Page 49 of Her Creation

With a nod, the two surgeons approached the cadaver. Alphonse attached the proper wires to Inno’s neck, head, arms, and legs, while Victoria adjusted the opening in his chest with careful, practiced precision.

“What if we do not have enough blood to flood his body?” she asked suddenly. “What if I miscalculated?” The nerves clawed sharply at her, panic blooming as her mind leaped to problems she should have anticipated days—weeks—ago.

“We have more than enough blood,” Alphonse replied, his voice deliberately calm. “We calculated extra, and you insisted on adding more despite it being unnecessary.”

The sound of his voice carried her back to childhood, to moments when she had sought comfort and he had dropped everything to lift her into his arms, lowering his tone into that familiar, cashmere-soft register that told her the world was safe, that everything would be all right.

She nodded. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Let’s set the blood infusion and attach the electricity.”

Alphonse switched several levers.

Victoria pulled on her newest pair of white gloves, ensuring they fit snugly enough to grant her the dexterity she required as she focused on Innominatus. “Everything is already primed,” she said. “It will only take me a few moments to attach the heart while his system builds—”

Victoria and Alphonse’s eyes snapped together.

“The heart.” His eyes widened in terror, the color draining from his face as if something vital had already been torn from him. “I’ve left it upstairs.”

Victoria’s lungs seized, the air turning thick and metallic as suffocating panic flooded her chest. Her pulse roared in her ears, drowning out even the storm. “There’s not enough time—his body will reach full connection in a few minutes. If there’s no heart to—” She faltered, her breath stuttering as she fought to keep her voice steady. “It’s done! There isn’t enough time now! I won’t have enough time!”

Her words broke into a scream as her father turned and bolted for the stairs. “What should we do? We can’t separate the electricity!” Everything would be ruined. Innominatus’s beautiful face and insides would be charred and irreparable. He would be lost to her forever.

White stars curled in at the edges of her vision as panic clamped its jagged teeth around her mind. This was her fault. She had ruined everything.

“Do nothing!” he called from the top of the stairs, his voice echoing sharply down the stone walls. “If you sever the electrical connection, it will surge through and burn him from the inside out. I can get it in time!”

A violent flash of blue lightning flooded the stairwell, spilling through the open door in blinding shards of light. Thunder followed instantly, a concussive boom that rattled the walls and vibrated through the soles of Victoria’s boots.

She forced herself to move, her hands working mechanically as she continued preparing Innominatus’s chest for the heart, her fingers numb and clumsy as she listened to the uneven, frantic pounding of her father’s footsteps above. Each step landed wrong—too heavy, too erratic.

A prickle of unease bloomed hot and sharp in her stomach. Her thoughts were too fractured to identify it, but the sensation burrowed deep, gnawing like beetle larvae beneath her skin as she looked at Innominatus.

“I’ve got it!” Alphonse called as he came down the steps.

The heavy bang of the door slamming shut echoed like a gunshot, perfectly timed with another furious roll of thunder that snarled through the castle.

“Papa, be careful!” she screamed. “The stairs are wet from my dress!” She dropped her tools without thought, metal clattering uselessly to the floor as she ran for the stairs.

Her eyes locked onto him just as his footing slipped.

For a single, terrible heartbeat, time fractured. His body pitched forward, his eyes widening in fear before finding hers. In that suspended moment, his expression softened into something else—sympathy, regret, love—as though he understood instantly what was happening and what this would do to her, as though he was already apologizing.

“Papa, no!” Victoria lunged, her arms straining outward until the limits of bone and sinew stopped her, fingertips grasping at empty air.

The brown satchel tore free from his grasp, tumbling end over end as his head and shoulder slammed brutally into the stone wall. The sound was sickeningly dense before his body struck the steps. A haunting crack rang through the stairwell as his skull collided with the sharp edge of stone and then he rolled, limbs folding and twisting at unnatural angles as he tumbled to the bottom.

Victoria reached him just as his body collapsed into a heap, the violent motion settling into a stillness that no one should know.

She gripped his shoulders as though sheer force could undo what had happened. “No…no…no…” Her voice broke as her hands tightened, slick with blood. A pool of dark crimson spread rapidly beneath them, warm and steaming faintly in the cold air. She turned his face with trembling, gloved fingers.

What met her gaze was not a face at all but a glistening, blackened-crimson cavity of bone and flesh that had been shattered against the stone. Half of his face was gone. Bleeding out onto her arms and hands that clawed frantically at him, incapable of believing what she saw.

“No,” she whispered, the word so faint it seemed to belong not to her, but to the small, innocent child buried deep inside her.

Her eyes darted wildly over what remained of him, searching for anything—any twitch, any breath, any sign that this was not real. She cupped his face, her hands shaking violently. The single eye still intact stared back at her, glossy and vacant.

He was gone.

He was dead and gone because she had chosen Innominatus. She should have gone up the stairs and gotten the heart, but she had been too focused on Innominatus to think clearly. This was all because of her and her obsession with the cadaver.