Page 33 of Her Creation

“No,” Alphonse corrected her. “You have a gift, my child. You will save so many lives; you will be revered and spoken about long after you’re gone. I can feel it in my soul. Your tenacity has given you a gift. I believe you will breathe so much life into this world that it will even affect this dead man.”

Victoria smiled despite herself. “You think we can do it? You think our formula is close? When can we run the experiment? Also, he should have a name.”

Alphonse’s glass stopped for a moment before tipping over his lips. “I do think we are close, though without something steady and dead to test, I suppose we shall be forced to wait until all the repairs have been made on it.” He tipped his head toward the body.

“Him.”

“What’s that?” He scowled.

“You constantly call him an it. He’s a him.”

“Victoria,” he warned. “Do not do this.”

“Walter?” She pushed gently.

“Do not name it. Names belong to the living, not to short-lived abominations that will be destroyed shortly after they are resurrected. It has no name. It is a tool for our use and gain, just as the scalpel is, nothing more.”

Her jaw clenched until she thought her teeth might crack, but she did not look up from her work. “And what if he cannot be killed? What if one can only truly die once?” She looked out of the corner of her eye to see her father taking another half-glass of tonic. The creature’s immortality was something that had occurred to her late one night. Her dark brows pinched together, but she said nothing of her anxieties about her father’s second dose of laudanum. At least he would sleep well tonight and not be pacing unsteadily about the castle. “Edgar? No, that’s not statuesque enough, is it?”

“I dread the idea; if it cannot be killed, then we will be even more grateful that we replaced its heart and brain. The heart is the spirit of one’s soul that makes us who we are inside; it chooses if we are to be among the angels or the devil, and in the brain lies the prison of memories that fuel our actions. And I beg your pardon, statuesque?”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “Him, not it, and yes, look at his face. Once I repair the rest of the burns on his face, he will look like a Greek god—Achilles! What do you say to that name?”

Alphonse rolled his eyes. “I say Achilles would be offended that you compared his likeness to that of an amalgamated monster. No name. I insist this monster have no name, Victoria.” He moved from behind the desk to where Victoria continued her procedure and gave her a kiss on the cheek before he moved around her and began his climb up the stairs.

“Prometheus! Far more fitting to what we are doing.” She grinned at her father, grateful that they could lighten the air before he left for bed. Lately, that hadn’t always happened.

His eyes rolled harder this time. He wiped the bit of perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve before continuing his climb up the stairs. “No name.”

Her lips pursed together in a rosy circle. A spark of inspiration suddenly lit up her face as she stole another glance at the cadaver’s face. “Innominatus!” she exclaimed. Both their eyes fell to the flash of flame that filled the entire glass.

“What?” her father called from the stairwell. “Innominatus? Clever. Fine.” He snorted out a laugh loudly before she heard the final click of the door close shut.

Her sentimental eyes traced the cadaver’s pale face as she marinated in her minor victory for the man.

Innominatus—no name in Latin.

“Innominatus.” She tried the word on. It felt dark and thrilling on her tongue in a way she hadn’t expected. It suited the man perfectly. The flame twirled and swayed.

Her gown rustled against the frigid stone table as she moved to the other side of the body, carefully reworking the parts of her father’s endeavors that were loose and unrefined. She pushed the sounds of her quiet breathing and swallowing from her focus and tried to listen to the floor above her, hoping to hear some comforting quiet that told her Alphonse had made it safely into his bed. No distinguishing sounds came from above, which she took as a good sign. The wind through the tunnel whistled against the cracks of the locked iron postern. The barrage of snow ceased falling days ago, though a blanket of white, glittering silk cloaked the trees and deep slopes of land that surrounded the castle and led to town. The chill in the air remained formidable, seeping into the cracks of the castle with ice-cold claws.

Victoria shifted, grabbing a few implements and returning to the exact position her father had stood over the body. For a moment it felt as if she were stepping into his shadow. With abnormal precision, she perfected and smoothed her father’s previous work.

With a soft clang of metal as they chimed together, Victoria cleaned and replaced the tools. The sound of something foreign in the distance drew her attention. She brushed it off as the high-pitched howl of the wolves that plodded through the forest at night and continued her ministrations. Her eyes fell on the flame as it seemed to grow darker orange with a tint of red.

She paused to look at the face of the cadaver, motionless and still beneath her small hands. The irony filled her gut with an odd satisfaction. Here, a handsome man, larger than any other she had ever seen and no doubt more dangerous than any man she’d been in the presence of, lay still and powerless beneath her small, bony fingers.

For the first time, Victoria felt the warm glow of power, but what surprised her was that she didn’t like it. Too many times now, the roles had been reversed. The surge of power mingled and dripped through her mind like thick, crimson blood—perhaps she was no better than the others. Was it possible that what she was doing was wrong?

She reached out in a haze and ran her fingers along the man’s attractive face, feeling the smooth, melted-candle texture where his skin had burned. What had he gone through? Did he leave behind a wife? She couldn’t fathom someone as attractive as him not having a wife, even if he had been a horrible person. The woman was no doubt perfect, delicately soft and healthy, with color to her skin and a roundness to her body. The opposite of Victoria’s gaunt and sallow self.

Victoria shook her head and withdrew her fingers, a flush of foolishness warming her for having crossed a boundary. Yet the thought followed at once, unbidden and cruel—how detestable it would be to have her mind cut open, its contents plundered, the memories she held most sacred torn away without consent. Even those of her mother, which time had soured into something that carried more pain than comfort. Already she felt an attachment to the man.

Grief had grown so vast it eclipsed the few fleeting recollections of happiness she still possessed. What remained was only a tightness in her chest, aching and burning, so sharp it made her wonder whether she had ever truly possessed a heart at all, or whether mother had carried it with her into the grave. She remembered herself collapsed on the floor of her bedroom, sobbing until breath failed her, her knees red and bloodied from striking the floorboards again and again, her body unable to keep itself upright beneath the weight of loss.

And yet even those memories—those brutal, humiliating moments of pain—felt sacred to her now. They instructed her. They had shaped her. Would she have endured as she had without them? Would she have found her way forward at all?

It was easy, in the abstract, to imagine relief in the erasure of suffering, in the banishment of the monsters that haunted her and the small, crooked houses they had built within her mind. But Victoria knew better. Without those houses, she would never have learned where not to tread. Her mind had become a locked tomb of reverent remembrance, and though it now held more anguish than light, it was hers. Dear to her. And she would defend it.