; she’sbreaking. Her hips lurch upward, slamming into my face, and then the floodgates burst.
She lets out a raw, lung-tearing scream as she squirts, a hot, frantic deluge of her own sweet ruin drenching my face, my eyes, and the open wound on my neck. It’s a violent, beautiful release, a physical manifestation of her surrender. I don’t pull away. I stay buried in her, drinking her in, feeling the rhythmic, crushing spasms of her pussy against my mouth as she floods me.
“That’s it, Darling,” I growl against her soaking skin, my voice a muffled, guttural rasp. “Give it all to me. Give me every fucking drop.”
She’s shaking so hard the desk is rattling, her legs trembling on my shoulders as she continues to pulse, the fluid running down my chin and soaking into the collar of my shirt. I’m a mess—covered in her, in blood, in the filth of my own obsession—and I’ve never felt more like a king.
I pull back slowly, my face glistening in the afternoon light, my eyes dark and blown out with satisfaction. I look at her—spread out, soaking, and utterly ruined on the maps of her old life. She looks like a sacrificial lamb who finally realised she loves the knife.
I reach out, my thumb dragging through the wetness on my cheek, and I bring it to my lips, tasting her one last time.
“You said I’d get bored, Wendy,” I whisper, my hand sliding between her soaking thighs. “But I think we just found a new rule. You belong on this desk. You belong under my mouth. And you sure as fuck belong to me.”
Part Three
Hate is easy. Hunger is not. And nothing carves a leash faster than the moment you realise you’d rather burn in his hands than freeze in your own silence.
Wendy
Ipull the heavy oak door shut behind me, the sound echoing like a finality through the corridor. Clara’s words are a toxin in my blood, making my skin feel too tight, my heart too loud. I’m walking fast, my bare feet slapping against the cold stone, heading toward the central staircase. I tell myself I’m looking for Peter to scream at him, to slap the smug, smirk off his face, but my hands are shaking with a different kind of urgency.
I turn the corner into the gallery, and a shadow detaches itself from the darkness of a recessed archway.
I gasp, stumbling back, my hand flying to the bite mark on my neck as if to hide it.
Vane stands there, his massive frame silhouetted against a stained-glass window that depicts some ancient, martyred saint. He’s cleaning a long, curved blade with a piece of black silk, his movements methodical and eerie. He doesn’t have Peter’s theatrical flair; he’s the cold, sharpened edge of the Hale legacy.
“He’s in the strategy room,” Vane says, his voicea low, gravelly rumble that vibrates in the floorboards. He doesn’t look up from his work. “But I wouldn’t go in there. He’s in a foul mood. The North End took out two of our couriers near the docks.”
“I don’t care about his mood,” I snap, trying to find the fire that used to come so easily. “I want to know when this ends. I want to know why I’m still being held in this fucking mausoleum.”
Vane stops. He slowly lowers the blade, his pale, predatory eyes finally fixing on mine. He looks at me for a long time—not with Peter’s obsession, but with a clinical, chilling curiosity.
“You think he chose you because you’re beautiful,” Vane says. It isn’t a question. “You think he saw a pretty girl in the rain and decided to add a new specimen to the collection.”
“Isn’t that what he does?” I retort, my voice rising. “He’s a collector. He told me himself.”
Vane lets out a sound that might have been a laugh if it weren’t so devoid of humour. He steps out of the shadows, the light catching the jagged scars on his knuckles.
“Peter doesn’t collect ‘pretty,’” Vane whispers, leaning in close enough that I can smell the gun oil and winter air on his coat. “He collects mirrors. He didn’t pick you because of the way you look, Wendy. He picked you because of what happened twelve years ago at the Saint Jude’s fire.”
My breath hitches. My stomach drops into a cold, dark abyss. “How do you… nobody knows about that. The records were lost.”
“Peter found them,” Vane continues, his voice devoid of pity. “He watched the footage of you walking out of that burning buildingwhile everyone else was screaming, your clothes charred to your skin, not a single tear in your eyes. He saw the way you looked at the bodies. You didn’t feel horror. You felt recognition.”
He steps back, sheathing his blade with a sharp, metallic snick.
“He didn’t bring you here to break you, Wendy. He brought you here because you’re the only person he’s ever found who was born with the same hollow space where a soul should be. He didn’t create the monster in you. He just recognised his own reflection.”
He turns to walk away, but stops, looking back over his shoulder with a chilling finality.
“He didn’t choose you to be his queen. He chose you because he was tired of being the only person who enjoyed the smell of the smoke. He’s not waiting for you to love him. He’s waiting for you to admit you’re the one who started the fire.”
I stand frozen in the hallway, the air suddenly freezing in my lungs. My mind flashes back to the fire—the heat, the orange glow, and the strange, terrifying calm that had settled over me as I watched the world turn to ash.
I thought I’d buried it. I thought I’d built a life on top of the soot.
