I’m vibrating. My muscles are twitching with a post-adrenaline comedown that feels like a sickness. I stay buried in her for a long minute, my forehead pressed into the wine-soaked rug, my breath coming in jagged, ugly hitches that scrape my throat raw.
I pull back just enough to look at her, and the sight of her—ruined, her lips swollen and stained purple from the vintage, her skin mapped with the red marks of my fingers—makes my stomach turn with a fresh, viral wave of possession.
“You don’t know what you’ve fucking done, Wendy,” I rasp, my voice a dark, ruined ghost of its former self. I’m not nice anymore. The light, laughing man from ten minutes ago has been swallowed by the void. I look at her with a cruelty born of pure, unadulterated terror because she has the power to make me crawl.
I grab her face, my thumb dragging across her bottom lip so hard it pales. “You think this was a game? You think you can just turn me on and off like a light?”
“Peter—” she whispers, her eyes softening, her hand reaching up to touch the scar on my neck with a tenderness that makes me want to scream.
“No,” I growl, pinning her hand backdown. “Don’t you dare look at me like that. I don’t want your pity. I need this. I need you. Not for tonight. Not until I get bored. I need you for fucking forever. I will weld your soul to mine if I have to. I will be the last thing you see before the sun goes out.”
She doesn’t flinch. She just looks at me, and that terrifying, sweet surrender returns to her gaze. She’s accepting the monster. She’s inviting the rot. And that is why I have to do it. Because I can’t trust her heart not to change when the smoke clears.
“I’m yours, Peter,” she breathes, her voice a fragile, beautiful lie. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know you aren’t,” I murmur, my tone shifting into something terrifyingly calm. Something clinical.
I reach into the pocket of my discarded trousers, my fingers finding the small, silver vial I’ve been carrying since the day I brought her here. I’ve been waiting for the moment the hunger outweighed the honour.
“I love you, Darling,” I whisper, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said. “That’s why I can’t let you choose.”
I don’t give her time to scream. I don’t give her time to question the sudden, sharp scent of chemicals that cuts through the wine. I press a silk handkerchief, pre-soaked and heavy with a fast-acting sedative, over her nose and mouth.
Her eyes go wide—vast, panicked mirrors of the stars above. She struggles for a second, her hands clawing at my forearms, her muffled gasps hot against my palm.
“Shhh,” I croon, my heart breaking even as I hold her down. “Just sleep. When you wake up, the world willbe gone, and there will only be us. No more fires. No more choices.”
I watch as the light in her eyes begins to flicker and dim. Her limbs go heavy, the tension draining out of her body like water from a broken glass. Her head lolls back against the stained rug, her long lashes fluttering one last time before settling against her cheeks.
She looks like a doll. She looks like a masterpiece. She looks like she’s finally, truly mine.
I pick up her limp, naked body, the obsidian gown left like a shed skin on the floor. I carry her toward the hidden elevator in the wall, my grip bruisingly tight. Outside, the first red flare of the North End’s assault lights up the sky, but I don’t even look.
The war can wait. I have a queen to bury in the dark.
Wendy
The transition from the floor of the observatory to the world I wake up in isn’t a transition at all—it’s a violent, sensory assault.
My head is a cathedral of shattered glass and white noise. The sedative tastes like copper and rot in the back of my throat, making my tongue feel like a heavy, leaden weight. I try to blink, but the light is too much—a blinding, aggressive shimmer of a thousand crystal chandeliers that makes my retinas scream.
I’m not in the observatory. I’m not on the rug.
I’m standing. Or rather, I’m being held upright.
The air is thick with the cloying, funeral scent of ten thousand white lilies. They’re everywhere—trailing from the vaulted ceilings of a private chapel I’ve never seen, woven into the heavy gold altars, and lining the aisle like a snowdrift. The walls are draped in cream silk, and the floor is a mirror-polished white marble that reflects the terrifying, glittering spectacle above.
Then I feel the weight.
My arms are heavy. I look down, my vision swimming, and my heart stops. My wrists are encased in thick, polished gold cuffs, connected by a short, heavy chain that clinks with a sickening, melodic finality. They aren’t iron; they’re jewellery. Gilded shackles for a gilded bride.
I’m wearing a dress that shouldn’t exist. It’s a masterpiece of lace and silk, the bodice so tight it feels like a second skin, the skirt a massive, frothing ocean of tulle that spills across the marble. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I want to scream until my lungs burst.
“Easy, Darling,” a voice purrs.
I snap my head to the side. Peter is standing there. He’s dressed in a charcoal suit so sharp it could cut glass, his hair pushed back, his face clean of the wine and the blood. He looks like a saint. He looks like a king. He looks like the devil in his Sunday best.
I look past him. The pews are full. The Council is there—the cold, grey-faced men who run the city’s underworld—alongside Vane and the rest of Peter’s inner circle. They’re all dressed in black, a somber, predatory audience to my ruin. And at the end of the aisle stands a priest, his hands trembling as he holds a leather-bound Bible.
