☽ - Welcome! Here you will find all my writing and series in one place - ☾
───────── WOUNDS
Henry Creel/001 x reader | slow burn - dark - nsfw - Hawkins Lab
Summary: An opportunity to participate in a paid medical study at Hawkins Department of Energy seems to promise you an escape from your misery.
That is, until you wake up to shattered memories and inexplicable abilities.
Grappling with your new reality as subject 019, you find yourself drawn to a strange, angelic orderly.
When the boughs of control are broken, the dark bonds of madness and obsession pull you together.
Chapter List | Read on Ao3
Part One - Lab Rat
Part Two - Emergence
Part Three - Shattered
Part Four - Labyrinth
Part Five - Covenant
Part Six - Furnace
Part Seven - Chokehold
Part Eight - Nightingale
Part Nine - Serpent
Part Ten - Haunted
Part Eleven - Ascension
Part Twelve - Massacre
Part Thirteen (Final) - Crucible
────── The Trials Expanded
Theo Deschamps x Jane Warfield!Reader | magic - rivals to lovers - nsfw
Summary: A deep dive and expansion into the world of The Trials. Featuring a complete part and perspective for Jane Warfield (reader insert).
Series and Chapter List
(* = additional/OC chapter not included in the audiobook)
The Trials | Read on Ao3
Part One - The Recruitment
Part Two - Drinks and Decisions
Part Three - Bodies in the Library
Part Four - Falling in The Forest
Part Five - I'll Take Care of You
Part Six - Conflict and Comfort
Part Seven - Lost Legacies, Found Hearts
Part Eight - The Morning After *
Part Nine - Epilogue *
Part Ten - The Office and The Library *
Part Eleven - Welcome Home *
Part Twelve - Uncaged *
Part Thirteen - Mind and Matter *
The Trials: Winter Solstice | Read on Ao3
Part One - Places of Power
Part Two - Mine, and Mine Alone
Part Three - Tethered
Part Four - Cradle
Part Five - Risk and Reward *
Part Six - Fragile Fears *
Part Seven - Frostbitten *
Part Eight - Over Your Head *
The Trials: Eclipse of Spring * | Read on Ao3
Part One - Paradise Lost
Part Two - Decaying Dreams
Part Three - Ides of March
Part Four - Aftermath
Part Five - Judgment Day
Part Six -
Note: Theo’s dialogue from base/existing audio chapters written by Tyler McCall.
Nooo that Wounds cliffhanger!! Please tell me that they won’t be separated?! I actually feel unwell after reading that! Next chapter immediately please 😭🙏🏻 You are an amazing writer but you’re killing me with all these emotional plots between this and the trials haha - love your work so much!
Oh man I’m evil hahah I’m so sorry you felt like that!
I needed to set up the start of the sequel in a particular way by ending Wounds the way it did. However do not fear, they will not be separated for long at all.
Sorry about all the traumatic plots it’s the horrors within me….. .. my brain defaults to trauma ngl
Also the last Trials chapter is full of love and fluff and happiness I swear I’m not all evil 🤍
Summary: You were bound together, broken together, sitting in the ruins of the crucible you'd created.
After confronting Henry, you realize you can't escape the binds of power and obsession. Freedom is close, but someone else is closer.
Pair: Henry Creel/Vecna/001 x Female Reader
Content/Warning Labels: Hawkins Lab, dark, violence, gore/blood, Mind Flayer, telekinetic fight, possessiveness, flayed!Henry, smut (dubcon, use of powers as restraints, feral!Henry, fingering, oral, choking, control, p in v)
WC: 7.7k | Read on Ao3
(Chapters: One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - Eight - Nine - Ten - Eleven - Twelve)
I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror, of an intense and hopeless despair.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
The smell of copper was acrid and overwhelming, a harsh assault on your lungs as you inhaled.
You stood on trembling legs, blood drying into your skin like a wash of violent clay. Caked beneath your broken nails, painted between your teeth, splattered up your arms.
The tiles were fractured. The rainbows were soaked in crimson. The air was thrumming, still warped around Henry's rage in the aftermath.
Exhaustion dragged at your every limb as you stepped closer to him.
His frame was rigid, his gaze was cast somewhere beyond you, outside of himself. Yours cut over to the crumpled remains of Brenner, broken on the tiles.
Then, the others. The small, helpless ones.
It was an anguish that pulled you between tides, filled your lungs with a sharp salt, as if you were drowning under it.
The relief, the revenge, lighting you up.
The horror, the sorrow, pulling you under.
At the crest of it all, Henry. An angel, once. A saviour, a creature of the heavens. Reforged by your hands into something lethal and untamed, something you could have never imagined.
Still, you couldn't smother it. The helpless drum of your heart, the way it clawed at its confines for him.
The grief was a punishment as much as it was a reminder. Of what he was, of what you were. He hadn't betrayed you. You'd betrayed yourself by believing he would stop at Brenner. That he would see them as you did.
Your heart ached for the lives they should have lived. The life he should have lived.
Your body shook as you spoke. “Henry… you shouldn't have hurt them.”
His head snapped toward you, the nuclear blue of his eyes sharp and challenging.
“They were children,” you whispered. “We should have killed Papa in that room and escaped. That was the plan. That was all. You - you killed them-”
Henry stared at you like he didn’t recognize the words or the face looking back at him.
“No, I saved them,” he said, the gentleness in his tone making your stomach twist. “From a crueller fate. From years of pain. From becoming what he wanted them to be. They were nothing more than prisoners, Nineteen. Nothing but imitations. They would never have left this place, even after he was gone. Someone would always rule them, always keep them as animals.”
“They were helpless, Henry.” You said quietly, your eyes welling with tears as you glanced around the ruined room at the small, broken bodies.
Henry tilted his head, studying you with a strange, cold curiosity.
“Because they were only echoes,” he murmured, “Papa confined them to this hell, just as he did to me. To you. I freed them.”
Your breath trembled. “Freed them? Henry, you - you broke them. Papa never gave them a chance and-”
Henry's glare turned sharp and ice cold, his face contorting as if insulted.
“-and neither did you.”
He stepped closer, eyes burning.
“You don't understand, do you?”
Your pulse stuttered. “Then help me to, Henry. Because I don't. I don't understand. We never agreed-”
“I never said they would live,” Henry said coldly, his voice slithering through you.
Your head jerked back, brows knitting. “You never said they wouldn't.”
Henry paced closer still, his steps slow and calculated, his brow furrowed into sharp angles, as his eyes bored into you.
“You lied to me.” You said, your voice as broken as the rest of you. “Just like he did.”
“I never lied to you,” Henry hissed. “You promised we would destroy this place, destroy Papa... and now I have done so, you turn your back on me?”
“Destroy Papa,” you stuttered again, tears falling through the fragile black threads of your eyelashes. Your gaze moved from his hellishly beautiful face to another small, wrecked body. “Not them.”
“They are a part of him,” Henry growled, stopping right in front of you. “Imitations made with his hands. I saved them.”
His body was oddly cool, the frigidness like a ghost that tumbled onto you as he leered down at you.
Anguish pulled through your spine at the word.
Imitations.
Despite what you'd done, despite your power growing into a monumental force that had reigned devastation down on the lab, you were also just an imitation.
A copy, an echo.
A shell with Henry's blood running through it, a hollow shape that would never be whole. You had been erased. Your body had never been yours, and now your blood, that too belonged to this place, belonged to Papa.
Belonged to Henry.
“And me, Henry?” you whispered. “Am I just an imitation, too?”
Henry’s expression flickered. A tiny, unstable twist of emotion that looked far too much like fear for your heart to remain steady.
“You are the only one that isn't,” he said, voice low. “Come with me, Nineteen. Join me, and for the first time in your life, you will be free.”
You couldn't do it. Not now, not yet. Not when Henry was so far from you. Your Henry, the one underneath the power, the one who'd saved you.
The one whose hands had held you together like fragile ceramic, now dripping with the blood of innocents. You couldn't give yourself to the ghost of him.
You took a step back. Your voice came out steady, decisive.
“No.”
Henry’s eyes went black. The air around him snapped, the feeling visceral against your body.
You tried to turn away from him, his demonic beauty, his blood-stained frame that was still looming over you with utter conviction.
But the moment you moved, Henry struck.
A pulse of power surged from him, rumbling the floor beneath your feet as it slammed into you. Loose, fractured tile fell from the walls as the room shook. Several lights blew out in a shower of sparks, and the air tightened around your chest, crushing over your ribs.
Henry gripped you with an almost violent intensity, his silhouette warped and shaking, as if he was holding the weight of you and himself in his grip.
You choked, feet flying backwards on the ruined tile as the force of his power viced around your body, binding you in his grasp. Panic began to rise through you, limb by limb, a dreadful ice-cold wash that made your bones burn.
For the first time, you were afraid.
Not of Henry, not of the crushing pain or the threat of death. Not of his face, however hellish it now was, being the last thing you would see.
You were afraid that you had broken him completely.
“Henry-” You tried, your voice choked.
Your hands clawed at your throat as he held you against the door with nothing other than his contorted fingers and the warping space between you, obeying him.
His face was twisted into a grimace, his eyes black as shadows, his entire frame shaking. His voice tore through the thrumming static around you, trembling and furious.
“Don't turn your back on me, Nineteen!”
You lurched forward and then slammed back harder into the door, your lungs choking on the sudden pressure as Henry increased his force.
Your own power writhed in your veins in response, trying to fight back, trying to release his hold on you. It felt magnetic against his, and for a moment, you thought your skin might split open at the force.
But you were weak, smothered, nothing compared to the pure force that spiralled from him. Your vision blurred as the room warped violently around you. It began blackening at the edges as you suffocated in his grasp, his power wrapping around your throat and pulling like a taut rope.
Just as you began fading into darkness, the images started to reel behind your eyes.
The first time you saw him, standing like a chalk sentinel against the wall. His gaze, impossibly cerulean. His angelic features, too beautiful to have been made anywhere other than the light of the ancient sun. The way they became devastated, baroque as he watched you break day after day. His hand, slipping into yours, fingers curling against your palm like he was trying to reach inside of you. His voice, silken, ribboning through your ears. His lips on you, the taste of him like lit embers, the soft sounds he let fall into you.
Giving yourself to him, every ache and every corner of desperation, curling into something deadly, something divine. Something binding and eternal and dangerously close to love.
He was the darkness that held you. The darkness that might kill you.
And you would let him.
You could feel the tears slipping hot down your cheeks as your frame shook against the door, as the images became black at the edges, curling inward.
You weren't sorry for yourself, if this was how it was to end.
You were only sorry for Henry. For the boy who was lost, the life that was stolen, the identity that was erased, the power that was smothered for so many years of darkness that your light of freedom had consumed him.
The feeling of his power gripping you morphed into another memory, one held by your body, your wrecked flesh. His weight perfectly upon you, grounding you to the earth, to yourself, to him.
You heard yourself speak, broken and raw in your throat.
“You... bury me... Henry.”
Then, there was silence. A stillness that felt almost brutal in how suddenly it fell.
All at once, his crushing force abated. Every atom of thrumming power silenced itself, every vice around your body released.
You collapsed forward onto the bloody tile, arms shaking, coughing and retching as you pulled the copper-tinged air into your lungs. Slowly, you lifted your head, your skull throbbing with the remnant pressure, and saw him properly.
Henry wasn’t standing anymore.
He was kneeling, shaking against the tile just as you were. His hands held his head, clawed into his hair, fisting it between his fingers. His breath came in ragged bursts, each sharper than the last. Telekinetic energy spiralled around him like static, bending outward and making the room pulse like a living wound.
“Henry-” you gasped, crawling over the fractured floor towards him.
“Please,” he gasped, voice cracking, “don’t-”
The static rose like a scream as you approached, every inch sharper than the last. Henry’s silhouette seemed to flicker, his form almost glitching as he shook, his shoulders heaving harder with every gasp. You crossed the debris on your hands and knees and stopped in front of him.
“Henry, look at me.”
He didn't. His eyes were tightly shut, damp at the lashes. He shook his head softly, and the faintest sound breathed through his teeth.
A sickening drop in your stomach came with the realization as it hit you.
Henry hadn’t killed the children because he was free. He'd killed them because he wasn't.
You reached for him, your fingers gently lacing around his wrist, still at his head as his hands clawed at his hair. His head snapped up towards you the moment your skin touched his.
His eyes were wrong. No longer blue, no longer nuclear. No longer human. They were black. A deep, endless black that swallowed the light around him.
Your breath froze, a dread like no other rising up your spine.
“Henry?”
His body jerked. A violent, unnatural twitch, as if something inside of him had seized utter control. His chest rose in a sharp, deep inhale. The air around him tightened, suffocating.
Then, he spoke.
The voice that came out of him wasn't the silk or the softness or the hiss that had overtaken them since you'd removed the Soteria.
It was cold, ancient, inhuman. Echoing through your very marrow, vibrating through the room like a living shadow.
“You.”
Your heart stopped.
He wasn't Henry. He wasn't in control, not even close.
“You think this is over.”
The remaining lights flickered violently, casting the room in stuttering flashes. Henry’s body swayed, his fingers twitching like a puppet’s strings being yanked.
“Henry, you have to fight it, you have to-” you pleaded.
His head tilted at an unnatural angle.
“He does not desire to fight it, foolish girl.”
You skidded backwards on your knees until your back was hitting the doors. Henry rose and stepped forward, each pace slow and predatory, his movements no longer his own. The air around him warped, pressed against you even from the other side of the room, making your pulse hammer violently.
“Let him go.” You tried to demand, but your voice was broken and feeble compared to the demonic one tearing through the room.
Henry’s mouth curled into a sick curve, a sinister smile that wasn’t his.
“I do not hold him.”
His arm shot out towards you again, his fingers splayed and contorted. Force tightened around your throat, an invisible fist closing in, squeezing around your windpipe.
“Henry, please-” You choked out, gasping as you clawed at your throat.
Henry’s eyes pulsed, his face contorting in rapid flickers of pain, rage, terror.
You tried to run, but he only held you tighter. The voice ripped through your ears like it was trying to split the very skin of reality.
“You cannot run.”
The pressure around your throat tightened. Henry stepped closer, the darkness inside him thrumming like a dreadful heartbeat.
“You cannot run from yourself.”
His head tilted again, wrong, unnatural.
“Your power belongs to me.”
Each of Henry's steps bent the air around him, warped the light, crushed the space between you as he approached. His long, pale fingers twisted and contorted, directing his power up through your limbs, twisting them into odd angles.
Your fingers clawed at nothing, your breath failed, your knees buckled. Your powers were weak, smothered. Your bones felt like they could splinter at any moment from the force crushing them.
Yet the longer he gripped you, the more your powers writhed frantically in your veins, trying to fight him, trying to break his hold.
Every nerve screamed for you to look at him, so you did the obvious thing.
You shut your eyes.
The darkness behind them belonged to only you, and here, you could focus. You could breathe, you could stop having to be brave.
You felt your mind strain, being pulled at the edges by you. You drew in the deepest breath you could, collecting every atom of strength you had left, fueled by every moment of rage, every memory of grief, every open wound.
Suddenly, the force burst forth from you, your hands flying outwards towards him as your eyes snapped open.
A scream ripped from your throat as your power slammed against Henry's, the two thrashing together like colliding storms, two rogue magnets tearing at each other.
You weren't sure who you were fighting. Henry, or the entity that seemed to have consumed him. You weren't sure that there even existed a separation between the two. You could feel it etched into his very bones as his power thrust against yours.
It was a darkness that hadn't been born the moment you'd freed him. It was one that had lived in every part of him for longer than it hadn't, seething, venomous, waiting.
Waiting for a chance. Waiting for you.
Henry's grip began to falter. His eyes narrowed into black slivers, boring into you as his feet slid backwards. He grunted, fingers splaying wider as he pushed back.
The ancient, eldritch voice ripped through the room again, tearing at your eardrums like a razor.
“You are both mine.”
A violent, ear-splitting crash detonated as every pane of glass shattered at once. The mirrors, the lights, the ceiling panels all exploded as a single, unstoppable shockwave tore from the point where Henry's power met yours.
Glass rained down on the room, firing against your face, shards slicing across your already blood-stained skin.
Then, pure pain tore through your skull. Your vision went black as you felt yourself being pulled under.
The shadow ripped through your head, gnarled tendrils that felt like living barbed wire. You felt split down the middle, mind in halves, one crushed under the weight of the entity, the other helplessly reaching for Henry, flailing for him. The agony pulsed through your mind, your body.
As it burned through you, you turned to the only place you could think of.
The void.
You clawed your way inward, into the ether, into the inexplicable darkness. You collapsed onto the waterlogged ground in the blackness, your hands swimming as they tried to find purchase.
You were sapped, empty, but you rose somehow on trembling limbs.
You had to find him.
Pain still ripped through your mind as you carried yourself through the void, searching. You could feel the entity still within you, a writhing, coiling shadow, infinite tendrils of dark melding into the black space. Lurking, hiding, watching your every move.
Then, you saw him.
Standing with his back to you, his white uniform a beacon in the ether. Dark, saturated smog hung around him, thrashing shadows and tendrils. Thunder rolled through the space around him in broken crashes, as if lightning was trying to break above him.
“Henry?” You said, your voice broken as you approached.
The closer you got the more suffocating it was, the shadows that encased him, the tendrils you could feel wrapping tighter with each passing second.
He turned.
You expected the ancient, eldritch creature you’d seen etched into his face in the rainbow room. You expected his eyes to be black as death, like they were leaking pure night. You expected his hellish beauty, sharp angles and pallid skin, taken over by his lust for revenge.
Instead, an angel looked back at you.
He was just Henry, face carved by something holy, standing in the shadow of his power, standing in the eye of the storm of himself.
“Nineteen?”
His voice was the soft octaves that your ears had so often yearned for, only broken by the strain of concern. His face was pale but alive, his eyes nothing but the deep cerulean that had come to haunt your mind in the way only something heavenly could.
He was beautiful, untouched Henry, and for a moment, the shadows suffocating you and surrounding him seemed nothing more than a fading nightmare.
“Henry, you have to fight it, please. It's controlling you, it's-”
“No...”
His voice caught in his throat as your hand came up to cradle his jaw.
“Please,” You said quietly. “I’m not leaving you in its grip. You have to fight.”
He sighed, leaning deeper into your palm. The void went quiet, the shadows retreating, the thunder silenced into faded clouds.
You leaned into him, your wounded arms wrapping around him, embracing him. He stiffened in your embrace, not moving for a few drawn-out seconds.
Finally, his hands moved. One brushed lightly over your back, the other cradled your head into his chest. He breathed deeply. Once, twice, steady breaths that dissolved down onto you in the darkness.
He was still, controlled, almost stoic.
For a moment, for a tiny, fleeting moment of calm in the chaos, you believed it.
Then, he spoke. The soft octaves of his voice were edged again with an eeriness that sank a cold wash of dread through you.
“Don’t you see, Nineteen?” Henry said, too softly. “It doesn’t imprison me. It doesn’t control me.”
You raised your head to look at him. He stared back at you, gaze piercing, in silence. His eyes were dark once more. The angles of his face were sharp, sheer cliffs. The curve of his lips was sinister.
“It is me.” He whispered finally, a serpentine hiss.
The void around him suddenly pulsed, suffocating and alive. Wisps of shadow wrapped around him, wrapped around you, still shackled to his chest. They whispered and writhed, consuming the ether as Henry’s breath echoed in the darkness.
Dread filled you as you struggled in his arms, but he only held you tighter, your ribs aching under his strength.
“Henry - stop - let go-”
He snapped.
His consciousness surged outward, overpowering yours in a violent, tidal wave of power. You felt your mind buckle, felt your knees hit the debris of the rainbow room floor as Henry’s presence swallowed the blackness around you.
You were never searching for him. He was simply waiting for you.
His voice filled the void, layered, fractured. Half‑Henry, half‑something ancient and terrible.
“And it is you.”
Your breath broke over your teeth.
Henry’s power surged again, pulling yours closer, drawing your mind into his, binding the two together in a dark, tumultuous spiral. His voice tore through the void, broken and exultant as he reached for you psychically, his consciousness wrapping around yours in a desperate, feral grip.
“And you, are mine,” he whispered.
Your stomach lurched up into your throat as you were pulled unceremoniously from the void. You were on your knees in the rainbow room, body wracked with ungraceful, exhausted sobs.
Henry approached, the blood splattered hem of his white trousers moving into your line of sight as you panted against the floor.
He kneeled in front of you, slipping a hand under your chin, tilting your face up towards him. His eyes weren’t black, or blue, but a mixture of the two, a shocking midnight that sat deep on his pale skin.
“When will you see, Nineteen?” Henry said, his eyes boring into yours, his voice low. “We are the same. And this world... together, we will bring it to its knees.”
“What - what do you mean?” You choked out, his cold fingers running static into your jaw. “You want to - you want to kill everyone? You can't be serious-”
“This is a cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules.” Henry hissed as he rose to his feet.
You followed him, straightening up on trembling legs as he paced around the chaos, his eyes darkening as he went.
His voice grew violent, tearing through the room as he turned back toward you, his midnight eyes piercing and lethal.
“Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades! Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before!”
You shook your head. “Henry, please. I-I just want to get out of here, to live-”
“Don't you see? You will never live. You will never be free. You will be a slave, a slave to humanity... wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die!” He yelled, his body shaking with rage.
He walked you back into the wall with his paces, his frame looming over you like a beautiful, feral god. His voice lowered, a dangerous rumble that sank deeper into your ears with every syllable.
“Everyone is just waiting... Waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I can not do that. I can not close off my mind and join in the madness. I can not pretend.”
His fingers slipped under your jaw again, tilting your face up towards him.
“And with you... I don't have to.” He said, his voice suddenly soft and almost reverent, as if he were being lurched between two disjointed versions of himself.
“Henry... this isn't what I wanted-”
“You freed me, don't you see? It is you who made this possible.” he pointed to the small, crumpled forms on the floor, the wrecked corpse of Brenner laying in a limp and bloody heap. “You did this, just as I did.”
“I don't want to tear the world apart. I don't want to bleed anymore. I don't want to fight anymore, I don't want to be a killer, Henry.”
“Oh, but you already are,” Henry snarled softly. “Open these doors and tell me you're not a predator, just as I am.”
You shook your head, tears falling as he gripped your jaw.
“You can't. Because you know what you are, and so do I. Yet you resist yourself. You resist me.” He ran his thumb over a streak of blood slowly clotting on your cheek, leaking from an open wound.
“But this blood... is mine.”
He dragged his fingers down the underside of your jaw, pressing over your kicking pulse, the midnight hue of his eyes piercing as they followed his hand.
“This heart is mine.”
He dragged his palm down, over the heaving swell of your chest, gripping your waist with bruising force.
“This body is mine.” He murmured.
He leaned into your ear, a cold growl ghosting into it as his hand slipped further. Your breath hitched as he dragged it over your hip, moving inward to press roughly between your legs.
“All of you... belongs to me.” He pushed himself hard against you, your back thudding against the door under his weight.
“No,” You breathed.
Henry's gaze cut to yours, cruel and intense.
“I don't belong to you, Henry. I don't belong to anyone, not anymore.” It tasted like a lie, like ash in your mouth.
His body jerked back, his brow furrowing with a deep, commanding anger as he glared at you.
“I decide what I am, Henry. Not you. Not Papa. Not whatever lives inside me-”
Suddenly, his hand shot up, and you were lurched upwards, held in the air against the door like a helpless puppet. You struggled, a whimper escaping you, but he only held you tighter.
“I live inside you.” He hissed, eyeing you with an unwavering, predatory gaze.
“Henry, please-”
“Don't I?” He said, his voice soft again as he moved closer, so close you could feel his cool breath cascading over your trembling, bound form.
You shook your head, whimpering as your boneless, exhausted limbs struggled in his grasp.
“Say it. Say you're mine.”
He held you tighter against the door with his splayed fingers, while his other hand curled over the waistband of your trousers, cold fingertips dragging against your skin.
You shook your head again, harder, your lip beginning to quiver as the force of his power warped around you.
“I'm not-”
“Say you belong to me.” He hissed.
“No-”
Henry's fingers yanked your trousers down to your knees, his cold breath catching as he dragged his gaze over your thighs, over your exposed flesh.
“Then who is this ache for?” he asked, voice a low triumphant snarl as his eyes cut up to yours.
You whimpered as he slid two cold fingertips through your slit.
“I can feel you, how you still ache for me...” he growled, leaning into your legs, his mouth sucking wetly over your thighs. “I can feel everything now... do you still think you can hide from me?”
You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head, fighting every word even though you knew he was right.
“This ache is mine… isn’t it?” He murmured against your thighs. His fingers slid roughly through you, spreading your slick. “Say it’s mine.”
You shook your head again, stubborn furious tears breaching your eyelashes.
He growled, biting against the soft inner flesh of your thighs so hard you cried out as he left reddened teeth marks on your skin. His power gripped you harder, squeezing your lungs into shallow, helpless breaths.
“Such a stubborn little thing,” Henry hissed. “But look at this...”
He plunged his fingers into your cunt, a cold laugh rumbling behind his teeth as you breached so easily for him. He scissored his fingers, stretching you, making you feel the burn you so desperately craved but wouldn't admit to.
“Feel how wet you are for me?” He snarled, thrusting up into you with a smug, sinister curve playing through his lips. “There's no use pretending. So tell me… tell me you’re mine.”
You shook your head, but a whimper escaped you, a tiny betrayal pushing through your quivering lips as Henry’s fingers curled deep inside of you, setting your insides on fire.
It was a battle, a war, a fight to the death of your ego that you couldn’t let him win.
Yet your body and mind were betraying you, spilling helpless whines forth as his fingers fucked into you, your hips bucking against the door as his powers held you aloft against it.
He laughed again, a cold, cruel sound of triumph. His fingers pumped you ruthlessly now, his eyes intensely focused on yours.
“Say you’re mine, or I will have to prove it.”
He was ruthless and relentless and right.
You were his. Your blood, your mind, your body. Consumed by him, buried by him, dominated by him.
Still, you shook your head vigorously. Your stubborn defiance, once laced with morality, morphed into one fueled by desire and obsession and the ache that flared through you like a pure flame.
“You are more wretched than I thought,” Henry murmured, his fingers pumping deeper and harder as you tensed in the air, trying to fight back the pleasure that was about to unravel you. “Look at you... trying to deny yourself, trying to deny what you know is the truth. For what purpose, hm? To convince yourself you are not a beast as I am.”
Henry groaned as your cunt began to clench, betraying your defiance. Betraying your lace-thin superiority you knew he was right in tearing apart.
“But you are.”
“Henry-” you whimpered, furious tears falling, streaking through the blood on your face.
He smirked, wicked and sinister, his splayed fingers contorting, his frame shaking as his power gripped you like coiling ropes.
“More stubborn than I anticipated, too.” He chided as his fingers curled aggressively, pumping over the spot inside you that made bright lights pop behind your eyes. “You're going to insist I prove it? Prove that you're mine, prove that every quiver of this pretty mess is mine?”
He growled like an animal and forced his face into your pussy, sucking your clit into his cold lips with an intensity that was almost punishing. The sudden, exquisite pleasure was undeniable. The whimpers you'd attempted to smother grew into frantic cries.
You bucked and writhed against his powers, against his face, your restrained thighs trembling with every furious lap of his tongue, every fervent circle he slid over your swollen clit, every thrust of his long fingers inside you.
The chaos and horror of the rainbow room melded into nothing but a blur of white and red and ruin as Henry unravelled you. Your orgasm tore through you, your body lurching in the air, shuddering against the door as the intensity overcame you.
You cried out his name, the world narrowing in to his mouth and his fingers and his utter possession that you craved.
He lapped at your slick mess, locking his gaze into yours as he did so, not blinking once as he claimed every drop of you. His fingers withdrew and spread over your bare thighs, smearing a wet trail over the flesh they claimed.
“Hm, mine,” Henry said, honey in his voice as he stared up at you. “Now say it.”
You glared at him, ugly with the need to fight, a feeble cover for your desire and desperation.
“Make me.” You spat through your teeth, your eyes narrowing into his, unblinking.
Henry's head tilted. Curious, intrigued, provoked.
He lowered his outstretched hand, and for a moment, you thought he would finally relinquish you, finally give up the game of control. But your feet didn't grace the floor.
Instead, the same hand came to your throat. You choked under his long, pale fingers, laced around you like a collar of carved marble. His powers were still warping around him, holding you just above the floor.
He leaned into the crook of your neck, his voice a phantom hiss as he spoke over the shell of your ear. “Last chance. I said, say it.”
“I said, make me.” You hissed back.
Henry didn't move for a second. A long, torturous second of pure silence that had every nerve inside you screaming.
Then, his free hand shot to his belt, releasing the buckle with a movement so deft it seemed instantaneous.
He didn't give any pause before he was pushing himself up into you, drawing a whine from your throat as he breached you in a single, deep thrust of his hips.
“You deny the truth,” he growled, pulling out and slamming back into you with a force that made you cry out, “but listen to you... whining for me like that...” He sank you down, his fingers still wrapped around your throat, his cock filling you completely.
His hand stayed at your neck while the other hooked under your thigh. His powers finally relinquished you as his body took over fully, holding you hard against the blood-streaked door with nothing but his weight and towering frame pressing into you as he fucked into you with a punishing rhythm.
The remnant ache in your ribs from his telekinetic grip was smothered by the fire he was driving into your core with every brutal thrust.
It was a torturous truth, that the burn of him taking you, possessing you, undoing you was the only salve to the horror that lived in you.
Henry looked like a beautiful, wretched animal. Surrounded by death and destruction, feral and furious as he ruined you, pumping into your cunt in a relentless frenzy.
“Henry - fuck-” You cried out, unable to stifle the desperate furnace of desire any longer, your cunt dripping around him, pulsing as he drove you towards defeat.
Your arms shackled around his neck, gripping him into you, your mouth seeking his. His lips crushed against yours, bruising and owning, his tongue sliding through your bloodied teeth. His mouth tasted like copper and salvation and absolute ruin.
“That's right,” He growled into your mouth, his voice raw and broken, “surrender... say you're mine, say you belong to me.”
It was divine, chaotic, something torn between the heights of heaven and the depths of hell.
You whimpered helplessly, giving up, giving in, refusing to deny it any longer.
“I'm... I'm yours, Henry, all of me, it's yours, please...”
His eyes sharpened, his face contorting into triumph as he buried himself hard and deep. You cried out as you came, your hands fisting in his hair as your cunt clenched down around him.
He followed you, his fingers choking around your throat as he spilled into you with a string of broken, animalistic noises, a final act of possession and surrender. He kept thrusting, deep and slow strokes as he came down, as you did, as the fury simmered into a quietly burning ember.
“Mine.” He repeated, his voice breathy and reverent and more Henry than it had been for hours.
Finally, he relinquished you. Your feet touched the floor, legs shaking with exhaustion and defeat and sated desire. Henry breathed heavily where he stood, his chest rising and falling raggedly.
His hand came up to your face, pale fingers stained with dried blood.
“This is what you are,” he muttered. “A beast. My beast. You can never go back. You can never be anything else. We are the same.”
You knew with sickening clarity that he was right. You nodded into his hand as his gaze pierced into you. Your eyes shut as they filled with tears.
No matter what lived inside you, lived inside him, you were the same.
You had been erased, reforged, just as he had. The storm inside him was the same storm inside you. The darkness in him answered the darkness in you. He felt more like a home than the world ever had.
The ruined floor met you as you sank down onto it. A sob broke from you as you surrendered to the grief, to the wounds, to truth of what you were.
Utterly broken and utterly his.
Henry sank to the floor with you, embracing you against his chest, his blonde hair ruined and splayed everywhere as his head fell to rest on yours. His trembling hand braced the back of your head as the shadows began to coil again, wrapping around you both like wisps of pure night.
His power thrummed through you, your own answering in a deep, burning pulse.
You were bound together, broken together, sitting in the ruins of the crucible you'd created.
The room fell into silence as the two of you, exhausted and ruined, surrendered to each other in a way only monsters could, by collapsing into darkness.
***
Your eyes opened in a haze, your head throbbing as it lay against Henry's chest. Your body was almost limp against his, your limbs splayed at odd angles, your bones aching.
Henry was still gone, his breath shallow as he lay unconscious on the fractured tile. You didn't know how long you'd been gone into the darkness. Your vision was blurry, pulsing at the edges.
At first, it felt like a distant nightmare. But as your eyes adjusted, you saw it all again. The rainbow room in ruins. Shattered glass, exploded lights. Blood‑streaked tile, piles of limp, warped bodies painted with crimson. A cold static crawled across the air like frostbite.
Something gnawed at you. A dread your mind could feel before your eyes could see it.
“Henry?” You said, your voice raw as you shook his shoulder.
His eyes fluttered open, midnight blue marred with the shadow of a dreamless sleep. He groaned against the tile, squeezing his eyes shut again.
“My head.” He murmured, a pale bloodied hand coming up to rest against his forehead.
You could hear the alarm still wailing in the halls, a siren no one was left to answer.
“I know, but Henry we need to go.” You said, panic settling into your limbs as you stood up. “We need to get out of here. Come on.”
Henry groaned again as you yanked at his arm.
“Please, Henry-”
His eyes fluttered again, unfocused, drowned in exhaustion. He blinked hard, trying to orient himself.
You noticed then how bloodied he really was. It had trailed and pooled from both his nostrils, staining his lips and teeth. His jaw was streaked with blood that had streamed from his ears. His eyes were full of broken vessels, the whites deeply reddened.
You felt as bad as he looked. Wrecked in every corner of yourself from the sheer exertion, from pushing yourself beyond your limits, from being a ragdoll at the mercy of him and the formless, eldritch entity.
You slipped your hand under his arm and pulled him up. He wobbled slightly, his body shaking with a low, smothered thrum of weak energy.
“We can't leave like this, Nineteen.” He muttered, glancing down at your blood-stained clothes, at his own.
“We'll get cleaned up.” You said, your voice hoarse. “Quickly, come on. For all we know they could be sending in the goddamn cavalry or something.”
As you started dragging him across the debris, the unthinkable happened. The doors opened.
You froze. Henry went rigid.
They groaned across the shattered tile, smearing a pool of blood and glass shards as they went.
She stood in the doorway, her tiny frame shaking, her eyes wet and wide with horror as her gaze swept the room. The bodies, the blood, the ruin, the crackling air.
011.
She whimpered, her breath catching in her throat as her eyes landed on you and Henry, standing together in the chaos, covered in blood, seeping darkness.
“P-Peter?” she whispered, her wide eyes landing on him first, on the shock of crimson painted across his uniform. “Nineteen?”
Henry's breath drew in sharp and hitched. He didn’t move for one long, painful second. He didn’t look at her. His hands tightened on your arms.
011's eyes pooled hot, heavy tears as they cut to the crumpled, wrecked form of Brenner.
“Papa...?” She whispered, voice breaking. “Nineteen... what did you do? What did you do?!” She shrieked, her tiny frame shaking violently, sobs wracking through her.
“No - Eleven, please, listen to me-”
She screamed, raising both of her hands towards you, sending you lurching across the tile with a slam of forceful energy. Henry reacted instinctively, his own hand flying outwards, power surging through him.
011's eyes widened, a gasp catching in her throat as Henry's force threw her backwards into the door. She crumpled and then stumbled back up to her feet, winded. Her devastated eyes fixed on Henry with a deep shock of horror and realization.
“Peter? But I don't - I don't understand, how did you-”
Henry moved, approaching her with slow, predatory steps.
“My name isn't Peter, Eleven.” He hissed.
He flicked his wrist out toward her, and her eyes darted downward. Her horror-stricken face contorted as she took in the shock of black ink in his pale skin. Her eyes grew even wider.
She didn't speak for a long moment, shocked into silence.
“One?” She finally whispered brokenly, her hands trembling at her sides. “But Papa said he-”
“Papa is a liar and a snake.” Henry snarled, pacing closer to her, “I was his prisoner all these years, just as you were Eleven. To your Papa, you were nothing more than an animal, a monster, a lab rat to be tamed. But now...”
Henry's head turned toward the limp remains of the man. 011's eyes followed, a whimper rising in her throat as she looked at him.
“Now he is gone... and you, Eleven. You will never be a prisoner again.”
“You killed them,” she sobbed. “You killed all of them, didn't you? Both of you.”
Henry was right in front of her now, his hand reaching up to tilt her tiny chin upwards. He loomed over her, studying her face, an innocence so twisted with grief.
“But you... you were always so nice...” she cried, tears falling to the floor. “You were gentle... you... you were my friend-”
Her head shook as she tried to make sense of it. Of Henry, of you, of the horror.
“Why? Why?!” She wailed.
You could feel Henry's power building, warping the room, rising through him as you rose to your feet.
“Don't you see? I freed them, Eleven,” Henry said, his voice a soft snarl as he tilted his head. “I freed them all.”
“No... no no no...” she cried, her head shaking furiously as her tears fell.
“Don't cry, Eleven,” Henry said gently. “They're free... and now, now it is time for you to be free from this hell.”
His hand shot up, the force flying through him. You reacted automatically, gripping him with your own power before he could break her, lurching him backwards across the room.
“No, Henry!” You shouted, thrusting your energy forward and throwing him to the floor. “Enough!”
You were weak, but so was he, and he easily crumpled, sent careening into the tile, splayed on the floor.
Henry snarled, his eyes narrowing in on you as he scrambled to his feet. You gripped him again, your weak power wrapping around his even weaker frame.
Fresh blood pooled from your nose, staining your lips. Your head throbbed dangerously. Even the exertion of holding him was tearing at the edges of your mind.
“Nineteen, let go-” he grunted, struggling in your grasp.
“No. Not until you promise not to hurt her,” you spat, splayed fingers trembling. “Please, Henry, she can come with us, she can-”
His brow deepened in frustration. You stared at him with wide, tired eyes and his face dropped, softening at your pleas. His eyes lowered. You could feel him surrendering, weak and exhausted.
But before he could speak, 011 stepped forward. Her face twisted with grief and terror and betrayal, all collapsing into one unbearable expression.
“No. I won't.” She said, her voice oddly calm as her tears continued falling.
It was too late. She'd already seen it. The darkness in you, the darkness in him. The bond, the shadow, the monster you had become together.
She wouldn't go with you, not now, not ever.
“Eleven, please-” You said urgently. “Come with us, just-”
“No,” she whispered again, her chest heaving.
Your power dissolved into nothing as you succumbed to your exhaustion. You slumped back as Henry regained his posture and turned toward her.
His eyes narrowed, sharp and intense. He stepped in front of you, defensive and furious, raising his hand towards the child, preparing to finish what he'd started.
His power warped for only a second.
Then, she screamed.
A shrill, ear-splitting shriek that ripped through your ears. Her power erupted from her in a violent, corrosive shockwave that tore through the rainbow room, explosive and catastrophic.
Henry was thrown backwards, through the shattered two-way mirror, his body slammed into the wall and held forcefully against it.
“Henry!” You screamed, scrambling forward.
011's hand flew towards you, pushing you down into the floor, restraining you in place as she held Henry against the cracked wall, his body trembling as he struggled against the force.
Henry snarled, grunted, writhed as 011 stepped closer on tiny trembling legs.
The power radiating from her small form bent the very air, a cascade of violent static that pulsed through the space.
“No more.” She growled.
Her fingers splayed and contorted towards you both as she screamed again, her voice ripping through the room in a raw, broken cry. Her body seized violently as the power burst forth from her, slamming into you and Henry both.
It hit like a shockwave made of something nuclear.
The floor fractured beneath you. Not the tile, not the concrete beneath.
It was the very skin of reality itself. Particles burst forth around you, firing in disarray, millions of rogue pieces scattering as she tore open the fabric of space.
A jagged, violent tear ripped open below you, a dark trench that clawed and pulled at your body.
Another tore open in the wall behind Henry.
You screamed and scrambled, limbs useless as an otherworldly gravity pulled you into the dark fracture. It gripped you, dragged you, tore at you.
You couldn't escape. You couldn't get out.
You screamed for Henry, guttural and terrified. He screamed for you, arm outstretched, fingers gripping nothing, his beautiful face twisted into terror.
Then, you were gone.
Torn from him, torn from the lab, dragged into the very maw of reality.
The last thing you saw was Henry’s face. Devastated, broken, monstrously human as pure darkness swallowed you whole.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
☣︎ Comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series! ☣︎
A/N: This is the last chapter of Wounds! Thank you so much to everyone who has read, commented, liked and shared this story. It means the world to me. Yes, there is a cliffhanger because you know my ass planned a sequel before I even wrote this series. Henry and 019 will return 🕷
Chapter Five of Season Three of The Trials Expanded
Plot Summary: Theo and Jane prepare for the trial. Theo faces judgment. The Black Ravens come under new leadership.
Pairing: Theo Deschamps x Jane Warfield!Reader
Content: Black Ravens politics, anxiety, hurt/comfort, Ministry/trial, partnership, intimacy, smut (shower, handjob, sub!Theo, switch!Theo, oral, p in v)
WC: 10.2k | Read on Ao3
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The benchtop was cool under Jane's legs as she stared at the back of Theo's head, the midday light spilling into his hair, sitting messily over his neck.
His shoulders were a straight, muscular line, moving ever so slightly as he swirled his mug under the running faucet. He stared out the window vacantly as Jane's spoon clinked around her cereal bowl.
“Theo?” She prompted.
“Hm?”
“You’ve been rinsing that one cup for like, four minutes.”
Theo’s head dropped, his gaze cutting from the brightly lit garden outside the window to the sink beneath his hands. His mug was overflowing, long-rinsed and spinning water down the drain.
“Oh, right.” He said, his voice flat as he shut the faucet off.
He snapped his fingers, mug drying instantly at his command, and set it down on the bench. His gaze dragged back up to the window.
The garden was brightly lit, warm and vibrant with an array of spring greens and pinks. And yet, he still felt it like a threat, as if the outside world were a wolf in Spring’s clothing, just waiting to strike.
“Theo,” Jane said again, pointing her foot out and bumping it against his lower back.
“Hm?”
“Wherever you’re going, come back.”
He sighed, turning on his heels and resting his palms back on the sink edge.
Jane sat cross-legged on the bench, her bowl in her hands, her cereal swimming gently in the milk as she studied him. The light flared over his face and across his bare chest, casting shadows over the lean muscles. She couldn't help but rake her eyes over all of him as he stood there.
The sight of her admiring him made Theo’s lingering anxiety descend somewhere he almost couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Come here,” Jane said softly, placing her bowl down with a quiet ceramic clang.
“Jane, I’m fine, really. I’m just-”
“No,” she said, her eyes half rolling in her head as she prodded at him with her foot again. “I said, come here. Don’t make me come to you and exert more effort than it took to get up here.”
Theo chuckled and let his eyes fall to her softly curved belly, peeking out of her t-shirt, which she'd loosely tucked under her bra. He surrendered, stepping over the kitchen and letting his hands rest on either side of her.
She ran her fingers through his blonde-brown waves, unbrushed and mussed. He leaned his head into her chest, letting it lie against her as she raked her nails through his hair. His hand moved to her belly, resting over the bump with a reverent touch, his thumb drawing circles.
The small, singular magical hum of their baby collected in his palm. It was warm, calming. It steadied his breathing, but Jane could still feel his energy landing tilted around her.
“You’re anxious.” She said quietly.
“You’re exceptionally un-anxious.” He huffed.
She slipped her hands under his face, tilting it up towards her. His eyes were their usual bright blue, but a glassiness sat on top, like he was looking at her through a window.
“Because I'm here with you, and I know you’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” Theo sighed.
“You did what had to be done.”
“I’m not sure they’ll see it that way.”
“It doesn’t matter what they see. You’re here and safe, and that’s all that matters.”
Theo rested his head down into her again, the weight of his impending trial looming over his shoulders. Jane felt the tension in them immediately. The way his muscles tightened beneath her fingertips, the way his breath hitched, the way his body leaned into her but never fully relaxed.
“And if I'm imprisoned?”
“Well then, I'll just have to visit you in my skimpiest dresses and hope we have a private room.” She tried playfully.
Theo huffed out a single, breathy sound that didn't quite make it all the way to a laugh.
Jane sighed, brushing her fingers over the warm, taut lines of his shoulders. Tension remained stuck there, unyielding. Her voice softened. He didn't need jokes, he just needed her.
“Theo, seriously, don't even entertain that thought. It's not going to happen.”
Theo sighed deeply into her warmth as she kissed his hair.
The last two weeks had been nothing but lingering dread. The raw horror of the crypt had begun to ease, the nightmares less frequent, the tremors less violent. But the anxiety surrounding the future had only grown sharper.
Every day that passed brought them closer to the trial. Every hour seemed to tighten the knot in Theo’s chest. The more days that passed, the less conviction Theo felt in what he’d been driven to do.
Gregory had been entirely corrupted. Warped, demonic. But Theo still sometimes felt like he could have acted differently.
He could have found a way to bind him, could have found a way to cleanse him. He could have delivered him to the Elders alive, could have chosen mercy instead of the blade.
But seeing Jane so lifeless and hollow, knowing their baby could have been killed by the effects of the curse, was what had driven him. Every single moment of Gregory's torment was pushed into the dagger that Theo drove deeper into his chest.
He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t wanted him dead. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t feel good to sever him from their world once and for all.
And he feared what that made him.
Jane picked up on every single emotion coursing through him. The guilt, the remnant fury, the doubt, the fear. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she held him against her.
“I don’t regret it Jane.”
“Neither do I,” she said, sliding her hands down his arms, grounding him. “Whatever happens, we'll face it together.”
He nodded, but she felt the tremor in him. It was subtle, but unmistakable.
“Come on,” she said steadily. “We have evidence to go over.”
***
Despite the warmth of the day, the late afternoon light felt colder than usual. The breeze had an edge, like it wanted them to pay attention.
Jane wrapped her cloak tighter around herself as she and Theo approached headquarters. The marble facade gleamed under the sun like a monument to everything they had endured, and everything still waiting to be confronted.
Theo’s hand rested at the small of her back, steadying her. She could feel the tension in him still, coiled tight beneath his fingertips like a storm waiting for the right moment to break.
They stepped across the threshold, heels clipping over marble.
The building was quieter than usual. Not silent, but subdued. Conversations were hushed and tense. Elders and members moved through the velvet-lined halls with stacks of parchment, sealed evidence boxes, and enchanted quills scribbling of their own accord.
The air hummed, thick with apprehension from every corner.
Jerry stood at the entrance to the meeting chamber, his expression drawn and exhausted.
“Theo, Jane, you’re here,” he said, relief and dread tangled in his voice. “Good. We need to go over everything before the Ministry convenes. Much of the evidence will overlap with your trial, Theo.”
Theo nodded stiffly. “Let’s get it over with.”
They strode inside behind Jerry, who had clearly neglected the back of his hair when preparing for the day. Even his steps were tense, his leather shoes scraping harder over the floor than usual.
The Elders sat around the carved stone table, their faces pale and drawn. Some looked ashamed. Others looked afraid. A few looked quietly furious. At Gregory, at themselves, at the entire situation.
Maybe at Theo, he couldn't tell. But it made his stomach twist as he studied them.
Silence fell as they took their seats, sinking into the high-backed chairs. Amber light flickered across the ridges of the table, lit torches dancing on every white pillar.
Briar gestured to the table. “We’ve compiled everything we have so far.”
Theo’s jaw tightened. “Show me.”
Jerry cleared his throat and reached for the first file. His fingers shook slightly, the edge of the parchment scraping across his nail.
“This is the forged note Gregory used to lure Jane to the estate.”
Jane’s breath hitched. It was just as she remembered it. The old, ashy parchment that she'd so easily fallen for. The handwriting was identical to Jerry’s, the seal perfect.
Theo’s hand slid over hers under the stone, his fingers lacing around it. Her nervous energy shot through him, mirroring his own.
Jerry continued, voice strained. “He must have studied my correspondence for months. He mimicked my tone, my signature. Of course, he managed to steal my personal seal, which only made it more convincing.”
Theo’s eyes darkened. “And you didn’t notice it was gone. Until it was too late.”
Jerry swallowed, his face stony. “No. I didn’t. I admit I was... foolish. Lazy. I didn't use it when corresponding with the estate, like I should have.”
“You were a fool about much worse than neglecting your seal.” Theo spat, leaning forward pointedly. “How about the fact that you hired Gregory in the first place?”
“I-” Jerry started.
Elizabeth spoke from across the table. “Please, Theo. We'll get to that. Let us present the rest.”
Theo's eyes narrowed, but he sat back in his chair, surrendering. She lifted another parchment and sent it floating over the table's surface towards him with a flick of her finger.
“This is the timeline of the resident Elders’ corruption. We believe Gregory began hexing them around January, approximately three months ago.”
Jane felt her stomach twist.
Theo’s voice was low, dangerous. “Three months. And none of you saw it.”
Lucien spoke up, his voice aged and brittle. “We saw… changes. But we dismissed them. We thought they were overworked. We didn’t investigate, and we should have. We were too focused on the other incidents... which of course, we now know were connected.”
Theo’s glare could have cut stone.
“You didn’t investigate because you didn’t want to admit you’d allowed an unsanctioned man into your ranks.” He spat. “Gregory was barred after the Winter Solstice duel, and despite that, you all let him take up residence at your most sacred place.”
Lucien sighed heavily enough that his breath pooled low over the table, a flume of Earl Grey and old age.
“Yes. We take responsibility for that.”
“That’s the least you will do.” Theo snarled.
Lucien looked away, his eyes drawing back down to the evidential parchments.
Jerry opened another file. “This is the magical residue from the crypt. The corruption was… extensive. Gregory awakened necromantic runes we haven’t seen in centuries.”
Jane shivered in her seat, a frigidness sinking into her limbs as her mind reeled back into the crypt.
“The Founder’s remains were in pieces. Bones, fibres from the raven crown. Remnant magical energy that was released from his tomb when it was opened.” Jerry continued gravely.
He averted his eyes from Theo's piercing gaze, wandering them over the parchments on the table instead.
Rowan, one of the resident Elders, stood up from his seat. His straight black hair was slicked behind his ears, his thin-rimmed glasses low on his long nose.
His voice was still weak as he spoke. “Gregory hexed us slowly, one by one. Primed us to behave normally so the others wouldn’t suspect anything. We couldn’t overpower him or communicate with each other. But we watched everything.” His eyes grew dark, a dread rising in them. “We saw everything he did, but the hex was absolute. We couldn’t act any more than Jane could.”
Jane’s breath trembled at the memory. The dark, decaying interior of the crypt cell, the smell of bones and ash, the sight of everything she was doing behind her eyes, powerless to stop it.
Theo’s jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth crack together.
Rowan continued, voice shaking. “We saw him hex Jane when she arrived and command her through the crypt. She sat in that cell for two days, just as we sat in the burial chamber, like hollow vessels. We saw him prepare it all. The Necronomicon, the altar, the obsidian blade. We saw him raise the founder.” He shuddered at the memory. “And we saw what happened when he-”
Theo’s fury simmered visibly beneath his skin. “When he tried to have Jane murder me.”
Rowan swallowed, drawing in a sharp breath.
“Yes,” he said quietly, his eyes low. “We will provide testimony for your trial, Theo. Those of us who can, but some are still recovering. That long spent under the hex… well, the healers think some among us may never recover.”
A heavy silence fell over the room, the only sound the torches flickering in their iron sconces. Jane’s eyes squeezed shut, her fingers tight in Theo’s.
“It’s not surprising,” she said finally. “That level of corrupted magic, for that long... It can burn through the soul entirely, strip you of your magical essence.”
Theo’s shoulders tightened.
Jerry cleared his throat. “Yes, well. We also have the estate’s observer ward records from the moment you arrived, Theo.”
He flicked his fingers over a particular, silver-white parchment lying in the middle of the table. It floated upwards, morphing into a shimmering sphere that floated like a tiny see-through moon above the table.
Theo stiffened. Jane squeezed his hand, rubbing the pad of her thumb over his knuckles.
Jerry hesitated, sensing the unease. “We don’t have to play it. We can simply hand it over to the Ministry-”
“Play it,” Theo said, his voice clipped.
After a beat, Jerry nodded and flicked his wrist towards it. The sphere began glowing, pulsing with a hum as the recording flickered to life. It was somewhat distorted, fragmented, but unmistakable.
Everyone in the room watched intently as the estate gates opened for Theo like they'd been waiting for him, trapping him inside Gregory's ruin. It showed him moving through the decaying grounds, the grand doors admitting him. It showed him running through the smog-filled halls in frantic bursts, collapsing and screaming, his face contorted, like a silent glitchy horror film, washed with grain. It showed every second of Gregory's cruel torment as he flew through each level of the manor, slamming open doors to empty rooms.
Theo went rigid in his seat, the feeling rushing back through him. His desperation, his dread, the thought of Jane held somewhere he couldn't reach. The demonic hiss of Gregory's warped voice spun through his ears, trailing down his spine as he watched the ward pulse.
The sphere dimmed, and silence swallowed the room.
Jane felt tears prick behind her eyelashes. She hadn't seen him like that before. So desperate, so afraid. She hadn't seen how Gregory had tormented him through the manor before he'd got to her. Her wet eyes gazed over at him. His breath was uneven, his shoulders tense.
“It doesn't cover the crypts. Wards can't penetrate sacred burial spaces, of course.” Jerry said. “But it's clear you were being tormented, Theo. Led through the place. And regardless, you have multiple witnesses as to what happened in the crypt.”
Theo's gaze was stony, staring into nothing, his head nodding vacantly. He didn’t respond. He was too exhausted, too empty at the memories, too hollow. His anger was smothered under it.
Jerry cleared his throat. “That's what we have. That's what we will present to the Ministry. Along with the healer's reports, all of our correspondence with the estate since January, Gregory's contracts and-”
He paused, curling his lips in like it made him nauseated to finish.
“And?” Theo prompted, his eyebrows pulling together.
“And... Gregory's body.”
Theo's jaw clenched, and his eyes slid shut.
Jane spoke for him, sensing the way he was beginning to shut down in his seat. “Of course. That kind of corruption doesn't leave the body, even in death.”
Jerry nodded slowly, sighing deeply as he did.
Lucien's voice drawled over the stone once more. “The Ministry's investigation into the order's leadership has begun. Several Elders have already voluntarily stepped down. Others are under review. The entire structure of the Black Ravens is being re-evaluated.”
“Starting with me,” Jerry said quietly. “I corresponded with Gregory. I believed his intentions to be pure. I allowed him to work for us, permitted him to reside at the estate. And I am prepared to face whatever consequence the Ministry deems appropriate.”
Jane's shoulders dropped, a solemness washing through her.
“We will not allow corruption like this to ever take root again,” Lucien added quietly.
Theo’s voice was low, cold. “No, you won’t.”
Jerry nodded. “We’ll need both of your statements for the Ministry.”
Jane inhaled slowly. “We’ll give them.”
Absolute silence fell through the chamber, the only sound the soft flames flickering and the scratching of quills on parchment as Theo and Jane recorded their statements.
Theo could feel Jane vibrating with a cold anxiety as she recounted her experience. Jane could feel him, his anger and dread pricking against her skin like static as he wrote.
Theo didn’t speak when they were done. He simply slid their parchments to Lucien and stood, his arm finding Jane's waist and guiding her up from her seat.
“Good luck.” Jane said, looking most pointedly at Jerry as she did.
He nodded gruffly, his hands falling onto his lap as he sat back in his seat.
“You as well, Theo.” He said as Theo began turning them towards the door. “With the trial tomorrow. We'll support you, of course. Evidence, statements, all of it. Whatever you need.”
Theo still didn't speak. He only nodded, a single, rough jerk of his head.
The moment they stepped outside, Jane felt Theo’s breath shudder. He didn’t look back, he just held her close as their shoes clipped across the pathway through the manicured front lawns.
Night had fallen. The spring sun had disappeared below the horizon, washing the world in a subtle darkness.
Jane leaned into Theo's side, staring up at the line of his jaw above her. “Home?”
Theo nodded, his voice barely audible. “Yes.”
He kissed her on the head softly before snapping his fingers, vanishing them.
The facade of the building was left absent as they careened through the ether towards home, where the lake rippled and shone, where they could breathe air that didn't hang thick with the scent of stone and flame.
Away from the headquarters, the evidence, the guilt. Away from the people that had failed them.
***
A quiet crunch broke the serene quiet as Theo and Jane landed on the garden path.
Silver moonlight trailed behind them like a soft veil as they walked up to the house. The lake rippled quietly, the night air cool as it rolled against their ankles. Theo held Jane's hand almost too tightly, as though he was afraid she might slip away if he loosened his grip.
Inside, Jane summoned a few balls of light, their soft glow filling the living room with amber flares as they floated around the space like tiny flickering flames.
Theo stood near the window, staring out at the lake, his shoulders tense again. Jane approached him slowly, sliding her arms around his waist from behind.
“We’ll get through this,” she murmured.
Theo closed his eyes, leaning back into her. “I’m not afraid of the trial. I’m afraid of what it will mean for you if they decide I’m guilty. What it will mean for our baby.”
Jane’s breath caught. “Theo...”
“They could imprison me, Jane,” he said quietly. “And you... you'd be alone-”
She gripped his waist and guided him around to face her, her hands sliding up to cradle his face. “I’m not losing you. Not now. Not ever.”
His face softened as she looked into his eyes with nothing but warmth and adoration. He leaned into her touch, his long hair brushing over her knuckles as his head tilted.
Jane ran her thumb over the scar between his eyes. “You protected me, Theo. You protected our baby. You protected the Black Ravens, even when they didn't do the same for you. The Ministry will see that.”
Theo's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. “I can only hope so.”
Jane’s heart kicked as she looked at him. The fraughtness underneath his features, the anxiety that was sitting shallow beneath his attempts at a smile.
“You need a distraction,” Jane said softly, her lips meeting his in a tender kiss.
She was soft at first, her lips loving against his, coaxing him to relax. Theo’s insides bloomed with a heat that even his anxiety couldn’t smother.
“Do I?” Theo murmured between their mouths, his own growing more insistent against hers.
“Thoroughly,” Jane smiled against his lips. “You need to relax.”
“Jane… we should prepare…”
“This is preparing. Trust me.”
She let her lips brush against his once more before lacing his long fingers through hers and turning, leading him up the stairs.
Theo’s eyes fell down the back of her. The soft cascades of her hair over her shoulders, the curve of her back and the lines of her legs as they climbed the stairs.
She led him across the landing and into the bathroom with purposeful steps. She ignored the main lights, opting instead to conjure another small, hovering ball of light that lit the space in a dim gold. The shower came on with a snap of her fingers, the room filling with clouds of billowing steam.
“My turn to take care of you,” Jane murmured.
She rose onto her toes to kiss him again, her mouth warm and hungry as the heat bloomed through her. Theo let himself get lost in her lips, melting into her like a helpless shard of ice in the sun.
Jane’s fingers brushed down his neck, finding his collar. She moved slowly, unbuttoning his shirt, punctuating each movement with another deep kiss.
Theo’s stomach flipped as her fingertips trailed down his bare skin, dipping over the peaks and valleys of his lean torso. She pulled his coat and shirt from his shoulders, letting them fall into a crumpled pile on the floor.
She kissed under his jaw, making his neck arch as she moved to his throat, laying a warm trail down into his collarbones and over his chest. Theo’s breath caught, his hands sliding up through her hair.
“Are you distracted yet?” Jane breathed as she grappled with his belt, sliding it through the loops.
Theo’s fingers slipped under the hem of her sweater.
“Almost,” he smiled, peeling off her top layers slowly.
He hummed, his eyes bright as his fingers brushed over the lace of her bra. He unclasped it, letting the straps fall in a whisper down her arms.
“Hm, yes. There we go.” He smiled, his eyes hazy as he took in the dark pop of her nipples, already swelling into peaks in anticipation. “Properly distracted.”
Jane grinned, her mouth returning to his as she pulled his trousers down his thighs. He circled his thumbs over her hardened nipples, drawing a soft, sensitive whine from her lips that tumbled into his mouth.
His fingers found the zipper of her skirt next, releasing it with a metallic whisper. He pushed it down her hips along with her underwear, letting it fall to the floor, his hands trailing back to the curve of her stomach.
“Beautiful…” Theo murmured, his heart kicking as he looked at her.
“Come,” Jane said softly, leading him through the steam into the hot shower.
The water cascaded onto their bodies, warm and calming, trailing rivers over them as Jane pulled Theo closer, her hands brushing down his wet, heated skin.
“God, look at you...” He murmured, brushing a wet lock of her hair back over her shoulder. “Incredible...”
His lips crashed over hers, deep and claiming, his fingers tracing over the swell of her breasts. His hands were as hungry as his mouth, touching her everywhere, caressing down her waist and hips, the water running over his knuckles.
Desire snaked through them both, hot and aching as they tasted each other, Theo’s tongue sliding through her lips, Jane’s teeth grazing over the plush skin of his bottom lip, making him whine into her mouth.
She slid her fingers down his torso, trailing them over his abs and his hips, dragging slowly along the muscular lines that led between his legs. Theo’s hips twitched instinctively towards her as her fingers brushed over his rigid length, agonizingly slowly.
“Hm… you do need this, don’t you?” Jane cooed, biting over his lip again as she wound her hand around his cock. “You need to forget about everything except this…”
“Yes…” Theo breathed, kissing her deeper. “How can I think about anything else when you’re wrapped around me like that?”
His words broke into a groan as Jane stroked him, working him in tight, steady pulls. She swirled her thumb over his slick tip, twisting her wrist in the way that she knew drove him crazy.
Theo’s head arched back for a moment, lost in the sensation as she gradually sped up, her hand like a hot vice around him. Every stroke was a salve to his stress, his body relaxing into her grip like it was made for her.
“Fuck, Jane, you better slow down.” Theo whined, his head falling forward, his eyebrows knitted.
“Is that right?” Jane purred, deliberately doing the opposite, stroking him faster.
It was more than just making him feel good. It was more than just pleasure or distraction. It was a reclaiming of their space, their bodies, replacing every atom of dread with love. Just as they'd reclaimed the lake, the garden.
Every intimate whisper was a stitch that worked to close the wound that had almost swallowed them both.
She watched with lust-laden eyes as Theo moaned and bucked into her hand, his wet hair falling over his cheeks as he leaned into her. His arms came up to the wall behind her, caging her in as he rutted into her grip like a man on the utter edge of defeat.
Jane could feel him shuddering, his muscles tightening, his cock throbbing in her hand as he teetered on the edge.
“Jane… fuck, please-”
“Please what?” Jane murmured, revelling in every single spasm of his hips, every single sound from his mouth, her own slick arousal surging from her.
“Please, I want to be inside you-”
Jane slowed her hand, rising on her toes to hover over his mouth. “You want to fuck me Theo?” She purred. “You want to fill me up?”
“Yes - oh god, wait - shit-”
Her words unintentionally undid him. Before he could stop himself, he was coming apart, spilling his thick release over her belly, bucking into her hand as the intense waves of pleasure wracked his body.
“Fuck,” He whined softly in a huff, his head falling into her shoulder, his wet hair clinging to her as she grinned and drew slow strokes over him. “I didn't mean to-”
She huffed out a breathy laugh. “And I was slowing down.”
Theo groaned, leaning against her bare, wet body as he kissed over her neck, the hot water trailing over her skin and his lips.
“I can’t help what you do to me,” he sighed. “And it's entirely unfair when you’re naked and wet and saying things like that, sweetheart.”
“Are you filing a complaint?”
Theo laughed, biting playfully at her neck. “Never.”
“Didn’t think so,” she laughed, pulling his head up to kiss him. “Now, stand there and look pretty.”
“What-”
“You heard me,” she said, her eyebrows flicking upwards.
He did as he was told, standing under the stream of hot water, letting it run rivers over him as he watched her gather the liquid soap in her palms. She lathered it over his neck, his shoulders, curved her soaped hands over his biceps and the lean plains of his chest, dragging them down and circling suds over his abs.
“You look like you’re enjoying that far too much.” Theo murmured, watching her eyes as they trailed over every inch of him.
“Maybe I am.” She grinned, gripping his hips with her soapy hands playfully.
Theo rolled his eyes as she lathered the suds down his thighs. His stomach flipped with renewed heat as she kneeled in the cascade of water to soap over his long, muscular legs.
His skin was hot under her fingertips, and she purposefully dragged them firmly over his thighs, watching as his length began to swell again.
“Oh… well, aren’t you needy?” She grinned from beneath him, her eyes feasting between his legs before flicking back up to his face.
“You’re on your knees, Jane. I’m simply not responsible for my reaction to that.”
She laughed and rose to her feet, hovering her mouth over his as her fingers dragged back up his thighs, her thumbs purposefully brushing over his thickened length.
“Turn around.” Jane purred, her lips brushing every so softly over his.
He paused for a moment, grappling with the urge to hook his hands under her legs and sink himself inside of her against the wall. She read the bright flicker in his eyes, and his thought landed in her head like thunder.
A wicked curve pulled through her lips. “I saw that.”
“Saw what?”
“What you just imagined,” she said slyly.
“I'm also not responsible for my thoughts when you're naked and wet and soaping me everywhere.” Theo said, his eyebrows sliding up pointedly.
Jane rose up on her tiptoes in the steam, hovering her mouth over his again. He tried to kiss her, but she jerked her head back. “Then be a good boy and turn around.”
Theo's stomach flipped with desire again, his heart kicking as she commanded him. He did as he was told, turning into the stream of water. Jane's hands moved over his shoulders, down the lean muscles of his back, spreading the soft suds over him.
“Does that feel nice?” She said, digging her thumbs into the muscles that were particularly tight.
“Yes, although I must admit, I'd rather be doing it to you.”
“You needed to relax. And I enjoy taking care of you, Theo.”
“You enjoy the view.” He said pointedly.
“Hm, well yes.”
“And you enjoy telling me what to do, don't you darling?”
“Just a little.” She grinned.
She ran her hands lower, smoothing suds over the plush muscle of his ass. She took her time, laying her palms over it, circling the subtle curves of him with reverence.
“Okay, well, now you're just groping me,” Theo chuckled.
“I'm washing you.” Jane protested, but her fingers dug harder into his ass, squeezing and kneading it.
“Is that what you call it?”
“I call it being thorough,” she said innocently, her voice a soft purr. “Though I think I missed a spot.”
Before Theo could answer, she'd slipped her hands around his hips, her soapy fingers winding around his cock in a sudden grasp that made his breath catch. He was already hard for her, having had her hands drag over his body for so long.
“That's better,” she purred as she stroked over him again, his head falling back into her as she embraced his tall frame from behind.
Theo groaned, his brow knitting down as she drew long, languid movements over his cock.
“Jane-”
“Hm?”
“Stop that.” He whined, his breath already ragged.
“Convince me to.”
Theo didn't move for a moment, letting her drag her tight hand over him a few more times.
Then, he abruptly spun around, making Jane's eager fingers slip off his cock. Her breath hitched as he walked her back into the wall in commanding paces, his eyes dark and hungry.
In one fluid motion, he gathered her wrists and pinned them up above her head, his eyes lingering on her mouth before dragging down to her chest, which had instinctively bowed out for him.
“Oh, now look at you,” Theo purred, brushing his wet lips against hers. “At my mercy, hm?”
Jane felt her stomach knot with a heated desire, her wetness pooling as he loomed over her.
Theo's hand tightened on her wrists. “You already made a mess of me, sweetheart. Now you're going to do what I say, aren't you?”
She nodded, a small whimper escaping her as he pressed his lips against hers.
“Good girl,” he breathed. “First, you're going to get out and get dry. Slowly. Without magic.”
She nodded again, her breath quickening.
Theo's voice was low, rough, a ribbon of gravel and silk that made the back of her neck prickle with need. “Then you're going to get on the bed and spread your pretty legs open for me. Aren't you?”
“Yes, Theo,” Jane breathed, her heart kicking with anticipation.
Theo released her wrists, ghosting his fingers down her arms, onto the side of her neck, his fingertips tingling over her skin.
She stepped out slowly, grabbing a fluffy towel as Theo lingered in the shower. He leaned against the glass, watching her every movement as she smoothed the towel over herself, drying herself slowly.
He hummed approvingly as she ran the towel over her breasts, over the curve of her ass, between her legs and down her thighs.
Each movement was slow and deliberate, teasing him just enough that she could see his fingers twitching with the need to touch her. She squeezed the water from her hair, ruffling it slightly, letting it sit damp and wildly untidy in a way that made Theo feel like an animal.
As she strode out of the bathroom, she could feel Theo stalking behind her like a predator, his eyes hungry as he raked them over her backside.
He dried himself with a snap of his fingers and stood in the doorway, watching intently as she climbed up on the bed. His gaze feasted on her as she lay back on the pillows and ran a hand up her thigh, spreading her legs for him.
“Hm… good girl,” he said, his voice low as he crossed the bedroom and sank onto the bed. “So pretty... and so ready for me, hm?”
He ghosted a hand up her leg, from her ankle to the soft flesh of her inner thigh, his fingers deliberately slow as he trailed them over her. His eyes drew to her pussy, flushed and glistening.
Jane whined as he leaned into her, his mouth laying light kisses across her slit. She writhed, seeking more.
“And so impatient,” Theo grinned into her flesh, his hands now kneading into her thighs as he trailed kisses through her heat.
“Please, Theo… don’t tease me,” she groaned.
“Oh, but I love how needy you get, darling,” he purred as he slid his tongue ever so slowly through her folds, parting them.
Jane bucked her hips and whimpered, her fingers sliding into his hair. Theo chuckled, his breath hot as it pooled over her slit.
“See? So frustrated… hm… are you aching for it, my love?” He teased, voice low and rumbling.
“Theo, please, you’re torturing me…” Jane huffed in frustration, her head sinking into the pillow.
“Well, I guess I should give you what you want then, my love. You have been such a good girl after all.”
Suddenly, he delved his tongue into her with force, lapping hungry broad strokes through her slick folds. He sucked them into his mouth, swirling at her entrance and sliding up to circle over her clit.
She moaned out ungracefully, her back arching off the bed as he devoured her. His mouth was feverish, the bedroom filled with the messy, wet sounds of him on her.
“Better?” Theo hummed against her cunt, tightening his hold on her thighs, spreading her further apart.
“Fuck… yes… thank you…” Jane whined as her hips rolled against his face.
His mouth was hot, his tongue slick, his nose shoved against her mound as he pulled her down at the hips, almost suffocating himself in her pussy as he ate her.
Jane’s legs were trembling around his head, caging him in, his hair falling over her thighs as he lapped faster, his tongue sliding through every crease of her, his lips sucking over her clit in rhythmic pulses.
“That’s it, my good girl,” Theo moaned, his voice muffled against her flesh. “Let me taste you come…”
Her orgasm was almost violent, a thrashing crescendo that sent his name crying out from her mouth as she arched and bucked, the waves of pleasure wracking her body.
Theo’s tongue lapped up every drop of her slick, sliding languidly through her creases as she breathed raggedly against the bed, her fingers still tight in his hair.
“Fuck…” Jane whispered on a breath, her body feeling floaty as it thrummed with aftershocks.
Theo pulled himself up, not bothering to wipe his glistening mouth and chin. He crashed his mouth over hers, hungry and urgent.
“See how good you taste?” He murmured into her mouth as he made her taste herself on his lips. “So sweet… and all mine.”
One of his hands wound around the back of her neck, knotting in her still-damp hair as he deepened his kiss. The other found his cock, painfully hard and leaking for her, and guided it to her entrance.
He pushed into her in a slow, deep thrust that made him spill a broken moan into her mouth. Jane whined, the stretch of him filling her so perfectly, so divinely.
“Oh fuck, you take me so perfectly,” Theo groaned as he rocked his hips, setting a deep, steady rhythm.
His muscles tightened, the pleasure intense as he felt himself sink again and again into her tight, wet cunt. Jane’s hips rolled to meet every one of his thrusts, deepening him inside of her.
“Can you feel how wet I am for you, Theo?” She moaned, her back arching as he rutted into her faster.
He whined, his hand tightening around the back of her neck, his mouth hot and crushing as it found hers, his tongue sliding through her lips. His other hand slid under her thigh, hiking it up to his hip.
Jane cried out at the deepened angle, her core winding tight and hot like a loaded spring, every one of Theo’s deep, urgent strokes threatening to undo her.
“Oh, that’s it… fuck that’s it, Jane, take me...” Theo groaned, leaning up on his other arm, finding purchase on the sheets, his hair falling wildly as his head fell forward.
His fingers were almost bruising on her thigh, still holding it bent beneath him as he fucked into her faster, losing himself in the feeling of her body.
“Theo, fuck… harder…” Jane begged, her legs trembling.
He obeyed, slamming his cock into her harder, the sounds of their bodies wet and obscene in the darkened room. Jane’s hands found his face, pulling his gaze from her naked body to her eyes.
“Look at me,” she moaned. “Look at me while you make me come… see what you do to me.”
Theo whined, thrusting in a frenzy as he felt her clenching around his cock.
“Oh god, yes, Jane… come for me, please…”
His gaze never left her face as she came, his eyes drinking in every contortion of pleasure that played across it as she clenched down onto his cock like a vice, bucking under him as the intense waves crashed through her every nerve.
The sight of her coming apart, the feeling of her body undone by him made him crash over the edge.
He collapsed down on her, grunting brokenly and thrusting himself to the hilt as he spilled into her. His body shuddered with pleasure, his cock throbbing inside of her walls in intense spasms. His hands ran reverently up her body as he laid kisses over her heaving chest, his own moving raggedly as he caught his breath.
Jane’s fingers raked through his hair and down his neck, drawing patterns over his bare shoulders.
For a while they just lay there, still joined, feeling each other's hearts kicking, listening to each other's breaths and the soft sounds of the spring night that were tumbling through the window.
Finally, Theo pulled out, settling next to her and curling his head into the crook of her neck as his fingers brushed absentmindedly over her. He danced them down, over her chest and torso, coming to rest on the curve of her belly.
He breathed a single, deep sigh.
“Are you alright?” Jane asked softly, her hand falling over his on her belly, fingertips tracing his knuckles.
“Yes,” he sighed. “I just like to make sure I can still feel it. That everything’s okay.”
His fingertips tingled with the static hum of their baby’s magic.
Jane smiled. “Everything is perfect, Theo. I told you what the healer said. They’re perfectly okay in there, I promise.”
She slid a hand under his jaw, tilting his face up towards her.
“Because of you. Because you saved us. Your magic protected us both, Theo. She said the power of that tether you created was like a shield, you know. Gregory’s corruption couldn’t touch them.”
Theo shuddered at the name, his eyes squeezing shut.
“I know I just… I can’t help but feel for myself, you know that.”
Jane kissed him, deep and tender.
“I know, my love. Now, let’s get some rest. Tomorrow, we fight.”
Theo nodded, and she saw the fear return to his eyes. Not of punishment, but of losing her, losing their life, losing everything they had fought to reclaim.
She kissed him again softly, lingering there until his breath steadied.
“Sleep,” she whispered.
He stayed beside her, pulling her close, his arm wrapped protectively around her belly. Jane rested her head on his chest, listening to the unsteady beat of his heart.
The trial could be brutal. Political, dangerous.
But for now, the night belonged to them, and for a few quiet hours, the world outside their walls didn’t feel like a threat.
***
The Ministry's Tribunal Chambers were cold, even in the spring sun. Sharp, sheer levels that towered high against the sky, black glossy marble covering every inch. Ominous and glinting in a way that screamed judgement.
Theo's breath was unsteady as he and Jane made their way through the halls.
The concept of being inconspicuous simply didn't exist here. Every single one of their steps echoed sharp and loud into every corner, as if the building itself was recording each apprehensive movement to use as evidence.
An official stopped them outside the trial chamber.
“Full name?” He said curtly, his black and gold robes impeccably folded in cascading pleats across his front.
“Theodore Alexander Deschamps.”
“Place your palm on the tablet.”
He gestured to the stone tablet on the wall, inset into the black marble. Theo eyed it and then placed his hand against it. It gleamed faint midnight blue under his touch as it read his magical signature.
“Confirmed.” The official said coldly. Then he turned his gaze to Jane, studying her over his glasses. “You?”
“Jane Elizabeth Warfield.” She said steadily.
The official jerked his head toward the stone tablet and she did the same, placing her palm flat against it. It glowed an amber hue under her touch, static collecting in her hand as it read her. Then, it pulsed, the light morphing into a soft bluish silver.
“I'm reading two signatures.” The official said, his eyebrow sliding upwards.
“I'm pregnant,” Jane said. “Shouldn't you know that already?”
Theo's hand tightened around hers.
The official eyed her over his nose. “I'm not privy to the personal details of those concerned in this trial. I'm simply admitting you.” He cleared his throat. “Sit. You will be summoned.”
With that, he strode off down the dark hall, his steps clacking. The air hung heavy, carrying an eerie undercurrent, the morning already marking itself as solemn.
Theo and Jane sat in the dark hall for what felt like hours. Not speaking, hearts hammering, exchanging looks and small smiles that did nothing to smother their nerves.
Until the large glossy doors opened at the end of the hall.
Another official stepped out, a woman this time, draped in the same impeccably pleated robes.
“Theodore Deschamps.” She said, her tone plain and commanding. “Follow me.”
Jane felt him stiffen, but he rose fluidly, with purpose. Jane laced her fingers through his as tightly as she could. As they clipped down the hall, she focused her energy into their psychic tether, which was still strained and frayed but steadily mending with each passing day.
I promise you'll be okay.
Theo squeezed her hand in response.
Inside the trial chamber, dark columns rose like pillars of pure night. The ceiling arched high above them, etched with ancient runes that glowed a golden hue in the light. A circular plinth sat in the centre of the room. The back wall was a crescent of tiered seating, already filled with officials, magistrates, and Ministry enforcers.
Behind them in the gallery, the Elders were already seated. Lucien, Briar, Elizabeth. Jerry was there, looking forlorn, his Black Ravens badge notably absent from his chest.
Theo's parents were in attendance. Alice looked beautiful as always, but teary-eyed as she offered a small smile. Alexander sat rigidly in his seat, gruff and agedly handsome, offering a single, curt nod.
“Jane Warfield, please be seated with the other witnesses.”
She nodded once, stepping across the black marble and joining Rowan in the hard, high-backed chairs adjacent to the gallery. A few other resident Elders of the estate were seated there, some still looking sickened, a pallid grey lingering in their skin.
“Mister Deschamps, please step forward.”
Theo stepped up to the plinth, his long dark coat falling in an elegant line over his frame, his shoulders tight, his face stony. His hair was pulled back into a low bun, neat on the back of his neck. He rested his hands in front of him on the marble in silence, steadying his anxiety with a deep breath that burned on the way in.
Jane sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her breath shallow. She could feel the tension radiating off him. A taut coil of fear, fury, and resignation.
The Head Magistrate, a severe looking woman, lifted her gaze to him.
“Theodore Alexander Deschamps,” she announced, her voice echoing through the chamber. “You stand accused of the murder of Gregory Walker, a registered magical citizen.”
Theo’s jaw tightened, his teeth clenching at his name. Jane’s heart missed a beat. The chamber was almost pulsing with the depth of authority in the air, pressing against every inch of itself with an ominous weight.
The Magistrate continued, “You are additionally accused of acting outside the authority of the Black Ravens, violating internal protocol, and failing to report the corruption at the estate promptly, which you did not do until the following day.”
Theo didn’t flinch. “I understand the charges.”
“How do you plead?”
Theo inhaled slowly. “Justified.”
A ripple of murmurs swept through the chamber. The Magistrate's lips pressed into a thin line.
“We will hear testimony.” She announced coldly. “Make your statement Mister Deschamps.”
His voice was steady, but Jane could hear the strain beneath it.
“I arrived home on the evening of the eleventh of March, around nine or ten o'clock, and my partner Jane Warfield was gone. I searched for her, with and without magic. She did not respond to messages, nor to our telepathic connection.”
His shoulders somehow tightened even further.
“I searched the Black Ravens headquarters that night. The Elders found me there, at which time I told them of her disappearance. We worked through the night to try to locate her, but we found nothing.” He paused, drawing in a deep breath. “Later that same day, I found a note, forged in Jerry Adam's handwriting and seal. There was no location, the note had held disappearing coordinates.”
“The parchment of the note was of a particular kind that had been used in the old Black Ravens books. When we ran into Gregory after Christmas break, we suspected he had taken old books from the initiates' archives. It was at that time that Jerry told me of his appointment to the estate.” Theo continued.
“I deduced the parchment had come from an old book, from him, from the estate. So I went there immediately. When I arrived, I was trapped.” Theo said, every word clear and concise. “He locked down the estate. He was completely corrupted and practicing necromancy. He'd taken control of the resident Elders and lured Jane. He kidnapped her and hexed her, locking her in the crypt. He severed our telepathic tether.”
The chamber shifted, the air thickening with shock and disbelief. Alice made a small, strangled sound from the gallery.
Theo continued, his voice sharpening. “When I searched the estate, he tormented me until I found her. He bound me and raised the remains of the Black Ravens' founder using the Necronomicon. He gave Jane the Obsidian Blade and attempted to use her to kill me, to steal our psychic tether. To bind her to him.”
The Magistrate's brow raised a fraction. “So you killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Explain yourself.”
Theo’s eyes darkened. “He'd taken over Jane, almost driven her to murder me. The only way I was able to break his hold was through our baby-” his voice broke slightly, “-who could have easily been killed by the effects of the corruption. Killing him was... the only way to stop him.”
Gasps rippled through the room. The Magistrate's expression flickered. Not with sympathy, but with a recognition of the gravity of the situation.
“You did not consider that he could be bound and cleansed?”
Theo's voice was lethal as his anger simmered under his skin. “Gregory was far beyond cleansing or containment. He was entirely corrupted by the Necronomicon, completely demonic. He was not a man anymore.”
The Magistrate leaned forward. “You made this judgment alone, without attempting to subdue him?”
Theo’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“Did you act out of necessity, or out of vengeance?”
The chamber held its breath. Theo didn’t look away from her. The magical influence of the trial chamber prevented lying, but Theo wouldn't have anyway. He just wanted it to be over.
“Both.” He said.
Jane’s breath broke, her heart hammering as she picked at the skin of her nailbeds.
“Explain.”
Theo swallowed. “I wanted him dead. For what he did to Jane. For what he did to our child. For what he did to the Elders. For what he did to me.” He explained. The chamber fell into a sharp silence. “But wanting him dead doesn’t change the fact that killing him was the only way to stop him.”
The Magistrate studied him for a long moment, her eyes piercing down her long, angular nose as the other officials murmured behind her.
Theo stood, his posture straight and taut, his hands still on the plinth in front of him, not looking away from the faces of justice that peered down upon him. The runes carved into the ceiling pulsed like watchful eyes, as if recording every single breath.
Finally, the Magistrate spoke again, her voice commanding through the chamber. “Jane Warfield, step forward.”
Jane rose slowly, her legs trembling, her breath uneven. Theo turned to her, his eyes softening as she approached the plinth. She stepped beside him, her hand brushing his arm.
“Miss Warfield, tell us what happened.”
Jane inhaled shakily.
“I believed the note I received was from Jerry. It said the matter was urgent, but that it wouldn't take long, so I went. Alone.” Her voice trembled. “When I arrived, the estate was totally decayed, the gardens, the grounds... everything was dead and lifeless, like it had been decaying for months. Once I passed through the Raven gate, I couldn't get out. I was trapped.”
She took a deep breath, dread creeping up every bone in her spine as she recounted it. Theo slipped his hand through hers, a tiny grounding gesture.
“Go on,” the Magistrate prompted.
“Gregory was waiting in the foyer as soon as I stepped inside. But he wasn’t - he wasn't himself. His eyes were black, his face was almost inhuman, like it was stuck between living and death. The entire place was filled with rot, with smog. The magic felt wrong. He hexed me before I could act.”
Multiple officials in the chamber leaned in, engrossed in the horror. Others sat plain-faced, almost bored looking. Alice let out another strained, tiny whimper from the gallery.
“The hex hollowed me out. I could see everything I was doing, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t speak or move on my own. I watched myself walk through the crypt, sit in the cell hour after hour. My thoughts... were far away, disjointed. I watched Theo find me, I watched myself move him through the crypt on Gregory's orders and I-”
A tear slipped past her eyelashes, her voice breaking as the dread sank through her. Theo tightened his grip on her hand, pushing a quiet thought into her head.
You can do it, Jane. I'm here.
Her breath shook. “I watched myself raise the blade and wound Theo. I... I watched as I almost killed him.”
A horrified murmur swept through the chamber. Several pairs of eyes darted up to the darkened mark between Theo's eyes, analyzing the scarred flesh.
Jane swallowed hard. “Gregory wasn’t... human anymore. He wasn’t sane. He wasn’t alive in the way we understand. He was completely corrupted and dangerous. He was going to destroy the Black Ravens.”
She lifted her chin, her voice steadying. “Theo saved me. He saved our baby, and he saved the order. He finished what I couldn’t by killing Gregory.”
The Magistrate studied her carefully, her severe face giving nothing away. “Miss Warfield, do you believe Theo acted unlawfully?”
“No.”
“Do you believe he acted maliciously?”
“No.”
“Do you believe he acted out of necessity?”
Jane’s voice was firm. “Yes.”
“Very well.” She said curtly. “You may return to your seat. Mister Deschamps, you may step down. We will now review evidence from the Elders and the estate.”
Rowan stepped forward, placing a sealed evidence box on the plinth.
Theo sat rigidly, his back ramrod straight in the chair next to Jane as they listened to the Elders give testimonies and present evidence. Theo's hand never left Jane's, his fingers threaded tightly through hers as she breathed shakily next to him.
The chamber felt like a tomb of black marble, cold air swirling, runes pulsing overhead like the eyes of justice itself. Every voice echoed too loudly, every breath felt too sharp.
Every now and again, Alexander Deschamps huffed disappointedly from the gallery, and Alice breathed her tiny, horrified whimpers.
Theo avoided their eyes, keeping his gaze forward, his jaw tight, his shoulders locked. But he felt Jane's radiating energy beside him. Her warmth, her static. Her quiet strength that simmered below her shaking breaths.
He held onto every atom of it like a lifeline.
Jane sat very still, her fingers curled through Theo’s. The chamber felt almost colder than the crypt had. It sent a shiver through her as she listened. Theo’s thumb brushed over her knuckles, steadying her.
She looked at him and saw plain the tension in his jaw, the tightness in his shoulders, the storm behind his eyes. Her chest ached. He was comforting her silently, but she could feel it.
He was terrified.
Not of the verdict. But of reliving everything, of the uncertainty. She leaned into him, her shoulder brushing against his. He didn’t move, but she felt the faint exhale he released, a small, fragile surrender to her comfort.
Finally, Lucien stepped forward, pale and ashamed.
“Theo warned us about Gregory before the incident, and we dismissed him. We failed to detect the corruption until it was too late. We failed to protect them, and we failed to protect the order.” He bowed his head, basset-hound eyes low. “Theo acted because we did not.”
The chamber fell into a suffocating silence after Lucien’s final words. The Magistrate’s gaze swept sharply across the room, as if trying to draw out anything unsaid with her eyes alone.
“Very well.” She said curtly. “The ministry shall convene.”
A thick, opaque veil came up in front of the officials, separating them into silence from the rest of the chamber.
Nobody seemed to move an inch. No one spoke. The air was pitched with a firing apprehension that pricked over their skin. Jane felt Theo’s fingers tighten around hers. Their breaths were shallow, tumbling together in the frigid air around them.
After a long, drawn-out silence, the veil dissipated.
The Head Magistrate stood, her robes whispering against the marble as she rose.
“The Ministry has heard sufficient testimony,” she said, her voice echoing through the chamber. “We will deliver our verdict.”
Alexander Deschamps leaned forward in his seat, eyes narrowed. Alice covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
The Elders sat straight and rigid, every set of eyes darting rapidly from the Magistrate to Theo.
Her gaze landed on him. “The Ministry acknowledges the following facts as proven by testimony and evidence.”
She lifted a parchment.
“Gregory Walker was corrupted beyond redemption. He hexed the resident Elders, forged official correspondence, kidnapped Jane Warfield, severed a telepathic tether, desecrated the estate, empowered the Necronomicon, raised the dead, and attempted to commit murder.”
Jane’s breath trembled. Theo didn’t move.
The Magistrate's voice sharpened. “The Ministry further acknowledges that Mister Deschamps’ actions were taken under extreme duress and in defence of his life, Jane's life, the life of his unborn child, and the lives of the Elders.”
A ripple of relief moved through the gallery.
Jane squeezed Theo’s hand. He didn’t react, his body not giving him permission yet, not until she said the words.
They fell like a hammer.
“Theodore Alexander Deschamps, we the Ministry, find you not guilty of the murder of Gregory Walker.”
Jane’s breath broke into a soft, shaking exhale. Alice let out a tiny sob. Alexander slumped back in his seat, muttering something under his breath as he exhaled.
Theo simply closed his eyes for one brief, fragile moment, a small breath leaving his parted lips.
But the Magistrate wasn’t finished.
“However,” she said, and the chamber froze again, “your actions, while justified, were taken outside the authority of the Black Ravens. You violated internal protocol. You endangered yourself and others by confronting Gregory alone. You failed to report what had happened until the next day.”
Theo’s shoulders tightened. He nodded in silence. Jane felt the shift in him like a quiet dread, like he was bracing for impact.
The Magistrate's voice was cold, final. “You are hereby stripped of your Black Ravens rank and membership.”
Jane’s breath caught. Theo inhaled sharply, his fingers loosening around hers for a moment and then tightening again, grounding himself in her presence.
The chamber erupted in whispers.
“Ridiculous,” Alexander muttered under his breath.
Jane turned toward Theo, her eyes wide, her heart breaking. “Theo…”
He shook his head gently, a small, steady gesture meant only for her. His thought landed softly in her mind.
It’s alright.
But it wasn’t, not to her. Not after everything he had endured. The very things he had saved were the things he'd now lost.
The Magistrate raised her hand, silencing the chamber.
“In addition, the Black Ravens order has been gutted. Jerry Adams has been removed. Many Elders are compromised and will not return to service. The order is fractured. New leadership is required.”
Jane felt the air shift as the Magistrate's gaze landed on her, sharp and commanding.
“Jane Warfield,” she said, her voice ringing through the chamber, “you have demonstrated strength, magical aptitude, and unwavering integrity during your time with the Black Ravens. You survived a curse that should have killed you. You provided critical testimony. You have the trust of the remaining Elders, who have all provided their support for this appointment.”
Jane’s pulse hammered. Theo turned toward her slowly, his eyes widening.
“You are hereby appointed Acting Grand Raven of the Black Ravens Order.”
The chamber exploded into gasps and murmurs of shock.
Alexander made a strange, gruff noise that made Jane's stomach knot uncomfortably. Alice let out a tiny, astonished squeak of pride. Jerry bowed his head, relief and gratitude washing over his face. Lucien nodded in silent agreement, a respect sitting in his aged features.
Jane stared forward, stunned, utterly breathless, frozen in place. Theo looked at her, really looked, and she saw everything in his eyes. Pride, adoration, love, relief, hope.
“Theo…” she whispered, shock pulsing through her in unrelenting waves.
He reached up to her face, cupping her cheek with a warm, steady hand.
“You deserve it, Jane,” he murmured, voice low and reverent. “More than anyone.”
Her eyes welled, filling with tears. “Not without you.”
Theo swallowed, his thumb brushing her cheek as a soft smile pulled through his lips. “I’m still here.”
The magistrate struck a gnarled, carved staff against the marble.
“Trial is adjourned.”
The runes overhead dimmed. The chamber erupted again into various whispers and gasps, but Jane heard none of it.
She heard only Theo’s breath, steady and warm against her cheek. She felt only his hand, tight and grounding in hers.
She only saw the man who had saved her life, lost half of his own, and still looked at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I finally received my WFYL merch (hoodie and black tee) and it’s genuinely amazing however I should have gone for bigger sizing because I like to be absolutely swallowed by hoodies and tees, and I overestimated the oversizedness, so it’s more fitting than I thought it would be. Which isn’t the end of the world I just don’t prefer it 💀
I read the returns info and they don’t do exchanges, just returns and reordering however of course everything is sold out by now so I can’t reorder.
Wondering if anyone has a bigger WFYL hoodie and black tee they’re looking to exchange for a smaller size?
I’d be looking for an L or even XL in each, the more it swallows me the better 💀
I have an S hoodie and an M black tee.
Please let me know if you do! I will pay shipping costs to send mine of course, internationally included.
Will u still make other chapters for the trials or is the spring chapter the last one? I loveeeee ur writing!
Thank you! I will write Summer chapters as well but I’m trying to plan the content for that still. Not sure at this stage if I should have an overarching plot or just a bunch of sol/one shots of their life.
Happily taking suggestions for what you guys want to see!! Baby content will be in there of course but I know people also want the intimate content and other things as well.
OMG the latest wounds chapter! INSANE WORK!! I was on the edge of my seat! I neeeed some sort of happy ending for them both though, after everything they’ve been through they deserve to be happy together 🙈 can’t wait to see how it all ends even if I am devastated for it to be over
Oh, we got a loong way to go before it's over! There's another chapter for Wounds, and I have planned a sequel as well. There will be a lot more Henry and 019 to come!
Summary: One God had fallen. Another had taken his place.
Henry is unleashed. Brenner is caught. You realize just how deep Henry's vengeance runs.
Pair: Henry Creel/Vecna/001 x Female Reader
Content/Warning Labels: Hawkins Lab, dark, graphic violence, gore/blood, mass death, trauma, Martin Brenner gets what's coming to him, smut (dom!Henry, rough!Henry, fingering, pinning, p in v)
WC: 8.3k | Read on Ao3
(Chapters: One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - Eight - Nine - Ten - Eleven
That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
[HENRY]
The machinery room felt like a concrete lung.
As if every pipe, every generator, every steel mechanism was drawing in a frigid breath and holding it before the air could turn to ash.
Above, the lab breathed as normal. Children pushed their blocks. Doctors plunged their needles. Nurses distributed medications. Sylvia tapped her heel and thought of Peter as she fiddled with the coffee machine. Brenner sat in front of 010, clipboard in hand, shoulders squared away in his blazer like they were imitating the very corners of the testing room.
Fluorescents whirred, faucets dripped, pens scratched across paper, chair wheels squeaked over linoleum.
Below, Henry felt all of it. Every single shift in the air, every single breath that tumbled between the walls.
Power, instinct, the simmering of fury. All shooting through his marrow, filling every single hollowed cell. He felt his nerves, every one aflame, every one a separate screaming wire of pure power.
He’d known power. He’d held it, and it had held him. But to be awakened from underneath the suffocation, to be unearthed from the tomb of himself was a relief so extraordinary he could hardly fathom it.
Shadows no longer lurked like a thin mist in the deepest depths of himself. They were alive, ancient tendrils that writhed and snaked through his every synapse at once.
He wasn’t drowned by it. He was ascended, burning in the flame of it as if circling the sun.
You were no longer the knife against his throat. You were the red-hot forge, remaking him.
You were the mouth that had drawn out the poison and laid it back on his tongue as venom.
The kind that he tasted before a kill.
***
[019]
Henry stood in the center of the undercroft, his shadow carved black against the concrete, utterly still.
The power radiating off of him warped through the space around him, thrumming. It ran through you, sharp and pulsing, an additional heartbeat that drummed through each bone as it went.
Your blood felt alive, responding to his presence.
“How long?” You spoke into the darkness.
Henry turned to you. His face was subtly morphed, power written on every inch. The bones were somehow sharper, more angular. His seraphine features had slipped into something demonically beautiful, like an angel fallen into the harshness of hell.
He looked at his watch.
“Twenty minutes until guard change.”
Even his voice was reforged. Elevated in the way smashed ceramic is rebound with gold, making it even more alluring.
“Where is he?” He spoke, low and smooth. “Find him.”
He was controlled, commanding.
“You could, Henry.”
He didn’t look at you as if he was surprised to know that. He looked at you with a purposeful control, as if the sheer act of commanding you was far more satisfying than slipping into the void himself.
His eyes were dark and unblinking. “Do it.”
You obeyed before you decided to, taking a deep breath and closing your eyes as you pulled yourself inward. You slipped into the ether with almost no effort, the presence of his power so close to yours acting as a strengthening force.
Water rippled under your steps in the blackness as you paced, Brenner’s image vivid in your mind. He materialized ahead of you within seconds, the back of his white-grey quaffed hair, the flat plain of his tailored blazer lining his long back as he sat in his chair.
Your voice echoed around you. “He is testing Ten. The room with the table that has a cracked veneer.”
“I know the one.” Henry echoed around you. “And the guards?”
A slice of the corridor materialized in front of you, stretching long and blue-white.
“One in the east corridor.” You murmured, following the thudding black boots along the tile.
“The other?” Henry echoed.
“I can’t… I can’t see him.”
You focused harder as you paced the blackness, in between dimensions, searching through the dark.
Then, you saw him. Standing oddly still at the door to the stairwell that led to the machinery room. He was staring, frowning. The door was open a fraction, caught on grit or some other betraying thing.
His hand tightened around his radio as he spoke into it, his voice pulling through the ether.
“Come in, Harris.”
A smaller voice crackled through the radio receiver. “Here.”
The guard's hand reached out to push the door open an inch further. His boot scraped over the line where the tile turned to concrete.
“We got maintenance in the machinery room as well?”
The crackling voice came back through the receiver. “Not to my knowledge. Everything alright over there?”
“Door's open is all. Unlocked.”
“Need me to join you?”
“All good, probably nothing. I'll check it out.”
“Copy that.”
A small choked sound fell out of you as you watched his palm push the door open fully. His boots scuffed across the concrete landing of the stairwell. He glanced up at the dead camera for a moment and then descended, his hand still around his radio receiver.
“What is it?” Henry said, his voice echoing in your ears.
“The door to the stairwell, it wasn’t fully closed. The guard, he's coming-”
His boots thudded louder on each step, each one more ominous than the last.
“Fuck.” You hissed. “He’s right above-”
The sound of the machinery room doors unlocking and banging open bounded through the blackness of the ether.
Henry’s hand flew over your mouth, muffling it before it could betray a single sound. Your heart lurched directly into your throat, yanking you out of the void and back into the machinery room.
Your hand shot up to his wrist and viced around it as he walked you back silently into the darkest corner of the undercroft. Your back thudded against the cold metal edge of a workbench along the wall, his hand still tight over your mouth.
You felt the warm slip of blood from your nose trail over the peaks and troughs of Henry’s knuckles.
“Don’t make a sound.” He whispered, almost silently, his eyes wide and intense.
It was almost pitch black, pressed this far back into the deepest corner. The only light was a dim hue of blue that diffused over the dark concrete before it could reach you both.
You tried to speak softly under his hand, but he pushed it harder against your mouth, making your lips part, making your teeth graze against his palm.
“Quiet.” His voice was as sharp as it was soft, a ribbon of silk with a knife-edge.
The authority in his voice now, even when it was the ghost of a whisper, made something primal twist deep within you.
The guard’s boots clanged across the metal platform and came to a halt for a moment. Your eyes cut up, locking onto the underside of the platform. Henry's followed, his hand still pressed hard into your mouth, his skin oddly cool.
“Anyone down here?” The guard called out.
Every part of you hoped he would retreat, but he didn't.
Your eyes squeezed shut as he descended the stairs, each step a warning on the metal. He flicked his torch around the room as he turned at the bottom of the stairs and began pacing. He moved between the machinery slowly, spilling a bright flare of yellow light across the concrete.
Henry’s hand stayed clamped over your mouth, his breath steady against your cheek as his head followed the silhouette of the guard. You felt the air around him tighten, as if the darkness itself was bracing.
“Hello?” the guard called out, voice echoing off the steel. “Maintenance crew?”
Henry didn’t move. You barely breathed. Both of you were exceptionally alert, nerves firing in the dark, ears fixed on every step.
The guard walked deeper into the room, scanning the shadows. His boots scraped across the concrete, slow and cautious. He passed the first row of generators, then the second, then the water reservoirs.
The yellow light of his torch dipped and flared, throwing shadows into odd, broken shapes that diffused into the tight space of the undercroft.
Eventually, his steps came back towards the metal stairs. His radio beeped.
“Come in, Harris.”
“Copy,” the receiver spoke, voice crackling with soft static, “anything?”
“Secure, probably just a lock malfunction. Typical.” The guard said, huffing with frustration.
“Great, meet you in Wing B in fifteen, over.”
“Copy that, over and out.” The radio shut off with a click. His steps got closer, one boot clanging onto the bottom step.
Torchlight dipped under the undercroft for no more than a second. Your eyes darted down as the warm ribbon hit the edge of Henry's shoe.
Henry drew in a sharp, tiny breath.
For a heavy, hung second, there was silence. Only the hammering of your heart, loud against your chest, and the thump of Henry's pulse against your mouth.
The footsteps stopped.
Then, they approached, two thuds across concrete, breaching the darkness of the undercroft. Henry’s fingers tightened around your jaw. His eyes narrowed into two cerulean slivers.
The guard took another step. His voice came low and commanding.
“Who's there?”
Henry moved.
Not quick, or frantic. It was controlled, fluid. He stepped out of the shadows like a creature waking from sleep, his hand falling from your mouth as he placed himself between you and the guard.
The guard jerked back, startled as his torchlight flared over Henry's face. Even he could see it, the subtle change in his features, the threat his body was responding to before his mind could make sense of it.
“What the, Pete-”
Henry didn’t let him finish. His hand flew outwards, long pale fingers contorted like carved marble.
The space bent at Henry's command, snapping into a sudden crushing pressure that made the guard stagger backwards. He froze, his body locking as if the air itself had turned solid around him. His torch dropped to the concrete, the glass lens smashing on impact.
Slowly, with terrifying grace, Henry raised his hand higher, twisting it in the air.
The man's boots left the floor, rising as easily as if he were nothing more than a feather. His legs kicked helplessly as Henry held him aloft in the darkness, his words choked in his throat as the force squeezed around his windpipe. Shock was etched deep into every line on his face.
He tried to speak, but nothing other than a guttural, panicked sound escaped him as Henry pressed harder.
“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Henry said softly.
The guard's eyes were bloodshot from the pressure, the vessels broken, his pupils blown black with terror.
Henry stepped closer to his prey, eyes bright and unblinking. He tilted his head, studying him with a cold, clinical curiosity.
His voice was almost gentle. “You should have kept climbing.”
The guard spluttered again, saliva spilling as his face turned scarlet, slowly suffocating in Henry's grip. His arms splayed outwards like featherless, trembling wings, obeying the smallest shift in Henry's fingers.
“But you didn't,” Henry said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a dark hiss. “You were a loyal dog. Thorough. Checking every corner. And now... you will find out what loyalty to such a place costs.”
The force that left Henry was enough to send tremors through your every vertebra. The room bent, the lights pulsed and flickered violently. You watched his pale fingers twist, tensing with power.
Henry's frame shook as the force lurched through him.
One by one, the man's limbs contorted.
His bones broke like twigs, each releasing a sickening crunch, the white shards of bone ripping through the fabric of his uniform as they snapped. Finally, his jaw broke, following his other bones with a loud crack. It hung open, crooked and warped. Blood dripped from his mouth as he choked, wet guttural sounds that gurgled in his throat.
With a final, decisive twist of Henry's hand, the guard's body went limp. It collapsed to the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud.
The room fell silent save for your heavy breaths pulling through your chest, and the steady whirring of the machinery, oblivious to the violence.
Henry didn’t look away from the twisted, crumpled man. His chest rose and fell once, slow and controlled, as he analyzed every inch of the body in silence.
You stepped forward, legs trembling, trying to make sense of what you’d witnessed. The sheer magnitude of his power, the way he had exerted so little effort with such graceful, horrifying control. The way the air had bent around him like it recognized him, like it feared him. I lit you up in a way you didn't have words for.
Henry finally turned toward you, and the sight of him made your lungs seize. His face was still, carved in shadow and midnight blue. His eyes were dangerously alive.
You'd seen Henry angry, hurt. You'd seen him broken, soft. But this, this was Henry unbound.
Pure, lethal, uncaged.
Your throat tightened as your hand reached for him, fingers brushing over the side of his shirt. “Henry...”
He didn’t speak, and didn’t need to. The air around him spoke for him, a low, pulsing thrum that vibrated against your skin, against your ribs, against the marrow of your bones.
Your heart pounded so aggressively it hurt.
Henry stepped closer, slowly, his silhouette cutting through the darkness. You felt it in your blood. A primal, dangerous recognition, a blinding magnetic pull towards him.
His eyes flicked over your face, reading every tremor, every breath. His voice came low and terrifyingly beautiful.
“Does it frighten you?”
The realization shot through you like a livewire. You weren’t afraid. You weren’t sorry.
You were exhilarated.
“No.”
“You're shaking.” He said, almost a whisper.
“It makes me feel…”
Your breath caught behind your teeth as Henry stepped into you, his fingers slipping under your jaw like it belonged to him. His cool touch stole the words from your throat as he loomed over you.
“Finish your sentence.”
It took a moment for your heart to stabilize as he let his hand drag down your jaw to your neck.
“Alive.”
Even in the dark, you could feel Henry’s eyes piercing into yours like a sharpened javelin.
“You... you are so much more than I ever imagined.” You continued, your voice thick with awe.
“What did you imagine?” Henry asked, his voice slick.
“Something broken.”
Henry tilted his head curiously, fingertip sliding over your pulse point. “Aren't I?”
You drew in a deep breath, your lungs inhaling him and the scent of copper that lingered in the air. You'd never felt more awake, more alive.
“Not anymore.”
Henry's lips slid up into a wicked point.
As you looked at him, hellishly beautiful, your every vein pulsed with the promise of revenge. You imagined Brenner in Henry's grip, twisting and cracking and suffocating until he was nothing more than a warped corpse.
“I want to watch,” you seethed in the dark. “I want to watch you break him just like that, limb by limb.”
Henry’s eyes darkened. Something twisted inside him at your rage, your fury.
“I want to watch as you rip him apart. I want to hear him scream. I want to watch you destroy him.”
Then, in the blink of an eye, in a blinding flash that pulled a shuddering gasp from your mouth, Henry’s teeth were in your neck. He bit down like he was trying to rip a hole and crawl inside you.
“And you will.” He growled into your skin. “You will watch all of it.”
He slid his arm around your waist and slammed himself into you as he devoured your neck like a man starved. His mouth was wrecked, urgent as he dragged it up your jaw, biting against the bone, crushed over your mouth, sliding his tongue through your lips to taste the hate that hid beyond them.
He walked you back into the metal workbench with terrifying control. You could feel the hard, long line of his cock shoved into your groin, straining against his pants.
“Now I am free, I can feel everything.” He growled. “I can feel every part of you aching. Screaming to me. Your fury, your darkness... your desire.”
Your hands fisted in his hair, dragged down his scalp, left angry red tracks across the back of his neck as he laid into your throat. He bit and sucked a wet trail over your skin, each kiss more brutal than the last.
“Henry…” you begged, slick already surging for him.
“Quiet.” He hissed, one of his hands flying up to capture your mouth, his other tugging at the waistband of your pants.
He shoved them down your thighs and plunged his hand into your soaked knickers.
Your chest arched back as his fingers slid through your slick cunt in one long draw, parting you. He circled them hard at your clit, drawing a moan into the palm of his hand as he held you there, his entire weight pressing you into the bench, his swollen need shoved into your thigh.
“Did you think about this when I killed him?” Henry sneered, teasing his fingertips at your entrance. “Did you think about me inside of you?”
You nodded into his grip, your eyes rolling back, struggling to stay open as the knot of primal desire tightened in your core.
You whined like an animal as he drove his fingers inside you in a single, deep push.
“You are wretched,” he growled, curling his fingers against your walls, “wretched and soaking... and mine.”
His fingers worked ruthlessly, pumping and curling as you writhed against his tall frame, spilling silenced moans into his vice of a hand. The coldness of them fucking into your heat was a sensation almost overwhelming.
The darkness was filled with a feral symphony, the wet, obscene sounds of your cunt, your stifled gasps, Henry's satisfied growls rumbling low in his chest as he edged you.
His eyes were dangerous, piercing into yours as he worked you, deep and unrelenting. The pad of his thumb returned to your clit, spinning rough circles over the swollen peak as you bucked into his hand.
“Henry, I'm-” you whimpered, your voice muffled behind his palm.
You gripped his hair, forcing his head back. His neck arched, a ragged groan pulling from his throat.
Then, his eyes pierced into yours, a raw and unfiltered instruction that your body obeyed like something held hostage.
You came onto his fingers, clenching around them as the scorch of release snapped through your every nerve. Henry groaned, shoving his clothed cock against you as you shuddered.
His hand relaxed on your mouth, but still lingered. Two of his fingers brushed over your parted lips and then pushed through them, into your heated mouth. He made another quiet, contented sound as you rolled them over his fingers, swirled your tongue around his fingertips.
“Are you going to be quiet for me?” He asked, his voice like gravel wrapped in silk.
You nodded, pursing your lips over his fingers as he pulled them from your mouth. He grunted quietly, approvingly, before grappling with his trousers. The slide of the metallic zipper was harsh in the quietly humming air of the machinery room.
You could feel the heat of him, so close, so carnal, dissipating over your exposed flesh.
In a single fluid motion he spun you, one hand gripping your waist with bruising force, the other pinning your body down over the cold metal bench.
Your breath hitched in your lungs as his hand slid down your spine, his fingers rough and urgent as they descended and settled over the slick mess between your legs. He slipped the head of his swollen cock through you, kicking your legs apart with his foot.
“Mine,” he repeated, possessive and primal.
He pushed into you in a deep thrust, his thickness filling you completely, stretching you, drawing a sharp gasp from your open mouth. He growled, setting a relentless rhythm as he pushed his desire into you in long, forceful thrusts.
His grip on you tightened as he rutted faster.
The soft tenderness of the Henry who'd made love to you before was completely gone. He was transformed, terrifyingly in control, dominating you as if his body was made for it. As if it had been lying in wait, a predator waiting to claim his prey.
It was drowning. The devilish pleasure, the way his body moved against yours, the shocks of pure ecstasy that he was laying into you. You cried out his name against the metal, unable to cage your voice.
“I said quiet.” He hissed as he wound his hand over your mouth again, pulling your head back into a painful arch.
His other hand was flat on the crest of your ass, pushing your belly down into the bench as he fucked into you, each stroke more devastating than the last.
The desire inside you was coiling, a tight scorching knot as Henry turned feral at your back.
“This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” He leaned down over you as he thrust faster, his voice falling into a hiss. “All those times I was with you… This is what you really craved. To be owned by me, broken by me, have me so deep inside of you you can taste me. Isn’t it?” He growled, slamming his cock deeper.
“Yes…” you whimpered into his palm, still tight against your mouth. “Henry, please-”
You were a wrecked, muzzled pup against his ruthless lust, bucking and writhing, your body completely owned, possessed by the demon of his desire.
“Show me,” he commanded in a snarl. “Show me how you craved me like this.”
His words, the carnal reverb of his voice in your ears, the wet, primal sounds of his body ruining yours against the metal sent you thrashing over the edge. You came like a vice on his cock, clenching and pulsing around him in intense waves.
Low curses tumbled from his mouth as his hips rutted hard against your ass, the slapping of his body on yours loud and animalistic, his shadow flickering wildly across the concrete and metal.
Your undoing spelled his own. With a broken growl, he buried himself to the hilt, spilling his cum deep inside of you with a violent shudder, the force of his fingers bruising at your hip.
The lights in the machinery room surged with a piercing hiss, his power surging rogue with his release, the bulbs threatening to shatter.
Henry collapsed forward onto your back, his chest heaving, his mouth sucking the back of your neck as he whined. His fingers caressed down over your thigh with a touch so reverent it hardly seemed the same hand that had splintered the body of the guard into a lifeless corpse only moments prior.
As the lights faded back down to their silent midnight blue you turned into him, catching the flares and shadows they left across his face. His eyes were closed, still lost in the haze of himself as his breathing came down to a ragged slow.
He was leaning into you, hands on either side, palms resting against the cold metal, a balm to his scorched skin.
His cherub blonde waves were ruined, splayed over his forehead, specked with blood from the guard. Your hand moved lazily through them, pushing it back as he breathed against you. You ran your fingers down the crimson painted on his neck. He hissed sharply as you passed over the open wound.
You breathed back into him, pressing your mouth over his. He tasted like burnt embers, like smoke and the earth. Remnant power was thrumming through him, through the air, through the place where your lips met his.
For a moment, you both stood there, mouths claiming, embracing each other at the ribs.
“We need to go,” Henry said finally.
His eyes sharpened into yours as they retreated from desire and slipped back into a controlled, lethal purpose.
It only made you pull him tighter against your chest. Part of you didn't want to let go. It didn't want to climb those stairs. It wanted to stay in the dark with him, caught between the metal and the world.
Henry could sense your apprehension.
“Do you trust me?” Henry said, his hands cradling your face.
“Yes.” You said without a second thought.
“Then from this moment forward, you do what I say,” Henry said, his voice commanding. “Obey me and only me, and I won't leave you behind.”
“If you did, I would die, and it would be freedom nonetheless.” You breathed.
“We will be free. We will be alive. And we will be far away from this hell and all who inhabit it.” Henry growled.
Those were his last words as he ran his hand up the back of your naked neck and crashed his mouth against yours one last time, his lips tinged with the bloody promise of retribution.
He let you fall from his grasp, and you stood still for a moment, steeling yourself, the ghost of his lips still upon yours, the imprint of his desire still wading inside you.
This was it.
Your veins writhed with the shadow of revenge, the scorch of fury, the hot pulse of Henry's blood.
You were a wretched, ugly thing. Broken and twisted and entirely his.
***
The hum of the machinery faded behind you as you and Henry moved through the doorway. The stairwell above was washed in cold fluorescent light, the camera still dead in the corner, oblivious to you.
Henry paused at the top of the stairs, listening. The air around him tightened as he focused.
“They’re moving,” he said. “The guards. The rotation has begun.”
You could feel it too. The subtle shift in the lab’s rhythm, the low vibration of moving footsteps, the crackle of radios growing more distant.
Henry turned to you, eyes bright blue and fevered. “Are you ready?”
You nodded. Henry studied your face for a moment, like he was searching for the tiniest betrayal of your composure. But your heart beat resolutely against your ribs. You were nothing but a suspended meteor, waiting for his signal to crash down upon Brenner.
“Stay close.”
Together, you moved through the doors and down the corridor, your steps falling silent, your breaths shallow. Henry’s power pulsed around him in faint waves, bending the shadows. Every light you passed underneath flickered, reacting to his presence.
Wing A was a long, sterile corridor you'd spent almost every morning of your second life in, performing for Brenner like the broken little circus beast you were. Every step pushed the rage deeper into your bones. Every test, every failure, every thinly veiled threat flashed behind your eyes.
The room was just beyond the corner. Henry slowed.
You felt him listening again. Not with his ears, but with his entire self, as if every atom of him was tuning in to the tiniest shifts in current.
Henry’s voice was barely a breath. “Now.”
The door handle clicked beneath his pale fingers, and he stepped through the doorway of the testing room in a long, controlled stride.
Ten went rigid in his chair, hands folded, eyes wide as he watched Henry enter. He could feel the threat immediately. The warped space, the power pulsing, awakened.
Brenner turned.
He frowned, a split-second of trying to make sense of the intrusion. Henry stood in the threshold like a monolith, his posture controlled, eyes dark and fixed.
“Peter,” he said. “What are you-”
Then, his eyes flicked to Henry's neck. The dark wash of drying blood on his skin, the torn open scar, the bright crimson a shock on his white collar.
Brenner froze, his aged face draining of colour.
“Say my name.” Henry hissed, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.
The lights whirred in the ceiling plaster, reacting to the spike in Henry’s anger. Ten flinched in his chair, shrinking back into it as the room bent around Henry’s silhouette.
Brenner swallowed hard. He rose slowly, abandoning his clipboard, raising his hands as if trying to calm a wild animal.
“Henry, please, listen to me-”
Henry tilted his head. A threat, a promise, an inevitability.
“No.” Henry’s tone was quiet again, terrifyingly calm. “Rats don't make demands.”
Brenner’s eyes darted to you, searching for some semblance of control. “Nineteen, please, step away from him. You don't understand, he’s unstable, he’s-”
Henry’s power surged. The table shuddered, the lights popped violently, bulbs giving out behind the plastic. Ten gasped as the room dimmed, clutching the edge of his seat.
“Who do you think freed him?” You spat. “I know what you did to him, Papa. All of it.”
Brenner’s face lost even more colour.
“You… you don’t understand…” He said, his voice cracked. “You don’t understand what he is, what you’ve unleashed-”
“I understand,” you said smoothly, stepping deeper into the room, your own power flooding your nerves. “That you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. To me, to Henry. To the children. Do you, Papa? Do you understand?”
Henry took another step, his voice dropping into something low and lethal. “You did this. You made me bleed for you. You made me break for you. You buried that little parasite in my neck and thought it would save you.”
Brenner’s breath trembled. “Henry-”
“You thought I was yours, didn't you? Yours to play with, to control. Yours to torture.”
Brenner froze, his eyes fixed to Henry's face, which was morphing into sharp, hellish angles the more his fury built.
Henry’s eyes burned, incandescent and unblinking. “I remember every single scar. Every single agony. Every single scream you tore from me. And now, you’re going to answer for it.”
Brenner moved, a sudden flash. Not toward Henry, or you, or the door. Toward the emergency switch on the wall.
Henry lunged, but Brenner’s hand slammed down on the button.
A shrill alarm began to wail, and you reacted before you could blink, force surging through your limbs.
Your arm snapped outward, the power surging invisible and violent, gripping Brenner mid‑movement. His body lurched and locked in place, suspended in the air like a puppet with its strings pulled taut.
“Papa!” Ten gasped, flinching forward in his seat.
“Quiet.” Henry hissed.
The boy sank back again, clutching the edge of the plastic, his knuckles white.
Henry gripped the alarm with a surge of power, cutting it off mid‑screech, the circuitry frying under the force.
“This man isn’t your Papa, Ten. He’s a parasite… a disease. A man so unremarkable he had to make you just to feel special.” Henry hissed. “But he isn’t special. He’s nothing more than a coward. A jailer… keeping you locked up in this hell, making you perform like a beast.”
Ten shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “No, Mister Pete- Henry… please… please don’t hurt him.” He pleaded, his voice tiny.
His innocent, childish pleading made your stomach twist. For a moment, you almost released Brenner from your grasp, unable to tear your eyes away from Ten's tiny, tear stained face.
Then, Henry spoke again, pulling your focus back.
“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him now,” Henry said softly, tilting his head at the child. “I’m going to teach him first. And you… you will never be controlled by him or anyone ever again.”
It sounded like the promise of hope, but it sank inside of you like a dreadful anchor, something dark and terrible wrapping around his words.
Brenner choked out a breath, his eyes wide, limbs trembling against your hold. His face was contorted with terror, shock, the crumbling of his control. A sick, dark wash of satisfaction pulled through you as his mind tried to fathom it.
Henry turned toward you slowly.
“Hold him.” He murmured, his eyes dragging over Brenner’s bound frame.
You tightened your grip, arm trembling, fingers drawing inwards. Brenner’s breath hitched in a ragged cough, his hands clawing out uselessly at the air.
Henry stepped closer, his voice dropping into a razor‑thin whisper. “Haven't you realized yet? There is no escape. Not for you.”
Brenner’s voice cracked. “Nineteen-let go-” He choked.
Henry’s face snapped toward him. “Don’t speak.”
The pressure around Brenner tightened with a flick of Henry's head. His knees bent in mid‑air, his breath coming in shallow, panicked bursts.
Henry’s eyes returned to Ten, who sat frozen, trembling.
“Come,” He commanded the small, pale boy.
Ten obeyed instantly, rising from his chair with shaking legs, eyes fixed on Brenner’s suspended form and your intense grip.
“The rainbow room,” Henry said, every octave controlled as he faced you again. “Bring him.”
Henry pushed through the door, the air bending around him.
You followed, dragging Brenner backwards, his body trying to writhe, his feet hanging limp. The toes of his polished shoes scraped helplessly across the tile as he spluttered in your grasp. Ten followed behind you like a terrified shadow, his footsteps shaking.
The corridor stretched long and yellowed white, humming with fluorescent light. The rainbow room doors stood closed at the far end, the clean, clinical white a sickening contrast to the violence coiling through the air.
You were halfway down the hall when the sound hit you.
Running. Heavy boots, slamming fast over the tiles only corridors away, heading straight for you. Then, the alarm shrieked to life again, a shrill wail accompanied by a blaring, repetitive siren.
Henry stopped mid‑stride, his face snapping around toward the sound, eyes narrowing, power rippling outward in a low, dangerous pulse.
The air shifted with a sudden spike of urgency as the crackle of radios grew louder, as the slamming of boots grew closer. You heard doors fly open, banging off the walls.
Brenner tried to shout, but only managed a choked half-yell before you surged more force from yourself, suffocating his voice in his throat. You tightened your grip, his suspended body jerking.
Henry turned to you, voice razor sharp, expression rigid and controlled. “Stay here.”
Your stomach flipped violently with a wash of panic at his words.
Stay here? Stay behind, without him?
It felt like being left to the wolves.
“What? Henry-” you hissed.
He stepped closer to you, his face carved into lethal purpose. “Do what I say. Kill anyone who comes through this corridor.”
Your pulse hammered. “Without you?”
Henry’s eyes burned, analyzing your face. Then, his gaze softened, flickered with a flash of deliberate warmth you'd come to know all too well, the kind that his reawakening had smothered in him.
“Trust me.”
A sharp wire twisted in your gut. The sudden honey in his voice, the softness not quite covering the darkness lurking in his features. The command hidden under the plea.
But you didn't have time to challenge him.
A guard flew around the corner, boots slamming, a shock rod alive and sparking in his hand.
“Stay where you are!” He commanded, voice booming off the walls.
You froze, still holding Brenner aloft. Henry moved instantly.
He ripped Brenner from your hold with a single, effortless motion, the force pulling over your own like a powerful magnet.
Brenner choked as Henry’s power wrapped around him like crushing, invisible chains. Ten stumbled backwards, nearly falling as the force rippled through the space around him. Henry caught him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the rainbow room.
“Inside,” Henry commanded.
Ten obeyed with a whimper.
Henry dragged Brenner with him, his body twitching as he pulled through the air. He shoved open the doors and threw Brenner inside with a flick of his hand, as if he weighed nothing.
Several loud screams and the clattering of items dropped by frightened hands came from behind the doors as Brenner careened to the floor, landing with a crash, his thin limbs sprawled on the sickeningly bright rainbow.
Henry turned back to you. His voice was a low, lethal hiss. “Hold the corridor.”
You nodded once. His eyes locked onto yours, a single, raw moment of shared purpose. Then, he slammed the rainbow room doors shut behind him.
You drew in a deep, steadying breath, but your lungs shook. You were alone in the corridor.
No Henry. No escape.
“Hands where I can see them, subject Nineteen!” The guard yelled again, his spit flying. “Now!”
He careened towards you, taser rod hot in his hand, his other reaching down to clutch the gun in its holster. As he got closer, you recognized him.
A grim, terrible image flashed behind your eyes. His face looming above you, his mouth curved into a sick smirk, his black boot slamming down onto your fragile fingers.
Your blood pulsed, power coiling through your limbs like a living thing, bolstered by Henry's proximity or the rage or the desperation or some other force you couldn't pinpoint.
It happened faster than you could register it.
Your power surged, lighting you up nerve by nerve as it snapped outward, a shapeless, formless jolt of pure energy that drew a shriek from your lungs.
The guard’s body violently jerked and stuttered mid-stride. You drew him up into the air, suspending him for only a moment before snapping your fingers inward.
The sound was a sickening, ear-splitting crunch. You felt each one of his ribs one by one, cracking, splintering, piercing into his organs. He choked, blood spluttering from his mouth in thick crimson droplets, painting the floor beneath him.
You dropped him and watched, your eyes dark with fury, as his body collapsed to the floor in a heavy thud. A wet, guttural noise spilt from him as his body twitched and then turned limp.
You didn't have time to slow your ragged breathing. More furious slamming of boots filled the corridors as two more guards banged through the doors and flew around the corner.
You didn’t hesitate.
With another shrill scream, your power surged again, sharp and controlled from both hands, gripping the two of them before they could even raise their weapons.
This time, you slammed them both up into the ceiling with such a violent force that the plaster rained loose onto the tile. You felt your power wrap around their throats like steel wire, and you pulled, tighter and tighter until their splutters and gasps choked down into dead silence. They both fell to the floor, motionless.
Again and again, the corridor filled with the echo of boots, the crackle of radios, the booming shouts. All backed by the continuous wailing of the alarm.
You were exhausted, but you had no choice. You had to keep fighting. You had to do what he said. You had to get out, had to gut this hell from the inside out.
At a certain point, you felt like you were outside of yourself. Hearing your own shrieks echo through your ears, feeling your blood pulse, seeing your hands snap outward, fingers splayed.
With each life you erased, more of you broke.
With each bone you splintered, with each throat you closed, more of your mind screamed for Henry.
The bodies piled up, limp and lifeless in the corridor, the white painted red. The lights in the ceilings had blown out and rained metal and glass into the crimson streaks, the bulbs sparking and dangling uselessly. Doors had flown open, broken off their hinges in response to you.
Now, you were on your knees, palms in the blood and ruins.
Dry sobs wracked through you from sheer exhaustion as you collapsed forward onto shaking arms. Blood was spilling fast from both of your nostrils, painting your knuckles red as it fell. Your head pounded, the edges of your mind throbbing, your vision blurring.
“Henry...” you croaked through your panting.
For a while, the only sound in the ruined corridor was the alarm, the live buzzing of exposed wires, and your heavy gasping.
Then, you heard the screams.
Not yours, not more guards. Not Brenner's or Henry's.
The children.
Your heart lurched violently into your throat as another ripped through your ears.
You staggered to your feet, slipping on blood, catching yourself on the wall. Red streaked across it from your palms as your hands slid against the tile, your legs shaking with every step.
The rainbow room door was sealed shut, the white spattered with streaks of blood and dust from the debris of your hallway massacre.
Another scream, sharp and terrified, echoed into the corridor like a nightmare.
“Henry!” you shouted, voice cracking.
No answer. You slammed your shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge.
You pressed your palms hard to the metal, pulling power into your limbs, into your bones, from the exhausted edges of your mind. The door groaned under your hands, resisting.
Inside, another shrill scream peaked, followed by a muffled thud.
Then, it was silent. A silence so complete it felt like the world behind the doors had been erased entirely.
You could feel it seeping through the thin line at the floor. An untamed, unbridled power, pure static leaking from every gap.
Henry.
Your breath hitched. “Henry, open the door! Henry!”
You slammed your fists into the door, pushing harder, power surging through you in a violent burst. The hinges groaned. Then, the lock broke apart with a metallic crack. The doors gave way, flying inward with a shriek.
You stumbled into the rainbow room, falling to your knees again, your legs boneless.
It felt like being thrown into a hurricane of pure electricity. The very air was alive, tilted, every atom charged. The smell burned through your nostrils, an overwhelming, acrid copper hanging in the room like an inescapable mist.
Heavy, urgent breaths wracked through you. You raised your head, and every part of you froze.
The room was devastated.
The white walls were blood-soaked, slips of dark red splattered over the rainbows, the floor slick with it.
Henry stood near the two-way mirror at the back of the room, seething.
His power spiralled around him in jagged, uncontrolled waves, bending the air, warping the light, making the entire room pulse with a sick, electric heartbeat. His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. His hands were at his sides, fingers twitching rapidly.
Then, you saw them. The bodies.
The children. Tiny, crumpled forms. Twisted, bloodied. Limbs broken and contorted into warped angles. Their jaws were bent, held wide open in silent eternal screams, their eye sockets nothing but empty voids, black and crimson.
Your voice came out cracked with dread. “Fuck, no no no... Henry, what have you done...”
He turned only his head, slow and controlled. His cheeks looked hollower, his jaw sharper, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the room and the shadow of his mind.
You stumbled to your feet and stepped closer to him, your peripheral vision invaded by the wrecked shapes of the small bodies.
“Henry,” you said again, quieter. “The children...”
He turned fully then. His eyes were fevered, unhinged, the blue burned into something almost nuclear. His face was carved into a mask of rage and revelation, every line sharpened into something feral.
The crisp white of his uniform was splattered with violent shocks of blood.
Brenner was on his knees in the corner. His face was twisted in terror, his hands shaking violently, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. He looked small, pathetic.
A man stripped of every illusion of control.
You realized then the true depths of Henry's vengeance. He hadn't killed him, not yet. He hadn't afforded him that mercy.
He'd forced him to his knees first. Forced him to watch as he destroyed his kingdom, his weapons, his control, one prisoner at a time.
A tear breached your fragile eyelashes, slipping down your cheek to mix with the blood that streaked your face. Henry stepped toward you, terrifyingly slow, and dragged a cold finger up under your chin.
“Henry...” You pleaded, tears falling. “I never wanted you to hurt them. Only him, only Papa...”
“Why do you cry for them?” His voice was low, almost gentle. He tilted his head, studying you with a strange, almost tender curiosity.
“They should have been free, should have been-” you choked out.
“Don't you see? They are free. They are no longer his prisoners.” Henry said softly. “You think you should mourn them, but you shouldn't. They're not gone, Nineteen. They're still with me. In here.”
His long, pale finger tapped over his temple as his eyes pierced into yours.
Henry looked around the room at the bodies, the destruction, the aftermath, cataloguing every inch of it.
“Are you scared?” He asked, looming over your shaking frame. “I was scared once, too. But now, I am liberated. As are they, as are you. And he-”
Henry slipped his finger up your jaw and then turned, pacing over the room to Brenner, trembling in the corner. “He will pay for all of it.”
You swallowed hard, your pulse hammering so violently it hurt.
Henry stood over Brenner like a silhouette carved out of darkness, barely human in the way power warped around him. The rainbow room still pulsed with the aftermath, crackling with static that ran up your spine.
Brenner raised his head, his glassy eyes fixed on Henry with a terror that stripped him of every ounce of controlled authority he’d ever wielded.
Henry took one slow step toward him.
Brenner scrambled backwards on his knees, palms slipping on the tile.
“Henry-Henry, listen to me, please-”
Henry's power surged, a violent pulse that made the lights flicker and crackle dangerously. The walls groaned under the pressure. Brenner flinched, covering his head with shaking hands.
“The rat is caught.” Henry whispered.
He turned toward you slowly, too slowly, as if every movement was being dragged through the weight of his own power. His eyes locked onto yours, intense and terrifying.
“This is what he made,” he said. “This is what he wanted. A weapon.”
Henry turned back to face you, his voice cold.
“He made you one, too. He took you. He deceived you. Made you believe you could trust him. Made you into a beast for him to tame. He hurt you, didn't he? He made you bleed. He made you feel nothing but pain and agony, all while trying to erase you, trying to stop you from ever knowing the truth.”
His voice cracked. “He ruined you with his hands and punished you when you broke.”
You knew he was talking about himself just as much as he was talking about you.
A furious heat rose within you, blurring everything around in the room except Henry and Brenner and the horrifying truth of it. Every memory rushed into you at once.
Blinding lights. Rubber masks. Agony in your head. Shards of things you were driven into insanity trying to make sense of. Shadows ripping at the corner of your mind. The drugging, the restraints, the pain burning through your limbs. Every single honeyed threat, every single perfect lie. Bruises around your jaw. Henry lit up, tortured. Brenner's sick smile as he made you watch. The violent shocks, laid into your temples. The collar, the cans, the broken bones.
The serpent slithering through it all.
Your breath broke. Henry felt it. He turned fully toward Brenner, decisively.
“Now it is you who will break. For me.”
Brenner’s voice cracked with desperation as his eyes darted to you, begging for mercy, for solace, for anything.
“Nineteen, please, don’t - don’t let him-”
Henry didn’t let him finish.
His power surged forth, more violent than anything that had come before it. He was explosive, inevitable, burning with every single moment of agony that had been brought down upon him under the reign of Brenner.
The entire room warped as Henry gripped him with a blinding force, his every nerve tuned entirely to the depths of his vengeance. Brenner's thin frame rose into the air, his suit crumpled, his limbs jerking, his terror-stricken expression splattered with blood.
He tried to scream, but Henry's other hand splayed forth, power wrapping around Brenner's throat and suffocating him. He clawed helplessly at his neck.
Henry held him aloft in silence, seething, his body trembling with fury. His eyes were burning, nuclear ice-blue, studying the face of his captor one last time.
“Goodbye, Papa.” He snarled.
“Please-” Brenner choked, guttural and desperate.
With blinding speed, Henry threw him into the wall. He was slammed against it, arms splayed, his entire body violently seizing as his face pooled scarlet.
Henry was gone, his eyes rolled back into his head, his own body twitching with power, his face warped into something ancient and demonic.
You felt every atom of it. Henry's unbridled rage, his brokenness, his pain, his desperation. All of it twisted into a lethal force, ripping into Brenner's every nerve.
A final cascade of power flew from Henry's hands, cracking the floor beneath his feet.
Brenner's blood burst forth, streaming in rivers from every part of him. His eyes, his mouth, his ears, painting his white hair. It ran down his neck, through every aged line on his face, a brutal haemorrhage that splattered onto the tile. His body convulsed against the wall, every bone shattering at Henry's command, every vein ripping apart.
Then, he dropped.
His body hit the floor with a brutal crack. He didn't twitch. He didn't choke.
He was destroyed.
Henry seethed where he stood, his nose dripping with blood, his body shaking as he let his arms drop to his side. His breaths were slow, ragged, his eyes not leaving the ruined shell of Brenner.
Your own breathing was broken. The weight of what you'd done, the weight of what you'd witnessed. The blood, the bones, the lives you'd taken, the power that had rushed through your body in unstoppable waves.
And the relief.
You fell to the floor, palms slamming into the debris. Sobs wracked through you, blood and saltwater streaking your face as you shuddered against the tile.
The serpent was dead. The chains were severed.
You thought it was over.
But as Henry turned toward you, his steps terrifyingly graceful, his beauty twisted into something demonic, you saw it.
One God had fallen.
Another had taken his place.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Chapter Thirteen - Crucible
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l love your writing!!! you can become a writer and publish your own books.
Thank you so much! I have published two poetry books irl, and I have definitely had fleeting thoughts about writing a novel but would have zero idea where to start
I'm looking forward to Theo and Jane's next story, hoping it will be updated soon. By the way, I really like all of your works; you are truly talented.
Just posted the new chapter!
The last chapter of Spring will be coming soon as well.
