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Chapter Text

The cold stung her fingers and made her eyes water and burn, but Evelyn Montgomery tried her best to ignore the discomfort, just as she attempted to ignore the pain of her ruined ankle. The leather and iron brace that held the joint in a stable position was falling apart at its seams and the metal was bent. More often than not her ankle rolled as she limped along. The hurt had once been almost unbearable, but time had made her a little more immune to it, at least on some days. Today was not one of those days. The cold and wet just made it more painful. The injury was eight years old and had occurred when she’d been but twelve years old. She was now twenty and even the span of those eight years hadn’t made a bitterly cold day easier. 

Her breath puffed out in crystallized clouds on the frozen air as she carted the ash to the Anderson Smith. With a bucket in each hand, she longed for her walking stick, but using it would have required two trips. Ned and Margaret would have a fit if she didn’t return to scrape out the rest of the hearths in time for their dinner party. Evelyn’s humorless and stern elder brother had little love for the younger sister that decent Christian charity demanded he care for. The same could be said for Margaret, Ned’s equally dour and outright malicious wife. Taking the ashes to the Andersons was one of Ned’s weekly chores for the footmen, but they were in town that afternoon, seeing about new horses for their master. 

Of course her brother couldn’t be troubled with such a menial task, so it had fallen to Evelyn, as many things did these days. 

Sometimes she wondered if they might be trying to work her into the grave. 

Elrik and Freja Anderson’s cottage and blacksmith appeared over the rise. She shuddered in relief and forced herself to move faster, despite the pain lancing like lightning through her ankle. By the time she was finally at the front gate of the property, her breath was sobbing in and out of her frozen lungs. She dropped the buckets and worked open the gate with her numb fingers, the metal like ice through her threadbare gloves. Picking back up the buckets, she laboriously made her way to the front door of the cottage and knocked. 

The smithy was a big Danish man in his fifties with a beard going to salt and pepper and a head of bushy hair beneath his cap. He eyed the two full buckets in her grip, then grunted a greeting. 

“Evie. None to help you today, eh?” His eyes beneath full brows were full of judgement and it eased some of the simmering frustration that had been burning in her gut since Ned’s orders this morning. The smithy was a kind sort of man and had strong opinions on women forced to do a man’s labor.

“Not today.” She answered with a wry smile. “Ned says to tell you that he has a touch of the flu, or he would have come to see you himself.” And they both knew that wasn’t true.

“Brown bottle flu more like. Well, come in out of the cold. Freja will fix you a mug of tea while you wait for my apprentice to return with wood for the furnaces. He’ll help you carry these back.” Elrik stepped back and gestured her inside, leaving the buckets of ash in front of the door. “Adam will carry these to the shop.”

“Mister Anderson, that’s not necessary. I made the trip here, I can make it back.” But she didn’t refuse his invitation to come inside. Her fingers and toes were now entirely numb in her ill-suited gloves and boots. The heat of his cottage would be welcome, especially on her ankle that throbbed like a rotting tooth. 

The cottage was a comfortable, but humble place, much smaller than the stately manor Evie had grown up in and now belonged to Ned and Margaret. But the blacksmith’s home was ruthlessly tidy and much more welcoming. The blast of heat from the sitting room’s hearth hit her square in the face and she nearly swayed with the wave of lightheadedness of going from the brutal cold to the warmth. The sting in her fingers and toes went to blazing as the blood began pumping again. She winced, then sank down upon the padded bench in front of the fire that Elrik Anderson directed her to. 

“Sit, Evie. I’ll have Freja make you a cup of licorice tea. And you’ll take my apprentice’s help. Your shiftless brother thinks to repay me with ash every week, the craven, rather than coming to face me and settle his debts. That he has his crippled sister - begging your pardon - do it for him is beyond the pale.” 

The ire in his heavily accented voice had her head jerking up. “What? I thought you gave him a few pence for the ashes every week…” Ash was a tool for the blacksmith’s trade and many in the village brought it from their hearths for a few extra coins. 

The big man shook his head as he fetched a blanket from another chair and cast it over her lap. “Ha! No. He owes me a dear amount, Evie. I poured a week’s labor into that new curricle of his that he tools about the village in. And he has made but one payment. He’s since refused my visits. And now he brings ash, as if I’ll take the few pence off his debt.” Elrik opened another door and murmured something in Danish to his wife.

But Evelyn sat in silence, staring into the hearth. She’d long known that finances were not in a happy state at her brother’s home, but not to this extent. Ned had a flashy lifestyle and Margaret had become just as greedy for more as he. They threw country balls and lavish dinner parties for all their friends, went to London for every season (leaving her behind, of course), and bought clothing that was delivered by tailors and modistes of high caliber. And lastly, Margaret had been voicing her unhappiness as of late with the size of the estate and the manorhouse. 

“So, they owe you a considerable sum?” She asked with hesitation, not certain if she wanted to know the answer. If Margaret and her brother were indebted to the smithy, then it reasoned that they were in debt to the other merchants and tradesmen as well.

“Indeed. And I sincerely doubt that I’m the only one your brother has broken his bond to.” He returned with a steaming cup of tea that her put into her aching hands. The frayed gloves were no barrier between the hot stoneware and her fingers and she nearly moaned at the sensation. Even if it threatened to burn the roof of her mouth, she took a slow sip. Bitter, strong tea and the earthy sweetness of licorice root coated her tongue. 

“Thank you, Mister Anderson,” She gasped out, the heat warming her frozen insides. Taking advantage, she stretched out her feet towards the fire. “I’m…sincerely sorry that my family has dealt deceitfully with yours. I didn’t realize that they were not paying their debts.” How much? How much of what they owned and what was being delivered week after week was being purchased on nothing more than promises and a lie? 

“The Montgomerys have a tendency to not take care of what is theirs. Such as that foot of yours.” His words had her glancing down at the twisted ruin of her ankle, the brace barely holding it into place. She flushed and hastily covered her boot with the edge of the blanket he’d given her. 

“It didn’t heal correctly. A physician couldn’t help me at this point.” It didn’t help anything to say that her family had never sought her any help beyond one of the stable hands setting the bone and wrapping it. Her Papa and Mama had been dead by then and Ned hadn’t seen a need to waste coin when a servant could do just as good a job for free. 

“I remember it, Evie. I was there when that horse threw you and trampled you and you no more than a little mite of a thing. I was delivering shoes to the stable.” Elrik shook his head and moved to shift the fire with a poker. “I told Ned he needed to get you to the doctor, but Ned always knows best, doesn’t he? They could have at least had your brace repaired by now. You’ve grown considerably in eight years. That strap needs replacing and the iron is bent out of shape entirely.” Replacing the poker, he knelt in front of her, moving aside the blanket and studied the brace. 

“There’s no coin for that,” she hastily explained, humiliation burning in her cheeks. “I don’t get a wage…” His snort had her smiling a little despite myself. 

“Not surprised by that. It can be a gift, girl. My wife can repair that leather and my apprentice will shape the iron…or replace it entirely. Let’s have it, then.” Without much of a choice, she let him remove the brace, stifling a whimper as her unsupported ankle rolled to the side and the pain throbbed ceaselessly through the joint. 

Evelyn thanked him, then sat in silence at such kindness while Elrik took the brace apart, then carried the leather strap into the kitchen for his wife to look at. She sipped at her tea, grateful for the warmth of it, the blanket over her legs, the fire burning in the hearth. There were no such comforts back at home. The housekeeper was miserly with the tea the servants were allowed to prepare for themselves. Insipid, weak tea was better than no tea, but it was a far cry from the strong brew in her hands. Her room in the servants’ quarters had no working hearth, but only a coal warmer that didn’t flow properly and only heated a small portion of the room. 

She stared into the fire, missing her parents with a sudden and strong pang in her chest. The life they had shared together before their deaths in a carriage accident when Evie had been but eleven years old had been warm and pleasant and their relationship a loving one. Ned, her senior by more than twice her age, had already married the lovely but quarrelsome Margaret and lived with her in a house in the village. And not having his domineering, critical presence at home had been so very peaceful. Even at such a young age, Evelyn had known she was not going to be a beauty, with her plain and freckled features and frizzy ginger hair, but she’d hoped to eventually marry a kind sort of man and have children to dote on.

Then the world had crumbled away beneath her feet with the splintering of a carriage axle and a turn taken too sharp near a frozen-over lake. Ned had inherited the family home, installed Margaret as its new mistress and deemed his much younger sister as a lost cause for a gently bred lady’s education and dowry once the horse-riding accident had left her permanently maimed. Gradually, her place in her own home had grown smaller and smaller, until her room was turned into a lady’s solarium for Margaret and her well-heeled friends. And she was relegated to a servant’s role. 

The simple and welcoming atmosphere of the blacksmith’s home was like a respite to her, the Andersons having been friends of her parents, despite the difference in their social status. Evelyn’s family were not nobility, but were the product of a successful shipping industry that her father had inherited. Elrik’s elder brother Mikael Anderson, a prominent Danish sea captain, had introduced the two when Elrik had settled in the village with his wife. The Andersons were childless and had treated a young Evie like one of their own as she ran tame between the two houses with other neighborhood children. With all that had happened in the last eight years, their quiet, warm home was a bittersweet glimpse into the sort of life that Evie would never have. 

The despair that welled up inside her chest threatened the backs of her eyes and throat with unshed tears. 

Something moved outside, a towering and wide shadow drifting past one of the glazed windows. Her fingers tightened around the mug as the outline of the man disappeared from sight. Elrik was still inside the home, his voice a low murmur of Danish in the kitchen. Another customer perhaps?

A door opened at the back of the shop without a knock to herald the man’s entrance. The apprentice. She’d almost forgotten that Elrik had taken one on. For as long as she had known the Anderson, the blacksmith had not been the type to take on another employee. Perhaps as he neared his older years, Elrik had a thought of passing on the business to someone. She knew Captain Anderson had a wife and older children. Perhaps the apprentice was a nephew. 

Before the sounds of slow and heavy footsteps could reveal their maker, the kitchen door swung open and Elrik appeared. He gestured to the doorway that led to the rest of the small house.

“Evie, let me go make the boy aware of your presence,” he hastily murmured, leaning towards her, as if trying to keep the words between only the two of them. “He is painfully shy and is heavily scarred from a terrible accident. There was fire and many grievous wounds. His appearance might be…” Bushy brows furrowing, he spread his hands. “...distressing to first look upon. He covers up the scarring.” 

Evie blinked, then quickly nodded. Her own scars and wounds might be contained to her foot and ankle, but she hated the idea of anyone looking upon them. The apprentice’s fears were entirely understandable to her. 

Elrik headed into the darkened corridor behind him and she couldn’t help the curiosity that had her straining forward to hear the conversation. When the soft words of the blacksmith were answered by a low and rasping voice, that curiosity burned in her chest. He was hurt in a fire? Wouldn’t working in a blacksmith’s shop bring up painful memories for the man? The forge and the heat and molten metal? The mere sight of a horse could still inspire a cold sweat to break along her spine and brow and bring a tremor to her belly. Even eight years after her accident, she still couldn’t bring herself to ride or go near the stables unless under orders from Ned and Margaret. 

There was a low and regretful sound from the rooms beyond, like one of the two men were full of anguish about something. 

“Adam, it will be well. She’s a good lass and I told her about the…”

“Fire.” The rasping word contained a wealth of something like irony and despair. On the bench, Evelyn shifted uncomfortably at the notion that the apprentice was  uneasy about meeting her, of all people. She had no illusions about being the sort of woman a young man would lose his tongue around. Even if she wasn’t crippled, there was nothing pretty or fetching about her.

The Andersons had a mirror hung in the sitting room and she lifted her head and looked into it now. Dreary gray eyes, too deep in her colorless oval face that had gone even paler with the pain. Freckles that dotted the whole of her entire face and body, too many to be simply charming, like some of the fresh-faced girls in the village. Scrawny and small, in both height and body, with bony shoulders and elbows and knees, small breasted and shapeless in a too-large drab brown dress and ash-covered apron.

And then there was her hair. Somewhere between ginger and pale brown. It was heavy and neither charmingly curled nor elegantly straight, but frizzy and bushy, especially in the wet. She had it plaited around her head and the limp strands clung to her brow and cheeks. 

No, she certainly would give Elrik’s Adam no reason to feel uncomfortable in her company. 

The men murmured to one another for a moment longer and then the blacksmith reappeared in the doorway. From the shadows behind him emerged his apprentice.

Evelyn had never seen a man such as him. He filled the small sitting room, his head almost scraping the beams of the ceiling, his wide shoulders nearly twice that of his employer, covered in a fur cloak. The hood, even in the heat of the room, was pulled up over his head. The cloak was a thick and heavy one, the bear hide gleaming brown-black in the fire, and the long waves of chestnut hair emerging from the cowl nearly blended in with the fur. Another coat of brown wool covered a linen shirt beneath, tucked into black trousers. Knee-high hunting boots with fur trim were laced up over muscular calves and covered a massive pair of feet. The layers could have added to the sheer breadth of his form, but the impression of Adam was of overwhelming size and strength. 

His face was nearly entirely hidden beneath a black muffler, the length of fabric wrapped across his cheeks, nose, mouth, and even over his brow. Only the pale strip of flesh where his eyes rested was visible and those eyes were deep and dark in their sockets. 

The apprentice, Adam, stared at her with an unblinking intensity. The way the man’s gleaming gaze swam with emotions as he watched her set her pulse to a frantic gallop in her ears. The way he looked at her was almost hungry. Even the diagonal lines of scarring that ran between his eyes didn’t distract her from the way his eyes devoured her. 

“E-liza-beth?”

The guttural question of a name, the consonants slowly enunciated. He took one slow, lurching step forward. Then Elrik shifted and the light from the hearth cut through the shadows in the room.

Adam stopped in his forward progress. Those liquid eyes that Evie suddenly realized were mismatched, widened, then closed. 

“No, Adam. This is Evelyn Montgomery. She’s a neighbor. We’re going to help her.” The blacksmith held out the iron stirrup of her ankle brace and the moment was broken.

Heart still pounding, she looked away, down to her hands in her lap. For a moment the man’s adoring stare had been everything. No one had ever looked at her like that, not even the young man who had briefly entertained the idea of marrying her before he realized her brother had not bestowed a dowry upon her. She was jealous of Elizabeth, whoever she was. 

What in heaven’s name was wrong with her?

“Yes, Elrik. Of course, I will help.” With another slow, long stride, the apprentice took the piece of iron in his hands. Evie swallowed past that sudden knot in her throat and watched surreptitiously beneath her lashes as Adam studied the stirrup. 

His fingers were so very pale. And long. Like ghostly, spindle-legged spiders, they moved over the iron, one index finger strangely discolored. Then moving with a slow, primordial grace that didn’t fit that towering frame, Adam sank into a crouch at her feet. She held her breath as he held up the stirrup to her ankle, the foot completely turned onto its side in her boot without the aid of the brace. His head tilted, mismatched eyes moving over the shape of the ruined joint. Then they lifted to her face and in the firelight, one seemed to gleam like an ember, burning in the dark. 

“May I put my hands upon your foot, E-ve-lyn?”

The name, her name, on his lips, muffled behind the scarf, was like hearing as something other than it was: beautiful, elegant, a name to be lingered over in three distinct syllables. She nodded, her breath rasping out between her lips in a ‘yes.’

Those long fingers dropped to her boot and wrapped around the circumference of her ankle, one hand gripping the joint, the other cupping the heel. His hands swallowed her foot entirely. Slowly, he began to apply pressure, straightening the joint. 

Pain shot through Evie like a hot lance and she couldn’t hold back the yelp and sharp wince, eyes wide on the scarred man in front of her. 

Adam flinched as if she had slapped him, pale hands jerking away from her body and into the air, covering his head, shoulders hunched. Huge, cowering at her feet, he whined in the back of his throat.

She knew the sight of someone that had been beaten before, that expected to be beaten again, knew it well because his gestures mirrored those Evie had made many times in the past when she failed to please Ned or Margaret or the housekeeper. Horrified that she could make Adam feel that sort of fear and anxiety, she bent forward without thought and caught one of his hands in hers. 

“I’m so sorry, Adam. I’m alright. It just hurt a moment. I’m perfectly fine.” She spoke softly, trying to soothe him. His skin was cool to the touch, the bitter cold of the air outside clinging to him, and she glanced down, studying his fingers as they curled slowly and hesitantly about her own much smaller hands. There were yet more lines of seam-like scars running along his fingers, at the base of those that were discolored and he almost wanted to ask about it, but Elrik saved her from doing something so badly mannered. 

“I think a new bit of iron is required altogether, Adam. This one seems to have been outgrown by our patient long ago, eh?” The blacksmith crouched down and retrieved the stirrup, then pushed to his feet. “Can you go start on a new one? About ye long and wide?” He gestured to Adam with measurements. 

The other man, still kneeling at her feet, gazed at her hands resting in his a moment longer, his thumb tracing across a blue vein running over the back of one, then nodded and stood. 

“Yes, Elrik.” Hooded head bowed, Adam melted back into the shadows. Evie stared after him, her fingers still tingling with his touch. 

She’d never felt such curiosity in her life, never felt such a strange sensation of…joy?...at the meeting of a complete stranger. Joy was an emotion almost entirely unknown to her. To feel it now after such a strange encounter was dizzying and very nearly frightening.

“Elrik. Who…who is he?”

Chapter Text

As reference for how I picture original characters mentioned thus far:

Evelyn:       Elrik: 

In the doorway of the low stone hut that housed the Anderson’s smith, Adam lowered his hood and unwrapped the scarf from about his face, then shrugged the bear fur cloak from his shoulders. Shedding the wool coat as well, he pulled on the thick leather gloves that would protect his hands (as if that mattered), then tied on his leather apron. There were already iron pieces from the foundry waiting to be worked with, purchased just that morning when he had taken the cart into the village. He went about in silence, gathering what he needed for the stirrup, keeping in mind Elrik’s requested dimensions in mind. Moving with the steady, slow and careful precision that his master had come to appreciate, he weighed out the iron, fed the forge with fresh coals with one hand while he pumped the bellows with another. 

The span of his arms was nearly twice that of Elrik and he stood almost a foot taller than the older man. From what he had learned in the several months that he had served and learned at the Anderson’s forge, most apprentices were gangly boys in their youth that would work alongside their masters. Adam was large enough, strong enough to easily do the work of two men. 

It had taken time for Elrik and Freja Anderson to not only trust him, but to be pleased with just how much he could take burdens off their lives. 

Captain Anderson had told his brother the tale, in all its gore and wrath and tragedy. Only the blacksmith and his wife knew the truth of what manner of creature Adam was. It had not been comfortable in the beginning. The fear and distrust for Adam had been very apparent in those early days. He was a monster, a horrible sight to behold, a brutal mockery of a man - if a man he could even be called. The Andersons had feared him at first, though Elrik had tried valiantly to disguise the fact. 

“There’s a reason my brother thinks you will be of help to us - and us to you - thought I cannot for the life of me imagine why. If you deal violently with me or, God help you, my wife, you’ll be out on your ear and wandering once again.”

Freja Anderson had not bothered to hide her terror and deep-seated suspicion of Adam. If anything, her vitriol towards him was even keener, though she kept silent about it. Her glares, gimlet and baleful, spoke plenty for her. 

It had not been until a week after his arrival that their thoughts had eased towards him. Freja’s beloved cat, a fiery tempered calico that had taken a liking to Adam despite his grotesque appearance and size, was heavily pregnant with a litter. Inexplicably, as many animals in his short life had, she preferred his company, winding about his ankles as he cut wood, sneaking into the barn where Elrik had reluctantly made up a bed for him, where the cat would climb up to nap on his chest. 

When one morning he woke to find her not asleep atop him, but at his feet, panting and straining. A kitten already lay silent and unmoving at her side and two more shortly followed. Panicked, worried and distressed, Adam had carried all four felines into the house, where he was not ever allowed to be. 

Freja had been beside herself as her beloved companion sniffed and mewled piteously over her unmoving kittens. The stalwart woman had openly wept and tried to take the tiny wet bundles from the grieving mother. 

And unable to see yet another innocent, sweet-natured creature die before its time, Adam had taken them from her. Cradling their fragile bodies in his hideous hands, he had taken them to the fire to warm them, gently rubbed their little chests, and crooned softly to them. All the things he had once wished that he had been given when he was new to this terrifying world. With careful fingers, he had cleared their airways, puffed his own breath into their mouths and worked on those tiny chests, again and again and again.

The kittens had survived, the mother cat had settled before the fire to nurse them in contentment and Adam had received the second ever embrace in his life from a woman. Freja had even kissed his brow and told him he was a ‘good lad.’

The next time Elrik had taken Adam to the forge to teach him, his master’s words had carved straight to his heart. ‘You can do the work of two men, Adam. But you’re also a decent man, which is worth more than three men. I questioned if my brother had gone mad, sending such a one as you to me, but I see now that I was wrong.’

Elrik Anderson had proved to be a kind man. A good man, much like Johannes, the blind man that Adam had treasured and learned so very much from. Adam did not want to take advantage of that kindness, and so he threw himself into the work, day after day, much as he had when he had masqueraded as the ‘Spirit of the Forest.’ It had been a year now since his creator had taken his last breath, since Victor had told him to live. He lived by having a purpose, by having a duty and a role in the place where he’d been fortunate enough to be given a chance. Elrik had given all of that to him by providing a roof over his head and a sense of dignity and importance in the work he did. He had food, had clean clothes to put upon his body, and now his own room on the back of the blacksmith shop to make a home in.

It was all more, far more, than his maker had ever given him. He still trembled and felt like weeping when he thought upon those days in the dank and dark bowel of the tower. Wet, cold, hungry, scared, body a symphony of pain he didn’t understand, chained, confused, yelled at, beaten. 

Helpless.

Even now as he stood in the blanketing heat of the smithy, the forge wrapping him in a warm, red glow like the womb he’d never known, he could still hear Victor’s scornful mocking, feel his creator’s spittle on his face while he raged at him, feel the shame of a scared child who only wanted to be held and didn’t know why they were being punished. 

The day he had at last fought back and tore that iron rod out of Victor’s nerveless hand and twisted it into a useless weapon stood like a turning point in his mind. Before and after. Victim and aggressor. His maker had looked at him with real fear and Adam had felt nothing but pure joy. 

Of course, that was when Victor decided to kill him. His creator had always been weak and craven. Adam just had not known that yet, nor why it had felt so good to punish the man. The only thing he had understood was that he had fought back and now he would burn for it. It had taken many months afterward to understand that sometimes there was no choice left to him but to fight back. The body count of those who had died at his hands was never far from his mind, even if he knew that there had been no other way. As with his realization about the wolves, Adam understood that as long as he was alive, humans would seek to kill him for being what he was and he would have to react with violence. 

Today, those memories felt closer to the surface. In all likelihood because he had thought the woman in the Anderson’s home was Elizabeth at first sight. 

“Foolish,” he murmured to himself as he set iron to softening in the crucible, turning the piece with tongs. Elizabeth was dead. The thought never failed to make a fist close around his heart and a knot to form in his throat. He shut his eyes on the sight of the iron as it slowly began to glow with the fiery heat and tried not to think about what it had been like to leave her there on that slab of rock, her body cooling, her beautiful white dress blooming with ever darkening crimson. The old man Johannes had taught him about life, about the loss of it, about grief. When he had been that helpless creature in the tower, chained and utterly lost, Adam had not understood that what he had felt for Elizabeth had been love. She was gentle, kind, curious, speaking to him as if he was good, not the monster that Victor and his brother had treated him as. 

And when he had Victor cornered in that elegant suite and Elizabeth had blown through the doors like an avenging angel in layers of white silk, he had looked at her with new eyes. A man’s eyes who had learned what love consisted of, what a precious and sacred gift a woman is and he had understood just what it was he felt for her.

Love. He loved her. And then moments later, Victor had fired a bullet into her fragile body. She had taken that bullet for him. The bitter irony of it all was that a gunshot would not have ended his miserable life, as it had her immeasurably precious one. It should have been him wounded, him bleeding, not her. Never her. He could have taken her with him, safe and whole and unharmed. Instead he had carried her to her death.

Adam swallowed over the hard knot in his throat and lifted the now soft and malleable piece of iron from the crucible. Moving carefully, he placed it on the nearby anvil and pulled a smithing hammer and clamps from the wall where the tools of his trade hung in neat order. Setting everything down upon the workspace near the anvil, he unfastened a thong of leather from about his wrist and tied back his hair from his face in a thick tail at his nape.

Steadying the molten hot metal with the clamps, he lifted the hammer and began the real work of meticulously beating and shaping the iron into submission.

Elizabeth was dead, but for one moment of terrible joy, he had thought she sat alive in the Anderson’s sitting room.

It was the hair. Much like some of his own, Elizabeth’s hair had been a shade of red, rich and dark like the hide of a chestnut horse. The glow of the fire in the sitting room hearth had gleamed along the woman’s plaited hair, gilding over a pale oval face.

But then the lights had hit her fully and the illusion of his beloved had faded. Rather than shining and silken, the other woman’s hair was a frizzy halo of untamed strands around her face and ears, the braided crown rippling with waves, the color too light to be Elizabeth’s deep shade. The eyes gray rather than dark, and sunken beneath straight, thick brows when Elizabeth’s brows had been almost undetectable against her skin. Freckled rather than smooth-complexioned and the figure beneath the old dress too thin and sharp.

Elizabeth had glowed with health and vitality, but this small woman could not be anything but malnourished. 

Evelyn Montgomery was certainly not Elizabeth, but it had not stopped him from being nervous and clumsy in her presence. She was as fine-boned and delicate as the sparrows that he fed in the mornings beyond the house. His massive, ungainly hands had hurt her when he’d tried to turn her injured ankle. Her cry of pain had startled him and for a moment the memories of Victor yelling and striking him for every little infraction and misstep had risen inside him like the tide.

‘Do not touch me! Do not ever touch me!’

The hammer struck the stirrup so viciously that the curve he had been forming bent in the opposite direction. Cursing quietly, Adam took a step back, gripping the top of his head, finger fisted in his bound back hair. After a long moment, he turned the iron and gently pounded it back into the proper shape. 

Just as Elizabeth, Victor was gone from this Earth. But also like Elizabeth, his ghost lingered, yet haunting his creation. 

He should not have touched the woman. She was a guest in his master’s home and Elrik could have easily taken the measure of her ankle. And he certainly should not have let her take his hands and touch his ruined flesh. The wrapping of the scarf and the layers of clothing did well to disguise the true nature of his being, but his ungloved hands were pieces of different men, stitched together. One of the conditions of his apprenticeship and living with the Andersons were that they would do their utmost to keep his…condition…a carefully guarded secret. According to Elrik and Freja, this little village was one deeply entrenched in their Christian faith and he would be seen as nothing more than the unholy abomination that he was.

In addition, it had surely been impossible to miss that he had enjoyed her touch and the act of holding her gaunt, calloused hands in his. Even with the respect and perhaps even a semblance of friendship of the Andersons, Adam craved physical touch. It was such a simple thing, the brush of one’s skin against another’s. But his experience with it was limited to only a handful of instances that remained sharp in his mind.

He had known only Elizabeth’s curious and innocent touches that night in the tower bowels. And then Johannes’ gnarled and arthritic grasp on his shoulders or hand or the gentle pat of those wizened hands on his head. And before all of that, the painful prodding and poking, smacks and shoves of Victor. 

Freja Anderson had embraced him briefly after saving the kittens and kissed his brow and Elrik had been known to give him a hearty thump on the back or two. But not since beloved Elizabeth had someone let their skin remain against his.

He did not feel the pull towards Evelyn Montgomery as he had Elizabeth. She was only a stranger. But he could not deny the wanting to experience her touch again, if only because she had not shown fear of him or looked on him with horror and disgust.

Conversely, she had not seen beneath the layers of clothing that hid the monster of his being. 

He could never entertain the fantasy that another woman would ever again care for him as Elizabeth had. That sort of understanding, that kind of bond that had formed between the two of them…he had been beyond blessed even to have had that in his lifetime. 

And there were endless years ahead of him.

With the iron now beaten and shaped into the stirrup for the woman’s brace, Adam sat down and began polishing it smooth and working out any imperfections. He would not go back into the house while she remained inside. When he was finished with the piece, he would hand it off to Elrik and his master could ferry her back to her home in the cart. 

After that interaction, he was sure the older man would see the wisdom in not furthering the acquaintance.

Chapter Text

Adam didn’t return.

Evelyn attempted to swallow her very great disappointment when a knock came at the back door, but it was Elrik who returned with the completed stirrup and handed it to her to inspect. It carried the warmth of the forge still, though it faded by the moment as she ran her fingers along the smooth and fluid lines of the iron.

“He made this?” She asked quietly, stroking the cooling metal, her overactive imagination fueled with images of Adam sweating over a forge, crafting the piece just for her. A particular bit of foolishness, that. She hadn’t the foggiest what the man truly looked like. But her feverish little brain conjured up brawny muscles, wide and strong shoulders, a lean waist and those pale, graceful hands…

“He did. He’s good with hands. A good lad, but a very private one,” the blacksmith answered, sending her a pointed look. 

Elrik’s words had Evelyn snapping out of her thoughtless daydreams. Heat spread burned in bright spots on her cheeks as she jerked her head up and blinked owlishly at the blacksmith. The unspoken hint that Adam wanted to be left alone had her shifting on the bench with embarrassment. Had her fascination been so obvious? Had she been so very transparent in the way the big man had enthralled her?

Guilt twisted uncomfortably in her belly when she thought of the look of fear that had passed through those expressive dark eyes when she’d yelped in pain and the guarded lift of his shoulders and hands as if to fend off a blow.

“I’m afraid I may have hurt him, Elrik. He acted as if I might hit him. I’d never do something like that…you know that, don’t you?” She gazed up at him imploringly, twisting her hands about the smooth piece of iron as anxiety spiked through her. 

“No, Evie. Rest easy on that front. He doesn’t know you and he doesn’t know your situation with your ankle or how bad it is. He’s fearful, our Adam, despite his great size.” Elrik fetched the leather strap that Freja had stitched up and fashioned for the brace and began attaching new buckles and making adjustments with a small toolkit.

She watched him in the firelight, turning the stirrup over and over in her fingers. The warmth from its making had died now and her own skin was starting to add its own heat. Elrik would attach it to the brace soon and then her visit would be done. The return to Montgomery House was inevitable but the thought of stepping back into her home never came with any of the comfort and solace that visiting the Anderson home did.

“Why is he so afraid?” Adam’s reaction hadn’t made sense to her.

Unless…

She straightened on the bench, eyeing the blacksmith as he worked. “You don’t strike him, do you?” Her voice was flat as she asked. She loved the Andersons, they were more of a family to her than her own, God knows, and the idea that they were cruel to the big, gentle man was like a stab to her heart.

Hands pausing on his work, Elrik sent her a censorious look from beneath his bushy brows. Evie squirmed, then muttered an apology. She should have known better…

“No, I’ve not laid a hand upon him, lass. But he’s had a very harsh beginning to his young life and not much better treatment until he came to live with me. And I won’t be saying another word about the boy. He’s entitled to his privacy. Would you like me to tell him about the sort of life you live with your bastard of a brother and his harpy wife?”

Evelyn hastily shook her head, thoroughly put in her place. 

“No,” she whispered, staring down at the stirrup in her hands. “I would not like that.”

“That’s what I thought. Now hand me that and let’s get this fitted and I’ll see you home.”

The cart had not yet made it to the bend in the road where Montgomery House sat when Evelyn asked Elrik to let her down. 

“If Ned or Margaret should see you bringing me back, there will be questions and recriminations. There already will be when they realize my brace has been repaired.” Huffing out a breath on the frozen air, she pulled up the hood of her ragged cloak and pulled the edges of it tighter about her shoulders, covering her thin dress against the cold. Dread was already starting to pool at the base of her stomach, an uneasy pit that never truly left her, but was made especially intense when it was time to walk through those doors of her home. 

Beside her, Elrik scowled fiercely and shook his head, but murmured a low command in Danish to the gelding drawing the cart and tightened the reins to slow the cart. 

“Evelyn, I don’t have much space, but Freja is getting older. She could use the help with the growing and tending…”

She shook her head, touched at his kindness and concern. Turning to peer at the man she thought of as a sort of honorary uncle, she smiled and reached out, folding her chilled hand over his gloved ones. 

“There’s no one else I’d ever run to if it became truly necessary, but you know Ned will never agree to that or let it lie. I’m still the daughter of a gentleman, even if there’s not a title. It would cause a scandal in the village. Nothing horrifies the two of them more than wagging tongues.” Which was just hilarious when she thought about it. If the church and its flock or the other more prominent figures in the village knew the amount of debt that their well-to-do neighbors were racking up in London and beyond, the gossip would spread like wildfire and no shop would ever open their doors to them again. 

She’d been ruminating over it on the ride from the smith to the Manor and it made far more sense to her if her brother and sister-in-law were paying their bills in the village in which they lived, but letting their debt in London go unpaid. In their sleepy little hamlet, the Montgomerys were well-known and highly respected and envied for their ‘wealth.’ They wouldn’t want to run the risk of being ostracized amongst their own friends and neighbors. Many of them were like the Montgomerys, landed gentry and working upper middle class merchants, owning the businesses in the village.

But the Andersons…they were Danish. Foreigners that lived on the far edges of the village and worked in a trade that was highly necessary, but considered a lower sort of work than a shopkeeper or tailor or accountant. The very fact that they were not English would have made their word not as good as one of the Montgomerys.

“Propriety is a strange thing to cling to when you don’t pay your debts and treat your own blood no better than a mongrel dog,” he muttered bitterly, then with a heavy sigh, the blacksmith pulled off his gloves and shoved them into her lap. “Those empty buckets are going to be freezing. You go drop them off and go straight in and get warm. Tell Ned the brace and the gloves are your Christmas presents. We’ve known you since you were but a babe, so it’s not all that strange if we remember you for the holiday. I’ll have Freja send around one of her Risalamande puddings for the family so it’s not so untowards that we gifted you something.”

They were such good and decent people. Evelyn nodded, her eyes stinging with emotion and hastily pulled on the gloves that swallowed her own thin hands, then twisted around in her seat and fetched the empty buckets. 

“Thank you so much, Elrik. Please tell Freja my thanks as well for the leather and the pudding she’ll have to make those two ingrates now.” Still blinking back the tears that wanted to come, she turned back about and grinned at her friend. “I won’t likely get a spoonful of it, so if she sneaks in something unpleasant…” 

He barked out a laugh, then leaned over and kissed her freckled brow and tucked a strand of wild ginger hair behind her ear. 

“Get on with you now.”

She nodded, then carefully stepped down from the cart. Pain shot through her ankle as she gingerly rested it against the snowy ground, but the new brace held steady, the snug leather straps and the larger stirrup keeping her ankle upright and straight. She blew out a slow breath of relief.

Adam flashed through her thoughts and warmth bloomed in her belly and chest as she pictured his elegant long fingers in hers, discolored tips tracing over the vein on the back of her hand and mismatched eyes gazing intently into hers above his scarf.

She limped around, and tipped her head back up to Elrik in the cart above her.

“Will…will you thank him for me as well? And tell him I’m sorry again? For frightening him?”

Beneath the brim of his cap, Elrik pressed his lips together, then nodded quickly. “I will.”

She smiled faintly.

“Thank you.”

Montgomery House swam up out of the clouds of frozen mist as Evelyn limped her way up the winding stone path. Candlelight blazed in nearly every window that faced the circular horseshoe drive and the tiered fountain at center of that drive was decked with fresh flowers and festive planters, rather than running with water. The dinner party to be hosted that very night had servants setting yet more arrangements of flowers in either of the two marble pots that flanked the doorway. 

Knowing what she knew now about her family’s finances, Evelyn couldn’t help but see the horrible expense in it all. Her brother was spending money hand over hand, every farthing coming in the Montgomery shipping business feeding into the image that he wanted to portray.

The question of just how much of the business’ profits were tangled up in debt was one she wasn’t certain she wanted the answer to.

Passing by the two servants that were busy arranging the flowers with a nod, she avoided the main entrance altogether, limping towards the door that the help made use of. If she was fortunate, her brother and sister-in-law were occupied with the party planning and she could slip in without notice or questions about how long she’d been gone or why she had a new brace. 

The brace would perhaps escape their attention entirely, other than that she was walking with considerably less pain than before. It wasn’t as if they looked long enough at her to see the shining new iron and smooth, unfrayed leather beneath her skirts. If anything, Ned preferred his much younger sister out of his sight. Twelve years older, many of his closest friends likely didn't know Edward Montgomery even had a sister. Which was a happy thought to Evelyn, because from what she had witnessed and heard, many of them were cut from the same cloth as Ned and Margaret. Careless, self-absorbed and seeking only attention and pleasure. 

In the mudroom, she unfastened her cloak, her new gloves safely tucked away in the pockets. From the kitchens there was a din of noise as the meal for the night was being prepared. Mouth-watering scents of roast duck and baking bread and something sweet like sauced apples had her stomach grumbling and her head spinning. The porridge and bit of toast she'd eaten for breakfast at the very break of dawn felt like an age ago. She could easily slip in and find something to tide her over if Cook allowed it. The woman had a fondness for her, despite the housekeeper’s refusal to allow Evelyn to be treated differently from any other servant. Mrs. Ferrar insisted staff eat together at allotted meal times and if someone missed those times, they went without. And Evie frequently missed meals because her sister in law kept her at her beck and call. 

The temptation to break the rules and steal a bite to eat was overwhelming. She glanced about then set the buckets aside and limped into the kitchen. 

It was a scene of some madness, which wasn’t a surprise. Margaret had a propensity for not deciding the menu for a dinner until the last minute. Did she think that kitchen staff could just…pull the meal out of their arses and plop it on the table?

Two kitchen maids huddled over the long counter near the hearth, frantically chopping vegetables into thin slivers and scooping them into a bowl. One of them hustled over with the bowl towards where Cook manned the massive stove and waited anxiously for the older woman to turn.

“Hand them here, Cissy. Good work, girl, though they may not be as thin as her Highness likes. No matter, don’t get that look on your face. Back to chopping!” The thick Northern accent of Cook sent the stream of words towards the maid as she flung the bowl of julienned vegetables into a saucepan. 

Another maid was pulling rolls out of the ovens built into the far wall with mitted hands, then dashed to set them on the butcher’s block to start cooling. There was already a platter holding a roasted duck and another bearing a massive rack of beef with hanks of root vegetables gleaming in juices around its base. 

Hunger was a raw and angry ache in her belly. When her parents had been alive, portions of the meal served to family and guests had been set aside for the staff to dine on after serving and they would gather together at the table in the kitchen, eating just as well as their masters. Now under Mrs. Ferrar, that was no longer the case. Cook had to prepare a separate meal for the staff, usually just simple soups and hunks of bread. But at least it was filling. 

Evelyn missed the evening meal almost every night and sometimes she truly questioned if it was purposeful, the state of malnutrition that she remained in. As if her brother and sister-in-law were waiting patiently for her to eventually burn out and fade away.

But why? Didn’t they get more work out of her if she was fit and well-fed?

Ignoring the platters of food, - because Mrs. Ferrar would conduct a rigorous inspection before they were served - Evie limped over to the rolls that had just come out of the oven and snatched one, burning the very tips of her fingertips. She squeezed herself next to the hearth to warm her frozen toes and then tore into the roll, stuffing the steaming, delicious bread into her mouth in hasty, big bites. 

Cook turned to shout an order for more vegetables and laid eyes on Evelyn. 

“Evie!” She hissed, tossing her spoon back into the saucepan she was working on and bustled over. She snatched Evelyn up by the elbow and hoisted her to her feet. With a yelp, Evie shoved in the last bite of the roll, her cheeks stuffed full. “Ferrar is looking for you, girl. Those last two hearths on the third floor aren’t finished and she’s in a rage. Already reported to the mistress that she can’t find you! I had to concoct some story of having sent you on an errand to the root cellar for me!”

Terror shot through her like a racing arrow. Ned was a bully and enjoyed finding little ways to make those around him, especially Evie, miserable and no one could reduce her to tears quite like Margaret with her verbal barbs and taunts, but the housekeeper was a different sort entirely. 

Employed in Ned’s house when he had first married, she had swept into Montgomery House, replacing the previous housekeeper who Ned had promptly sacked. She was a brutal woman, tall and raw boned, with big hands that held none of the gentleness of Cook’s equally large hands. She freely doled out smacks to the housemaids and had the larger footmen take a switch to the younger boys that served in the household when she perceived any disrespect or lack in their service. And Mrs. Ferrar had been given free reign in how she managed the household for her employers. 

Evelyn was not ashamed to admit that she was afraid of the woman. She’d been on the receiving end of the back of the housekeeper’s hand more times than she could count, but it was being tossed into her room with a locked door and no meals that terrified her. Her workload didn’t diminish just because she hadn’t eaten and the fear of exhaustion and losing what muscles she had was very real. The previous autumn Evelyn had spent nearly an entire week believing wholeheartedly that her body would not recover from a bout of pneumonia coupled with crushing fatigue. 

Ned hadn’t hid his disappointment that she hadn’t simply died in her bed.

“Oh God,” Evie exhaled, feeling the color draining away from her face. She limped as fast as she could towards the kitchen door. “If she comes looking for me, please–” 

“Yes, yes, I’ll make up something about having sent you some different errand. Now get gone!” 

Evelyn got gone.

By the time she had made it up the stairs to the other rooms that required their hearths to be scrubbed clean for the guests, her ankle was throbbing, even with the new brace. She longed for her cane, but there was no time to fetch it. If the hearths of the last two rooms didn’t get clean before the guests arrived, she would most certainly not get her dinner and likely not her breakfast, either. She was already hours behind on her chores. 

She worked like a madwoman, scooping ash on her knees, then scrubbing until her callouses threatened to split open. When the second room was completed and set to rights, she was filthy from head to toe, her plaited crown of braids sliding precariously off to one side and her ankle was swollen inside her boot. Exhausted and wanting nothing more than to fall facedown on her bed, she wrestled the full buckets through the door and into the hallway. 

“Evelyn.”

Tension twisted up like a vine along her spine and into her shoulders. Swallowing, she turned to set down the buckets and face her brother as mounted the top of the stairs behind her and stepped onto the landing. 

Eleven years her senior, she and Ned shared the same gray eyes set beneath straight, thick brows, the same top-heavy upper lip, but that was where their similarities ended.  Edward was like a living portrait of their father. A little less than six feet in height, going slightly soft around the middle with broad shoulders and golden brown hair that curled at his brow and around his ears. His features were stern, handsome and sharp. 

Or at least they had been. The stern and handsome remained, but the sharp had been lost to the regular over-consumption of alcohol. His jowls were beginning to soften and capillaries were broken across his nose and cheeks, turning them ruddy. He didn’t usually start imbibing until the evening in order to remain alert in any business dealings, but as soon as the sun began to set, both he and Margaret drank continuously until servants had to pour them into their beds. 

His upper lip curled as he raked his gaze up and down her frame.

“You’re filthy. The guests will be arriving any moment. I sincerely hope you’re not tracking dust and ash over my carpets.” His soft voice dripped with disdain as he glanced at her boots beneath the hems of her skirts. His gaze narrowed, fixing on her right foot and the new brace there. Evie gnawed on the ragged skin of her lower lip and searched for a way to distract him. 

“Scrubbing hearths does often result in filth, brother.” It was risky to offer Ned cheek, but the longer he stared at her foot, the more likely he was to realize that something had happened concerning her that he hadn’t orchestrated. Elrik had insisted she say that the new brace was a gift from them, but she did not trust Ned to not tear the thing off her and force her to give it back. 

Just as expected, his pale gaze snapped up to hers and then that intent focus was on her face instead. The hand that snatched her up by the throat wasn’t a surprise. She just tried not to give him the satisfaction of yelping in pain as her ankle was dragged across the carpeted floor. 

“Mind your tongue, sister. Margaret has been looking for you.” An inch from his face, her feet barely touching the ground, she could make out the telltale spidery veins in his eyes and smell the bourbon on his breath. Looks like he’d started early tonight. “Apparently Mrs. Ferrar found that you didn’t finish your work in time this afternoon. Just how much time did you piddle away at the blacksmith’s? I thought I made myself clear that you weren’t to continue that association.”

The wrapping of his hand was tightening, his family ring beginning to bite into the side of her neck, threatening to choke off her air. Ned was strong, but even more so when he’d been drinking. She felt small and entirely too breakable in his hold. 

“You sent me there, you know. You could have gone and avoided me visiting.” She coughed, pressing her toes to the carpet to steady herself and suck in a breath of air before he decided to cut it off entirely. Goading him might lead him to strike her, but at least he wouldn’t keep holding her like this.

With a scoff, Ned unfisted his hand, letting her drop to the ground. She crumpled, digging her teeth into the inside of her cheek as her ankle rolled beneath her. Twisting her leg out from under her to keep her ruined foot from getting further injured, she shut her eyes as she massaged her aching throat.

“I suppose that foreigner made you that new brace? What manner of favors did you trade, hm?” 

Her eyes snapped open and she stared up at him as he strolled closer, tucking his hands into the pockets of his elegant amethyst waistcoat. Hate churned and twisted like snakes inside of her as he carelessly knocked the toe of his gleaming dress shoe against the stirrup of the brace. That hate boiled over like acid coming up the back of her throat.

“What favors did you trade for the Andersons to make you a new curricle without barely a payment given? Those are good people and you’ve all but stolen from them! I hope they engage a solicitor against you!”

The ugly rage that had begun to cross her brother’s face bled away until all the color in his ruddy cheeks had faded, leaving them bloodless. She stared up at him in confusion as he visibly swallowed, his throat bobbing. The lack of retaliatory violence after such an insult aimed his way was more frightening than the violence itself and she instinctually curled away from him as he rolled his shoulders and audibly cracked his neck. 

“Get that mess out of the hallway and go to your room. I’ll tell Mrs. Ferrar you won’t be joining the other staff for supper. You can thank that tongue of yours for how hungry your belly will be tonight.”

Without another word, her brother turned on his heel and strode away towards the stairs, his curly hair disappearing as he descended them. 

Trembling, uncertain and wondering why the mention of a solicitor should make her brother look so shaken and taken aback, Evie slowly got to her feet, gathered up her buckets and limped down the hall.

When she was in her chilly room later that night, stomach reminding her loudly and painfully that the roll she’d snuck in wasn’t enough, Evie stared out the small window towards the hills. Snow hadn’t yet begun to fall that winter and the sky was a clear expanse of midnight velvet, the stars and moonlight so bright the beauty almost made her want to weep. Or at least that’s what she told herself as tears burned at the backs of her eyes and her bruised throat ached. 

She wrapped the robe of her nightrail tighter around her shoulders and touched the raw points on her neck where Ned had choked her. She thought of the shock on his face at the mention of the debt he owed and what that might mean.

And she thought of Elrik’s offer to let her come work at their home, where it was warm and safe and food wasn’t withheld as punishment. She thought of Adam and his long, gentle hands and the depths of his mismatched eyes. 

Leaning her brow against the cold windowpane, Evie wished into the nightsky, watching the stars blur through her tears.

Chapter Text

Adam

The snow at last began to fall, the crystal clear clarity of the cold English air turning misty and thick with moisture as thick flakes fell, but did not yet stick to the ground. The leaves that had fallen in November now began to rot with the wet that slicked them and the December morning was heavy with the earthy, loamy scent.

A puddle of gathering moisture glittered in the late morning sunlight near the back of the smithy. In the water’s surface, Adam studied his reflection. The scarf was wrapped tightly about his throat and snugged over the bridge of his nose, but the cloak was tossed onto the bed inside his room. In the mirrored surface, he watched his discolored fingers lift and gently probe at the trio of scars that spread like cracked porcelain over his brow from the edge of his hairline. They were entirely healed now, their seams a deep red, like old blood. He no longer bled from the places where Victor had stitched the parts of him together, his muscles and joints and skeleton no longer felt foreign, though he had never quite learned how to move as he observed other men could: quick, easy gaits and thoughtless, automatic gestures. But the healing that Victor had declared so erratic had fully completed. He could eat, sleep, sweat, bleed, weep, relieve his body’s necessities and to his great dismay and chagrin, feel the blood rush to a certain part of his anatomy when he felt desire or dreamed of it. 

That had been a great shock the first time it happened. 

He was as whole and human as he would ever be. Except he could not, would not, die. But as time passed on in this new life, he found the desire to meet his end less and less urgent. Living with the Andersons reminded him of that brief time that he had spent at the cabin with Johannes. Learning, reading, working, exploring the hills and forests, spending evenings with the people that welcomed him at their table and broke bread with him. He had longed to be a part of Johannes’ family and that had ended in tragedy. But he had a flicker of hope that this family would not end the same. If there was a God and He was listening, Adam sent up such a prayer frequently, even if he doubted the Almighty would listen to the likes of him. 

A single golden leaf landed in the puddle, sending his reflection outwards in ripples, its edges curling and spotted brown. Crouching down, he plucked it gently from the water, then held it up to the sunlight, studying its delicate infrastructure of veins. Perhaps there wasn’t a God, but there was an Elizabeth. A fanciful part of his brain hoped that the leaf was a sign from her that she looked down upon his attempts to live as something other than Victor’s creature and approved.

“Adam?” From the direction of the field behind the buildings, Elrik’s voice carried to him. Pressing back up to his feet, he tucked the leaf into the pocket of his trousers, then moved to meet his employer halfway. 

The older man swept the cap off his bushy head and shook the snow free. “I’ve got the cows into their stalls and Freja’s going to milk them, but I think it’s best we leave them in. This snow is going to start sticking before nightfall.” Elrik replaced the cap, then stood hipshot, surveying the hills that surrounded them, as if listening to the snow whisper its intentions. 

It was an enviable skill that fascinated Adam. Elrik was rarely wrong when it came to the weather, including that the morning would see the sun shining, yet the snow would fall despite it. The resulting drifting of flakes that glittered and gleamed in the light like sugar had sent Adam from his little room off the smithy, and he and one of the barn cats had spent a pleasant hour just sitting on a boulder, watching it fall in silence, then melt on his outstretched hands. 

“We will need more firewood. Yes?” He turned away from his master to look towards the wood pile that had dwindled to only a dozen or so logs. It was a chore he enjoyed if for no other reason that the Andersons always seemed so in awe of how quickly he could restock the pile. It was a point of pride that since he had come to live with them, neither Elrik nor Freja had been forced to do the job.

“Mmhm. And if you don’t mind, fill the log racks in both the house and the smithy, will you? And cover the pile out here. I promise, this snow will start to stick and we don’t want to be burning wet logs.” 

“Too much smoke,” Adam supplied, and unconsciously mimicked Elrik’s stance, long hands fisted on either hip, surveying the land. 

“Right you are. Too much smoke. There’s a lad. I’ll go let Freja know the ladies are ready to be milked. Then we can finally settle down to breakfast.” Elrik gave his shoulder a friendly thump, then whistled as he ambled comfortably towards the house. When the blacksmith opened the front door, he heard him holler, “The cows are ready for you, love. Our Adam will cut the wood.”

Our Adam.

It was Johannes, his blind friend, that had given him the name Adam. His creator had never bothered to give him something to be called by, other than It and Creature or Beast. And he had never known what to call himself, either. How does one go about naming oneself when one felt so very apart from everything else? There were no family names to which he could harken back to, no sense of belonging on which to call on. Victor had called him son that day on the ship, and to an extent Adam did feel that, in his heart, he had forgiven his maker, but taking on that name? He had tried to imagine being called Victor, but no…the idea of being called the name that he had been mocked for repeating when he had known no other words…he could not do it. 

To remain nameless…for a time that had strangely seemed fitting. Because what was he? A man, in form and function, yes. Even perhaps a human, in the end, made of flesh and bone and blood, with a heart and brain, self-aware and emotional. But a name? None had ever come. 

But one night after that day on the ice, when he had found the slip of paper from the Captain in his coat, giving him an address where he might find help in the future, he remembered something. The endless stretching of the stars above him had brought back a memory of sitting outside with Johannes, reading the creation story in the book of Genesis. He had struggled to understand how all that was supposedly in the world (for he had seen so very little of it) could have been wrought in only a matter of days. Such as the stars, that were too many to ever possibly count. 

Johannes had chuckled in that wry way of his and rested a gnarled hand over his much larger one and squeezed, the old man’s skin so papery thin and warm. 

“I suppose Adam must have thought the very same. He was like you. Newly created, animated fully formed and grown with the breath of life from his maker. The first man, like you are the first man of your kind. I imagine he had all sorts of questions. You’re an Adam, taking your first steps in a brand new world.”

It had not seemed like a naming at the time, just a conversation about the wonders of life that he was experiencing for the first time. But then his weeks of walking and sneaking onto railcars had led him to the Anderson's door. The captain had already paid his brother and sister-in-law a visit and told them the story and explained that such a man might land upon their doorstep, but Mikael had no name with which to call him. 

When the blacksmith and his wife agreed to take him on, they were adamant that to live on their property and venture into the village when it became necessary, a name would be required. After much anxious pondering and uncomfortable self-reflection, he had chosen Adam Johannes.

As with Victor, he also could not reconcile with using the name of Frankenstein.

Turning to the woodpile, he stripped off his coat for better range of motion and got to work. With one arm, he hauled up a log and propped it up on the stump at the center of the clearing, and with the other arm, swung down the axe, splitting the log in one swift and powerful strike. He worked quickly, barely feeling the exertion in his long frame as he halved log after log, then quarter after quarter. The two piles of freshcut wood, one for the smithy and one for the house, grew large after only a few minutes of Adam plowing through the stack behind him.

He was nearing the most that each building could hold when the sound of trotting hooves and the rattle of wheels broke the hush of falling snow and the echoing retort of the axeblade on wood. He set the axe aside and hastily tugged up the scarf from where it had fallen around his neck and shoulders during his efforts, hiding the majority of his face once again. Keeping an eye out for the passing of the carriage, he swung his axe back up and went back to work. 

Evelyn

Two days had passed for Evelyn in which she felt as if every moment was spent waiting for the other shoe to drop and some fresh hell to fall upon her head. That next morning after the visit to the blacksmith, she had not been released from her locked room until breakfast had already been served to the staff, more punishment for her absence and lateness returning home to do her work. Hungry and light-headed, she had hung on through the morning, cleaning up after the dinner party and waiting for the guests to depart so she and the others could turn the rooms. 

At lunchtime, Mrs. Ferrar had not said a word when Evie sat down with the other staff to have their meal, but she had been painfully aware of the woman’s eyes on her the entire time she sipped her weak tea and spooned up soup. It had taken all her effort to not fall upon the food ravenously, her hand trembling as she lifted each bite to her lips. In the end, she wished she had simply picked up the bowl and swallowed straight from it when the meal was cut short by the housekeeper. The guests were finally departing and they had work to do. 

The unease in her gut that was more than just hunger lasted, a nervous sensation of something terrible looming on the horizon. Ned and Margaret never rose before evening after a party, but there they were, appearing throughout the day, moving in and out of the rooms where she worked. Stripping a bed of its linens, she would find her sister-in-law standing in the chamber’s doorway, studying her silently before bustling away. Putting away the china that guests had dined on, Evie was aware of Ned standing in the entry watching her steadily. When she glanced at him, he pursed his lips, then strode off. 

The only part of her routine that felt normal was Margaret demanding that she come to her solarium to mist her plants and sweep up leaves, keeping her busy long past the evening meal. Evie went to bed once more with a nearly empty stomach.

The next day proceeded much the same as the previous, her punishment lasting through another missed breakfast, a day of constant work with the uncomfortable and unsettling sensation of being watched by her brother and sister-in-law. Were they waiting for her to do something? Was there supposed to be some difference in her behavior that they were hoping to see? At lunch, she ate with greater speed, nearly spilling broth on the front of her dress, her brows furrowed as she racked her brain for what could have made Ned so alarmed at the mention of the debt he owed the Andersons, what could be making he and Margaret hover at the edges of her vision. 

When she did spill a bit of soup and beef on the table, Mrs. Ferrar had snatched the bowl away. 

“If you’re going to behave like a beast, then perhaps Cook should just put a saucer on the floor for you, Evelyn.” 

The threat had worried her enough that Evie had eaten her toast point with more delicacy. 

But her sense of foreboding and dread would reach its breaking point that evening. Yet again denied dinner because of a chore from Margaret that just had to be completed, she was limping past her brother's study when his voice, low and strained, reached her ears. 

“Her birthday is in less than six months, Meg.” 

Outside in the quiet corridor, Evie slowed, the basket of rags and furniture polish clutched in her hands. A sliver of light from the cracked open door illuminated the otherwise dark hall and after a moment she approached it. 

“It's not as if she has any prospects. Let it come and go, darling.” Margaret's soft and airy response to her husband was a contrast to the condescending, mocking way she spoke to Evelyn and the other servants on a daily basis. “We’ve been keeping an eye on her. She doesn’t know anything or we’d have seen it…”

Prospects? …Know what exactly? It didn’t take a complete idiot to know they were talking about her, but why? It was a little reassuring to know that she had not merely been paranoid and imagining that Ned and Margaret were watching her for the past two days. This conversation was proof of it. 

“A solicitor, Meg! She said they were going to engage a solicitor!” A pouring sound accompanied the bitter fury in Ned’s voice, then a hasty gulping and a crack of glass thumping down upon wood. 

Evelyn crept closer to the opening of the study, even as she scowled. She had never said the Andersons were going to engage a solicitor, only that she hoped they did. The man only heard what he wanted to hear. When a chair suddenly scraped across the boards of the floor, she stumbled back, hefting the basket against her chest to stop the jars from rattling and held her breath when her ankle gave a protesting throb with the sudden movement. In the shadows, she pressed herself against the wall and listened as her brother continued.

“There’s one bloody solicitor in the village and if Collins should come here on an inquiry and he sees–”

“Then give the damned carriage back, Ned!” Margaret’s tone had lost its softness and now a hint of that derision she wielded so well shone through. “What does one curricle matter in the grand scheme of things? What we stand to gain in the end will buy you a dozen of them. Finer, better ones! Now sit down, love, drink your whiskey and light that cheroot. You’re just borrowing trouble.”

Ned’s sigh of disgust drifted into the hallway, then the leather of his chair creaked. “Very well. I’ll send a footman with it in the morning and the little bitch can accompany him. She’ll convince them not to go to Collins or I’ll break her other ankle. If Mother had just kept her damn legs closed when Father wanted another child, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”

“Well, they’re dead, thank heavens.” 

Ned barked out a laugh. “Fortunately. Who knows how long the old man would have hung on if that axle hadn’t broken.”

When they both began to laugh and discuss other matters, Evelyn quietly limped away from the door. Tears burned in her eyes and formed a hot, hard knot in her throat. Ned had always been cold, but to hear him say that he was glad their parents were dead was still like a fist to her middle, let alone the vile things he had just said about her. But Papa? Mama? He was happy they were gone when she had grieved until she thought she might die from it?

After the news of their deaths, everything in her life had turned to sadness. There was nothing she could lay eyes or hands on that did not remind her of the two people she had loved most in the world. That day had made her an orphan and utterly lost and she was still lost. That her brother, her brother, could take any kind of pleasure in them being gone… 

Along with the cold, Ned had also always been cruel. Evie had come along when he had already been half-grown at eleven years of age. Some of her earliest memories of him were of pain. In the nursery, plopped down on the rug by the hearth, playing with her dolls and Ned would slip in. Tearing the heads and limbs off her dolls wasn’t enough for him, he would also pinch her little arms and legs, squeezing her baby fat until she screamed and dark bruises were left on her pale skin. Her nursemaid would go to her parents in a fury to report on it and her father would take a belt to his backside, but it only made things worse for her, until Ned at last was banned entirely from the nursery. 

When she was old enough to understand that her brother was abusing her, Evie had wondered if it might be out of jealousy. He had been the only child for all those years and then here is this little interloper, stealing attention away from him. But then she had learned that the reason her parents adamantly refused to let her have a pet of her own was because Ned had been given two in his earlier years, one dog, one cat. Both had ended up dead, found with their necks broken and injuries that couldn’t have come from anything else but a human hands. 

Her father had taken her aside when she had begged for one of the barn cat’s kittens to be her own and had explained everything in terms that she could understand. 

‘Edward was born lacking something that most of us have, Evie. There is a piece of him missing, that piece that gives us kindness and mercy and gentleness towards creatures like animals and those less powerful than him, like you. I don’t know if it is his fault or not, poppet, but perhaps when he marries Margaret Worth, we can see about getting you a kitten, hm?’

Of course, that day had never come. Ned had moved into town to live with his new wife and the all too brief period of absolute peace when it had just been Evelyn and her parents had only lasted months before their deaths. Then her brother and Margaret had come to claim Montgomery House and nothing had ever been the same.

Hours after overhearing the awful conversation, Evie washed up in her room, wiping away all the filth of the day with water from her small basin and a square of treasured soap Freja had made for her. Baths were a weekly allowance for servants, but she tried her damndest to keep herself clean in between. Still, there seemed to be a permanent dark stain of soot under her nails and a gray pallor to her skin from cold and malnutrition. She shivered with a bone-deep chill as she scrubbed the rag beneath her nightgown, then rinsed up and all but fell into her cot.

Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, she combed her hair out and then wove the frizzy waves into a plait over one shoulder, eyes staring sightlessly on the glowing embers in the coal warmer, her teeth still chattering. 

The things she had overheard were starting to whirl about in her head, a rotating spin of words that baffled her. What in heaven’s name was so important about her birthday? It wasn’t as if it was celebrated in her house. Only the Andersons ever gave her presents, with Freja baking her a little ring of cake, topped with marzipan called Kransekage. She would be turning twenty-one in May and the age held little significance. 

And why did the idea of Mr. Collins coming to the house put Ned in such a fright? He was the only solicitor in their village, overseeing all the legal needs of its population, from wills and estates to one farmer suing another over a dead pig or ruined crops. He was not someone her brother and sister-in-law associated with, which now that she thought about seemed odd. Collins was from a well-to-do family in trade, moved in the same circles…why was he never in attendance at the festivities at their house? 

The chill was settling in deeper and with it, an ache in her bones. Eyes so heavy she couldn’t keep them open, Evie blew out the candle by her cot, then burrowed as deeply as she could beneath the blanket. 

Tomorrow she would be accompanying a footman to return the curricle to the Andersons. 

She would see Adam. The thought of encountering the gentle giant of a man again opened a fissure of warmth straight into the chill that had her shivering and despite her chattering teeth, she smiled. 

But in the morning, even knowing that she might be able to speak to the person at the center of her fascination wasn’t enough to overcome the dreadful realization that she was ill. Very, very ill. 

Cold chills wracked her frame and her head pounded in time with every step and breath she took. In the small mirror near her washbasin, she studied her swollen, burning eyes and the bright flags of red in either of her otherwise ghastly white cheeks. Her body felt impossibly heavy, but also like she was wrapped in cotton gauze, clumsy and lethargic as she dragged herself through getting dressed and lacing up her boots. When she tried to pin up her hair, her arms simply wouldn’t cooperate and she left the fraying braid she had slept in to remain down her back. 

Getting down the stairs left her dizzy and disorientated. She desperately wanted food and water, but the thought of trying to swallow something down had nausea creeping up the back of her throat. Weak as a newborn babe and just as useful, Evie wasn’t even aware of how late she was for her chores when Mrs. Ferrar came up and snatched her by the back of her neck, her big hand biting into Evelyn’s aching muscles. 

“The master has been looking for you,” the housekeeper hissed into her ear, though the words sounded watery and distant. “Footman William is outside now with the curricle. Go!” 

Evelyn barely caught the cloak thrown at her with her nerveless fingers and clumsily wrapped it around her and pulled the hood up over her head. She never thought to protest that she was too ill. It wouldn’t have done any good, regardless. Fighting back the nausea and the fever chills, she stumbled outside and found herself being pushed up into the passenger side seat of the high, elegant carriage by the grumbling footman.

“Got better things to do than wait on you,” he muttered as he climbed into his own seat and took up the reins. 

She spent the trip to the outskirts of the village clinging to the side of the curricle, eyes shut and swallowing back the bile that kept threatening to rise in her throat. The seat was ridiculously high off the ground and every time she cracked one watering eye open, the road seemed to swim up at her. 

“How–” Lord, her throat was on fire. “How are we going to return home?”

Beside her, William shrugged a shoulder in his winter finery. “I’ll be riding. There’s a saddle stored under the seat. The Danes can give you a ride back home in their cart. The other lads and I wonder if their horse pulls it or that massive Bedlamite they hired.” He laughed, cracking the reins over the horse’s back.

Even in her current state, Evelyn stiffened beside him, her eyes flying open to shoot William a glare. “Don’t call him that. He’s not insane.” 

The footman sneered over at her, eyes lighting with amusement. 

“Met him, have you? He doesn’t speak to anyone or if he does, he just grunts and lumbers around, hides under that hood and scarf. What would you call that if not slow in the head?”

Before she could speak, one of the wheels hit a rut in the road and she could do nothing but close her eyes again against the pain in her head and wrap a protective arm around her churning middle. A steady crack and thunk was ringing in her ears and echoing off the nearby hills and trees.

“There’s the big bastard right now.” 

The hissed words beside her had Evie carefully opening her eyes again and turning her head slowly to the right. The relentless sound she had thought was only in her head was actually the sound of logs being split in a vigorous, mechanical fashion.

His cloak was gone and so was the coat. Adam’s long body was braced, legs spread as he fluidly swung an axe through the air, driving it down into a quarter of wood and slicing it cleanly in half. Beneath the linen shirt, his broad shoulders and back rippled with the effort. When a hunk of wood splintered unevenly, he simply tossed the axe aside, gripped both sides of the log and ripped it the rest of the way down the center. 

She shivered under her cloak and perhaps not entirely from the fever. 

“Not slow in the head,” she murmured to the footman who had gone silent beside her, perhaps rethinking insulting a man who could likely rip one of his arms off his body.

Then they hit another rut and all her efforts to mask her illness came to a sudden stop as she clutched the seat of the shining curricle and vomited up the contents of her painfully empty stomach over the side. When Footman William cursed and yanked the reins to stop the horse, Evelyn’s head went cold and empty and then she lost what grip she had and pitched over the side.

The last thing she was aware of was being snatched out of air and crushed against a wide, warm chest before her vision went dark.

Chapter Text

The small woman weighed almost nothing in his arms, just a bundle of cloth and pale flesh and delicate bones, but little else. He had caught her just before she fell, taking the distance between the workyard and the carriage in only a few swift, ground-eating strides and now she was so very still, her face as gray as certain pieces of his stitched together one. Cradled against his chest, he stared down at the stark crescents of her red lashes and scattered freckles against her colorless cheeks. Even through her cloak and dress, he felt the heat pumping off her skin, into his thin shirt and to his body.

The door of the cottage flew open and Freja came hurrying out. She hadn’t even yet began to speak before Adam was turning away from the gape-mouthed man driving the carriage and bringing his small bundle to her. 

“She is ill,” he rasped, never taking his eyes off the unconscious woman in his arms. “She vomited and she is hot.” He juggled her gently into the crook of one arm and gently touched the tips of his discolored fingers to her cheek. Alarm spurted through him at the scorching feel of her flesh. “Very hot.” 

Freja stepped close and then rested one of her hands on the younger woman’s brow before drawing back with a hiss and a troubled expression. “Saints! She’s burning up!”

Elrik was emerging from the house now and threw his wife a pointed look, jerking his head towards the cottage in an unspoken command. Freja nodded her blonde head and then bustled back towards the house. Adam followed her silently, Evelyn Montgomery in his arms. 

“Oy! The Master’s going to expect the girl to come straight home, sick or not! You tell that big oaf to bring her straight along!” 

Adam spun about and beneath the scarf, snarled plainly and savagely at the manservant that was starting to follow them to the house. The animalistic sound sent the liveried man to a skidding stop, the color draining from his face, his gaze fixed widely on Adam’s unearthly left eye. Seeing that his point had been put across, he turned back to the cottage where Freja held the door open for him.

The last he heard was his own employer gruffly saying: “If you’ve eyes in your empty head, you’ll see she’s ill. She’ll be home when she’s home. Let’s get this horse unhitched and you can run home and squawk all you want to Ned.”

The inside of the cottage was warm, the front room had its hearth blazing and Adam smelled the scents of breakfast in the kitchen, but he was only focused on Evelyn in his hold. When Freja directed him to lay her on the couch, he found his arms tightening around her, a curious protective urge overtaking him that he must keep hold of her or she would simply fade away from him. She was limp and lifeless, laying there with her head nestled against his bicep and his chest, her limbs hanging much like Elizabeth’s had the day that Victor had stolen her away from him. 

His breath huffed from his nostrils, brows furrowing as he flicked his gaze to the couch and back to her face. He hovered there, uncertain. At his elbow, Freja’s face turned soft and then she was gently touching his arm.  

“You have to lay her down, Adam. I need to get that dress off her and try to cool her off. We have to break her fever.” Her voice was quiet, but sober and it sent alarm clanging through him again. 

“Will she…die?” He unconsciously stroked his thumb over the curve of her leg through her dress, his memory flung back to that day Elizabeth slowly bled out in his arms and how she had grown weaker and weaker on that rock as she whispered to him. 

“To be lost, and to be found. That is the lifespan of love.”

Why had he not told her how he felt? Why had he not spoken a single word to her?

Freja adamantly shook her head. “No, Adam. She won’t die. This isn’t like your lady…please, lay her down, sød dreng.” 

He swallowed against the knot forming in his throat, then did as she asked. Turning, he gently rested Evelyn down upon the couch, settling her head upon a needlepoint pillow. 

“Here, sit her up for one moment. There’s vomit on her dress and I need to get it off her so we can start cooling off that fever.” Freja pulled up a stool, then sat upon it as Adam moved to do as she asked. He leaned over the small redhead and carefully slid his hands under her head and shoulders, pulling her up. One of his hands could swallow her head entirely and his heart quivered at how easily breakable this little woman was. 

This is not wise, an small insidious voice whispered in his head. This was not prudent, to let his heart care again for another. All of them were taken from him. All of them perished. 

Freja slid behind Evelyn on the couch and made quick work of unfastening the buttons down the back of the shapeless brown dress. It was already too large for her frame, but when it was loosened, it gaped open at the neck and he reached out with his free hand and easily pulled it down either of her arms. At Evelyn’s back, Freja cursed in fiery Danish.

“I can see every knob of her spine! Every last one. I knew they were mistreating her, but this! They’re starving the poor mite.” 

At her words, Adam tore his attention away from Evelyn’s still face and let his eyes travel over the body that had been revealed by the falling away of her bodice. Above the edges of the strange undergarments that women wore - a thin, sleeveless slip and a quilted vest hooked closed over her breasts - he could see the exaggerated, sunken hollows of her collarbone and the details of her clavicle. Her shoulders were points, as were her elbows. But what caught and held his attention was the ring of dark bruises about her neck. 

Rage snared him in its grip and held him. His big hands - easily capable of killing her with but minimal effort - shook and he had to slowly and deliberately exert control to not fist them and harm her further.

“Someone has…” His tongue felt thick in his mouth with fury. “...has hurt her.” 

“What do you mean? Here, let’s get this dress off her entirely before you lay her back down. Ease her back now. There we are. Let me see what you’re talking about.” Moving carefully, they worked together to pull the dress down her hips and legs and off, then shift her back to laying on the cushions and Freja came around to where he knelt and stared down at the livid bruises like an ugly necklace around Evelyn’s throat. 

“Bastard!” She cursed, reaching out to gently touch her fingers to the marks. “Choked her, someone has. I’ll be damned if she goes back to that house. I’ll be damned.” Freja straightened and raked a hand through the graying blonde hair coming loose from its topknot. “Adam, I need you to fetch me a basin filled with cold water and a piece of flannel. And start a pot of broth on the stove, you know where I keep it in the icebox. Warm that for me, please. This next bit here is just for us ladies, hm?”

He did not want to leave her. He did not know her, and yet he did not want to leave her. This is not wise…

Exhaling another slow, hard breath, he nodded and lumbered away and into the kitchen. 

When Adam returned to the sitting room, Freja had Evelyn stripped down to just the thin slip and stockings, the rest of her garments cast aside in a pile, even the vestlike undergarment that looked like some sort of torture device that ladies wore under their clothes. His employer’s wife glanced up when he dipped his head to enter the room and quickly cast a blanket over the younger woman’s body, but he had seen more than he supposed he ought to.

The thin slip was nearly transparent, as if it had been washed over and over, revealing the darker skin at the center of each breast and the triangle of shadows between her thighs, but it was the shape of her body that had his brows lowering and his hands clutching tight around the basin. She was too thin. Not merely just slim and small, but her bones were too sharp, even her belly a shallow dip rather than a gentle swell.. He remembered with crystal clarity the shape of Elizabeth’s body that night she came to him with her candelabra. She’d been rounded with health, even though she had been a slender woman. Just as Freja was a full-bodied, sturdy and strong woman, with a healthy shape to her figure. Evelyn was neither of those. She did not look healthy. Not at all. 

“She is so still,” he murmured as he approached with the basin and cloth. 

“She is running a terrible fever. We have to cool her head, then Lord knows we need to get something in her stomach. I’ve never seen her this thin before. Let me have that, Adam. You go feed the fire some more kindling.” 

He did as she requested, handing her the bowl of cold water and then he crouched by the fire, pushing fresh wood into the hearth. He watched the new pieces begin to smoke and smolder, then glanced over his shoulder. His curiosity got the best of him and he rasped out a question.

“You have known her for many years, yes?”

“Oh, yes. Since she was a babe. I held her when she was but a few days old. Had that red hair even then, little thing. Her parents were good people. We were friends with them until they died in a carriage accident.” She dipped the washrag into the basin, then wrung it out before running it over Evelyn’s freckled brow. 

Adam felt as if he could not stop staring at that pale oval of a face, lost in the sweat-soaked tendrils of her hair. 

“And who is hurting her?” His question was low as he tried to control the monstrous rage that was building inside of him like an inferno being fed by a powerful wind. Since Elizabeth, since Johannes, Adam had not allowed himself to get attached to anyone, save for the Andersons. He did not speak to people, he did not even meet their gazes. But this small woman had been kind to him and had touched him with a curious gentleness that had wound straight to his all too potent emotions. He wondered if Victor could have ever imagined that his creation would not only learn to speak with clarity, but to also be so very capable of feeling. 

He tore his eyes away at last from Evelyn’s face and found Freja watching him, her green eyes seeing far too much. 

“Someone in that house, but I’ll not say who. I won’t give you reason to go there and punish the ones responsible.” 

He lurched towards the couch, dropping to one knee, frustration tightening the muscles in his face and along his spine.

“She is small. Helpless. Those who hurt ones such as her deser–”

He found his face clasped hard between Freja’s hands, one of them damp and cold from wiping Evelyn’s fevered brow. 

“No. I care about her. But I care about you as well, sød dreng. If you go there and try to avenge Evie, you’ll expose yourself. And it’s not only you they’ll try to harm, but us as well. And her. There’s other ways to protect her than you tearing through that house.” 

Held in the fierce grip of Freja's hands, he exhaled roughly and then shut his eyes. The scarf was still over his face and feeling smothered by it, he yanked it down. 

“I see the wisdom in this,” he at last muttered. “But know that I would very happily punish these people who hurt her and treat you and Elrik so poorly.”

The older woman pulled his head close and he shut his eyes again as she pressed a kiss to his misshapen and scarred cheek. 

“You're a good boy, Adam. I need to go get that broth in a bowl and make sure Elrik hasn't beaten that footman senseless. Will you keep bathing her? Just over her brow and down her throat. Hopefully we'll see that fever break soon.” She pressed up to her feet with a groan and then bustled off towards the kitchen, leaving him crouched by the sofa, staring down at the unconscious Evelyn. 

With gentle and deliberate motions, he copied Freja’s movements, soaking the cloth, then wringing most of the water loose. Shifting until he was on both knees, he hovered over Evelyn’s still form for a moment, then very carefully began dragging the cool washrag over her brow. 

Even through the temperature of the wet flannel, he felt the scorching heat of her skin. She was not sweating, but very dry, her cheek burning when he laid the fingertips of his free hand there, cupping her small head. He marveled again at how fragile she was, at how fragile all humans are. He envied that fragility and hated it in the same beat of his heart. Such delicacy had cost Elizabeth her life and yet he would have given anything to follow her.

Tilting his head, he stroked his thumb slowly over the curve of her pale cheek and drug the wet cloth down over her throat where the bruises lay so dark against her flesh, the sight of them digging talons of fury into him again. He felt very…protective of Evelyn Montgomery. Perhaps that was the word he was searching for, the name for this ache in his chest, the urgency to keep her safe. He just wanted to protect her. Not fall into the all-consuming love he had felt for Elizabeth.

Adam lifted the wet flannel again to set it upon her brow, his brows still furrowed as he stared at those bruises. Movement flickered out of the corner of his eye and he shifted his gaze up to her face. Pale gray eyes, glassy and unfocused with fever, were fixed on his face. His uncovered face. One of her thin hands struggled to free itself from the blanket, then latched around his wrist. Her grip was weak, like a bird landing on his arm.

He knew he should move, drag up his scarf over the patchwork seams of scarring and mismatched, ghastly flesh. But her chapped lips were parting, that feverbright gaze roaming his face with an emotion that he couldn’t place. 

“You’re like the sky at twilight. Blue and gray and violet.” She whispered it hoarsely and then her eyes rolled back shut again with a shuddering sigh and she went limp. 

Her fingers remained curled around his wrist. 

He slowly returned to bathing her brow with his free hand, unwilling to free himself from her insubstantial hold.