While Elizabeth was being reduced to a panting, cum-slicked animal on her knees, the atmosphere in Alexander’s private study was suffocatingly different, heavy with the stench of stale ink, guttering candle wax, and the bitter rot of failure.
"Gghhh... nrrggghhh..." Alexander keeps mumbling while scratching his forehead with a pen. "Think... think clearly...!"
The clock on the mantle had long since struck the deepest hours of the night, the rhythmic tock tock tock sounding to Alexander like the steady beat of a hamr driving nails into his own coffin. He sat hunched over a massive oak desk, his eyes bloodshot and burning from hours of squinting at cramped, ancient script.
"Co on... there has to be sothing..." he whispered, his voice a raspy, broken shadow of its forr command.
His hands, usually steady enough to lead an expedition, were trembling as he frantically flipped through the vellum pages of a crumbling to on Arcane tallurgy and Relic Restoration. He had gone through dozens of books.
He had consulted every text in his personal collection, searching for a way to fuse the enchanted brass of the key back together, to nd the magical fracture he had caused with his own goddamn stupidity.
He stopped, his forehead resting heavily against the cool wood of the desk. A single, hot tear escaped his eye and hit the parchnt, blurring a diagram of a celestial seal.
"God, what have you done, Alexander?" he groaned into the silence of the room. "You’ve ruined everything."
The guilt was a physical weight in his chest, a crushing pressure that made it difficult to breathe. Every ti he closed his eyes, he saw the look in Elizabeth’s eyes before she left—a bitter, jagged smile that indicated she was sacrificing her dignity to clean up his ss.
He knew she was going to Rex. He knew the "negotiations" he had hoped for were a lie and that she was heading into the arms of a man who viewed her as nothing more than a tool or a toy.
And of course, he’s not a man with negative thoughts because he trusts Rex is probably going to find a way with Elizabeth to think of sothing that could cover the destruction of the key.
"She’s out there... dealing with him because of ," he choked out, his fingers digging into his scalp, pulling at his hair in frustration. "Because I couldn’t just listen..."
"And I thought... I knew better than the protocol."
He sat back up, his face pale and drawn in the flickering candlelight. He looked like a man aged ten years in a single night. He reached for another book, a heavy, leather-bound volu on Underlayer Geotries, and began to leaf through it with a desperate, manic energy.
He was searching for a miracle, a way to fix the key, a way to undo the damage so he could go to her, pull her back from Rex’s grasp, and tell her it was all over.
But the pages remained silent. The ink remained indifferent.
He had no idea that while he was drowning in his own self-loathing, Elizabeth was currently face down on a floor, her mouth full of Rex’s essence, her mind shattered, and her body being claid by the very man he feared most.
He was fighting a war of books and ink, completely oblivious to the fact that the woman he loved was being thoroughly, brutally broken in the na of his survival.
"Please," he sobbed quietly, his eyes scanning the text once more, his vision blurring. "Just one way."
"Just one fucking way to fix my goddamn stupidity...!"
The image flashed in his mind like a recurring nightmare, a jagged shard of mory that cut deeper than any blade.
He could still see her face. Not the cold, composed Professor Elizabeth he always knew, but the woman he loved, the one who had looked at him with a gaze so heavy with disappointnt that it had felt like being buried alive.
He closed his eyes, but it only made the mory more vivid. He rembered the mont of his ultimate humiliation.
He had been so desperate to prove himself to her, so fucking arrogant in his desire to be the hero she deserved. He had snatched the key from Rex’s reach, wanting to show her that he could handle the responsibility, that he could protect the expedition without needing a brute like Rex to bail them out.
He had wanted to see that spark of pride in her eyes. He had wanted her to look at him and see a man, not a boy playing at being a soldier.
("Look, sugar plum! See?! It’s safe! I have it!" he had shouted, his voice brimming with a misplaced, frantic confidence.)
And then, the sickening, hollow snap.
The sound had echoed in the silence of the camp like a thunderclap. He rembered the way the enchanted brass had felt as it splintered between his fingers and the sudden, terrifying loss of its magical hum.
He rembered the weight of the broken pieces in his palm, cold and useless. "Fuck, fuck, fuck...! If only I were patient and not rushing to her like that, then... I wouldn’t stumble like a fucking dumbass!"
But most of all, he rembered her reaction. She hadn’t scread.
She hadn’t even cursed. She had simply gone still.
The light in her purple eyes hadn’t just dimd, but it had died. She had looked at the broken fragnts, then up at him, and the expression of pure, unadulterated disappointnt had been more painful than if she had slapped him across the face.
It was the look of a woman realizing that the man she relied on was nothing more than a clumsy, prideful man-child who couldn’t even finish the simplest job by retriving the key without having to rush.
"I was trying to impress you..." he whispered into the empty room, a fresh wave of tears spilling over. "I was so fucking stupid, Elizabeth."
"I just wanted you to look at with full pride that you soon will have a strong and reliable husband like ..."
The thought of Rex, the man who had actually succeeded where Alexander had failed, made him want to howl in agony. He knew Rex was a man that hides many secrets, especially after beating him in a humiliated way, but he knew that Rex was capable.
Rex had saved them many tis, cleared so of those legions while rescuing Apollo and the others, and retrieved the key. And now, Rex was the one who would be taking responsibility with Elizabeth, while Alexander sat here in the dark, surrounded by useless books and broken promises.
He slumped forward, his forehead hitting the desk with a dull thud. The regret was a physical ache in his gut, a nausea that wouldn’t subside.
"Goddamn it...!" Every ti he breathed, he felt the weight of that mont, the mont his pride destroyed their future.
"Forgive ," he choked out, his voice a broken plea to a woman who was currently being used as a vessel for another man’s pleasure. "Please, just... let find a way to fix it."
"Let fix it before you forget there was ever a man who truly loved you."
As the tears finally began to subside, leaving Alexander’s eyes stinging and his face salt stained, a small, fragile flicker of hope began to stir in the depths of his exhausted mind. It was a desperate thought, a lifeline thrown to a drowning man, but it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing into total madness.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, staring blankly at the flickering candle.
Rex.
The na itself carried a weight of raw, unrefined power. Alexander leaned back in his chair, his breathing slowing as he forced himself to think logically, to push past the jealousy and the bruising ego that had plagued him all night.
"Rex is... he’s not just so brute," Alexander murmured to himself, his voice gaining a tiny shred of stability. "He’s a reliable man I could trust my wife with because he’s her student."
"He’s the most capable man in this entire problem because he saved a lot of innocent lives, and I could tell that he’s probably trying to solve sothing for us all."
He thought back to the canyon, the way the earth had groaned and buckled, the way the panic had gripped the entire party, and how Rex had moved through the chaos like a god of war. Rex had been the anchor while Alexander had frozen in awe at the sheer scale of the disaster.
He had been the one to pull them from the brink of death, his strength and his instincts proving to be the only thing that mattered when the world was falling apart.
A small, tentative smile touched Alexander’s lips, though it was tinged with a profound sense of relief.
"If anyone can fix this... if anyone has the sheer, unyielding will to find a way to nd the underlayer without the key... it’s him," he whispered.
He began to rationalize the situation, trying to convince himself that his sacrifice and Elizabeth’s weren’t in vain. If Rex were as powerful as he seed, perhaps he could find a workaround.
Perhaps his connection to the more primal, druidic forces of the land could compensate for the loss of the enchanted brass.
"He’s reliable," Alexander reassured himself, his eyes brightening with a new, albeit lopsided, sense of optimism. "He’s strong, a bit arrogant, and certainly a man of many words...!"
"But ultimately... he keeps his promises when it cos to delivering results."
"HE won’t let Lady Valentina’s wrath destroy us."
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