//CLARA//
"Gary, look at ."
I threw my entire weight forward, pinning his wrists against the mattress.
"Look at my face. You’re safe. You’re out of that place."
His single visible eye darted around the ceiling, wild and bloodshot. His chest heaved in violent jerks, each breath a ragged, wet scrape that made my stomach clench. He was fighting invisible ghosts.
"No," he choked out in a panicked rasp. "Get them off ! I don’t know anything. Please spare . It’s dark... God, it’s so dark."
"Gary! Listen to my voice. It’s . The one who steals your fries and calls you an idiot. Rember? Look at , you bastard."
The blunt words hit him like ice water. His thrashing slowed, the frantic twitching of his legs going still. His swollen eye flickered, trying to lock onto my features.
"Cl... Clara?"
"Yes. It’s Clara. I’m right here."
I released his left wrist, cupping the side of his burning, sweat-slicked face to force his gaze into mine.
"We’re in the mansion. You’re upstairs in the guest wing. Dr. Varga fixed you up. Those n can’t touch you anymore."
He blinked twice, the film of delirium finally rolling back. "Clara?"
"Hey, idiot. Welco back to the living."
His entire body went limp, his head sinking deep into the pillows with a slow, exhausted sigh. For a terrifying second, I thought he had slipped under again. But then his eye opened, sharp and entirely present.
"The dock... the cellar," he whispered, his vocal cords tearing at the effort. "I thought I was still down there. I thought they were still cutting..."
"You’re safe. It’s over."
He gave a weak nod, his fingers blindly groping across the sheets until they found my hand.
Then, the door creaked open. The air in the room instantly plumted.
Casimir stood in the threshold, likely drawn by the screaming from his study. His gaze dropped to Gary, shifted to leaning over the mattress in nothing but my thin chemise, and finally landed on our clasped hands.
Gary went entirely rigid beneath my palms, his fingers clawing into my knuckles with agonizing force.
"Casimir," I said quickly, forcing a casual tone to diffuse the sudden tension. "He’s awake. He’s just confused. He needs so air and so water—"
"No."
The syllable cut through my words like a blade. It ca from Gary, his gaze locked on Casimir in pure horror.
"Gary—"
"I need to speak with you."
Gary’s eye darted back to mine, desperate. He pulled my hand closer to his chest.
"Alone. Clara, please. God, please. Alone."
I slowly looked back at my husband, then to the people witnessing the ordeal.
"Give us a mont."
Casimir’s gaze flicked down to Gary, then back to .
"I’ll be in the hallway."
He turned on his heel and stepped out. The click of the latch sounded like the firing pin of a revolver.
The room fell into a suffocating silence. Gary’s eye remained glued to the door, his face turning a sickening, translucent paleness.
"They’re gone, Gary," I said, leaning closer. "Now, tell , what the hell is wrong with you?"
"I saw it," he croaked, a tear tracking through his swollen cheek.
"The fever... it broke sothing open in my head. When I was passed out in that cellar, I was in Elias’s mories. I saw what he saw before they broke him."
A cold drip of dread leaked into my bloodstream. "What did you see?"
"The docks. A man nad Cuthbert. William Cuthbert. He was cornered in the alley behind the pier. He was on his knees, begging..."
Gary stopped, his throat working violently as if he were about to throw up.
"Gary, what did you see? Tell ."
His single eye t mine, stripping the last of the warmth from the room.
"Casimir shot him."
I felt the blood completely drain from my face. I stared at him, waiting for him to tell the fever was playing tricks on his mind, that it was a hallucination, a joke. Anything. He just stared back with a hollow, dead certainty.
"Point-blank range," Gary continued in a frantic whisper.
"Cuthbert was weeping, offering him money, begging for his children. And Casimir didn’t even say a word. He looked down at him with those dead eyes, lifted the barrel, and pulled the trigger. I saw the blood hit the brick wall."
I wanted to deny it. I wanted to tell Gary his brain was fried from the infection. But then the pieces violently slamd together. The ledger. Silas Thurston. Mr. Cromwell’s cryptic warnings. Casimir’s na sitting in that ledger. It all pointed to the exact sa truth.
"I’ve killed before, Clara."
He had warned exactly what he was. And I had looked into that dark abyss, shrugged my shoulders, and chosen to love him anyway.
"Clara." Gary’s voice pulled back. "Elias wasn’t running from the syndicate. He was running from him. Elias was the only witness to the Cuthbert murder. Casimir has been hunting him ever since to clean up the loose end."
"That’s not—" I swallowed hard, the back of my throat tasting like ash. "Casimir wouldn’t... he brought you back. He saved you."
"Because of you!"
Gary shook his head. There were fresh tears glistening on his lashes.
"Only because of you. I know you think he’d never hurt you I know you trust him blindly because of whatever sick bond you two have ford in this house, but Clara..."
He shivered.
"Be careful. Please. I saw his face in that mory when he pulled the trigger. There was nothing there. No anger. No remorse. No hesitation. Just..."
Gary let out a trembling sigh.
"Just emptiness. Like he was stepping on a bug. He’s a machine built to destroy things."
The air in my lungs felt like lead. The brutal, unfeeling executioner Gary was describing didn’t match the man who had held against his chest last night.
It didn’t match the man who had bitten my shoulder in a frantic panic, whose voice had broken as he told he would burn the entire world to ash if it ant filling the empty space where my body used to be.
But as I sat there, the cold winter light cutting through the room, a terrifying thought crawled up my spine.
Maybe both versions were true. Maybe he was a monster to the rest of the world, and a protector only to . And maybe that made him ten tis more dangerous.
I stood up slowly, my legs feeling like brittle glass that might shatter if I put too much weight on them. Gary’s hand slipped away from mine.
"Rest," I whispered, hearing myself completely hollow even to my own ears. "The fever is still high. I’ll... I’ll check on you later."
"Clara." His voice stopped right as my hand touched the brass doorknob. "Be careful around him. Promise ."
I turned back, forcing my shoulders to straighten.
"He would never hurt , Gary. That I know as surely as I know my own na. And I promise you... I will do everything in my power to keep you safe in this house. No one is touching you again."
I turned the knob, stepped out into the corridor, and let the door click shut behind .
Casimir was waiting.
He was leaning his broad back against the wood paneling of the opposite wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
The mont the door clicked, he pushed off the wall, closing the distance between us in two heavy, predatory strides that completely boxed in against the fra.
"What did he tell you?"
I looked up at him. I looked at the man I loved—the man who had killed without a single second of hesitation.
"That you’re terrifying," I jested smoothly, completely devoid of the panic screaming in my mind. "That you nearly scared him to death just by walking into the room."
He lifted his brow. "That’s all?"
"That’s all."
He studied for a mont, his gaze searching my eyes, my lips, the pulse point fluttering at the base of my throat.
Finally, he reached out, grabbing my waist and pulling roughly against his chest. His arms wrapped around , his chin resting heavily on top of my wet hair.
"I’m sorry," he muttered against my crown. "For everything you went through. For all of it."
"Stop."
I pressed my palm flat against his chest, lifting my head to et his gaze.
"You have nothing to apologize for."
He didn’t say anything else. He just tightened his grip, crushing against him until it was hard to breathe, as if he were trying to pull my entire existence into his own lungs.
I closed my eyes and listened to his steady heartbeat.
Gary’s terrified whisper echoed in the back of my mind.
I took a deep breath, buried my face into the crook of Casimir’s neck, and violently pushed the words away into the dark.
I wasn’t ready to face them. Not yet.
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