Chapter Text
Evie
She was dragged through the dark.
Barty Daniels wrenched her arm painfully, hauling her with him, running like a man pursued by the very devil.
And she delighted in knowing it wasn’t far from the truth.
The warehouses stretched on in a maze of timber and shadow, their long corridors broken by stacks of crates and narrow passages that twisted toward the river. Lanterns burned low and uneven, throwing light that flickered and died and returned again.
Her ankle was a steady, miserable ache as she stumbled at his side, her breath sawing in her lungs, hard and fast.
But her mind was curiously calm, focused on the knowledge that Adam was awake, that her husband was even now tearing apart everything in his path to get to her.
And he would make it, she swore to herself as her face scrunched up with another lance of agony up her leg, he would make it before it was too late. Before the man dragging her through the dark did something to her that she would never recover from. Before he harmed the precious life in her womb.
Behind them, deep within the yard…
Adam roared her name.
The sound rolled through the night like thunder tearing the sky apart. It struck the walls, the beams, the very air itself, and came back warped and terrible.
Barty flinched, his breath rushing out in a stream of terrified expletives.
She just grinned like a madwoman.
“Move!” he snapped, yanking her forward harder, his fingers digging into her arm with bruising force.
“I hope you can hear him,” Evie spat, stumbling but refusing to fall.
She felt…healthy. Wonderful. Her throat had stopped burning from Ned’s choking hold, her head was no longer splitting. It was as if something inside of her was rising up, called by the sound of her man’s furious howls, and pumped new life into her body. “I hope you understand what’s coming for you.”
“Shut up!” he snarled, looking back over his shoulder at her.
But his voice wavered with the terror that pumped off him. She caught a scent in the air, emanating from him.
Urine. He’d pissed himself.
Another crash echoed behind them, wood splintering, something heavy striking the ground. A man screamed and…
She knew that voice, knew the man whose wails of agony were painting the air with his misery.
Adam had found her brother.
The knowledge slammed into her and she didn’t feel the satisfaction she thought she might…instead it was bitter and sharp, the pain that settled in her chest, the grief that sent tears to burn at the backs of her eyes and a knot to tighten in her throat.
He’d made his choices, she reminded herself. Choices that had hurt not just her, but the people she loved, her true family.
Barty’s grip tightened painfully before he wheeled about, his wildly swinging gaze fixed one where the agonized screams rose. And the look on his sweating face said it all:
If Ned was gone, dead…then Barty had lost everything. And that realization had to be maddening.
“He’s more than just a man,” Evie said, her voice low and cutting. “You should have realized that before you went along with this plan to kill him.”
“I said shut up!” he barked again, dragging her faster now, his boots slipping slightly on the damp boards, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a crazed grimace. “I still have you,” he whispered, more to himself than to her.
She twisted in his hold, fighting him with everything she had left, kicking, clawing, trying to wrench herself free.
“You’re already dead!” She shrieked it, the fear of what he might do in this state at last sinking in deep. “You were dead the minute you touched me!”
Another roar, closer. It shook dust from the rafters, rose into something that should have horrified her, but only thrilled her.
Barty’s breathing grew ragged. Panic flickered in his eyes, wild and unsteady, but beneath it, uglier things burned. Determination and greed.
“You think I’m walking away from this?” he shot back, dragging her into the shadow of another warehouse corridor. “You think I’m giving up what your brother promised me?”
“He’s going to kill you,” she promised flatly. “Slowly.”
“Not if I have you,” Barty snapped and he stopped abruptly, spinning her to face him. His hand clamped around her jaw, forcing her to look at him.
“You’re worth more alive than dead,” he said, his voice dropping, thick with dark intent. “And I’ll take my due one way or another.”
Revulsion and that same terror that had gripped her that night in Ned’s study surged through her. She jerked her face from his grip. “I’m going to watch him tear you apart!”
That snapped the last fragile thread of his control. He bellowed with fury, taking her shoulders and slamming her so hard into the crates behind her that the crack of her skull against them had lights exploding behind her eyes.
Evie’s hand moved instinctively to her abdomen, shielding her belly, her child, expecting his fists to start raining down on her any minute.
But he had gone silent and still, his breathing ragged and echoing in the space between them. When she dared to lift her head, his expression twisted, rage flooding into his features–violent and all-consuming, his eyes fixed on her hand on her her belly
“You..” His voice broke into a snarling laugh. “You think that would stop me?”
His hand dropped to his belt, to a sheath she hadn’t even seen until that moment. The steel whispered as he jerked it free, the length flashing in the dim light. The way he held it in his fist told her he knew how to wield it.
The sight of it drove her from anger to fear in the blink of an eye as he advanced on her.
Oh, merciful God…
“I’ll carve it out if I have to,” he said, his voice low and shaking with fury. “I’ll use this on you, tear that brat out.”
And looking at his crazed eyes, she knew he meant it. He’d do it. Ned’s death would have cost him everything and now he had nothing to lose.
So she did the only thing she could think to do.
She ran.
She tore free and bolted down the narrow corridor between stacked crates, her ankle screaming, pain tearing up her leg, only the brace keeping the joint from buckling. Boots slipping on damp wood, her breath ragged in her throat, she hobbled around a corner where the shadows were the deepest, praying she could lose him, praying she could find somewhere to hide long enough for Adam to find her, save her, save their baby.
Behind her, Barty screamed, the sound edging towards hysterical.
“Get back here!”
He came after her hard and fast, boots pounding, cursing ripely, loudly. Loud enough, she hoped desperately, for Adam to have something to follow.
She pushed herself on, her breath sobbing as her ruined ankle became a searing point of inescapable misery. The corridor twisted and narrowed and–
A dead end, one she only just managed to avoid hitting face first by planting her hands, catching herself.
She turned, tried to push off the wall…
He slammed into her, the impact hard enough to take her to the ground, where he landed atop her, driving the air from her lungs. She struggled beneath him, clawing at his face, driving her fist into his jaw, fighting desperately to buck his weight off her.
The lanterns caught on the knife as it flashed near her head.
She grabbed his wrist, straining against him, desperate to keep that blade from its destination. His knee pinned her thigh, the sharp point of bone driving into her soft flesh. He was all angles, thinner, smaller than Adam.
His knee slid, jolting him forward.
Jolting the knife forward.
It plunged down, punching through fabric, skin and muscle, striking against bone. White-hot, fiery agony exploded through her left shoulder
The tortured scream tore out of her, echoing through the warehouse, raw and terrified.
Everything went red. The pain was blinding, consuming, her body convulsing under it as Barty cursed, then wrenched the knife free. Weeping, shaking, she tore at the buttons of her gown, sending them flying as she yanked her bodice open and pressed her hand over the wound as blood welled and pumped over her fingers.
Warm. Thick. Too much. The wound was so close to…
Her heart.
Had he nicked her heart?
She gulped at the air, her vision swimming, the world tilting–
The pain stuttered, faltered. Became hot filaments and fibers of movement.
Above her where he still had her pinned Barty’s gaze locked into the bloody tear in her shoulder, his pupils blown wide.
She swallowed, the fear a fluttering, frantic thing in the hollow of her throat and then gathering her courage, she tipped her chin down.
And watched the wound writhe, the red muscles reaching towards one another, knitting together, layer by layer, blood slowing skin sealing, closing. Till it was just…
Her breath caught, the heart she’d thought might be nicked pounding in her ears, its pulse fast, powerful, strong.
Barty recoiled, his grip loosening as something like horror crept across his face.
“What–what is this…?”
Evie pushed herself back, straightening against the wall, staring down at her own body in disbelief.
The pain faded to a furious throb, still there, still sitting beneath the skin, the bloody, smooth skin.
Her breath came in short, stunned bursts, a smile slowly moving across her trembling lips
Adam.
No.
Not Adam. Not entirely.
Their child. Adam’s child.
The miraculous life growing within her…carrying more than just his blood.
Carrying his regeneration. Passing that regeneration through their connection, to her.
She lifted her gaze to Barty and smiled, no longer afraid–of him or what he could do.
Something shifted in his expression. Now it was fear on his face, fear in his eyes, in the way he began to stammer insensibly.
And somewhere behind them, echoing through the darkened maze of the shipping yard, her husband roared her name again.
She pushed to her feet in the dim corridor, breath still uneven, her hand pressed to the place where the knife had torn into her and watched Barty stare at her as though she had risen from the grave.
“What are you?” he whispered.
“You should have left me alone,” she said quietly.
He took a step back, then another, the knife still in his hand, but his grip had loosened, his confidence had shattered under the impossible thing he had just witnessed.
Behind them, Adam’s roar bellowed out, terrifying and bestial.
She lunged for him, fast and direct and without hesitation. Her hand closed around his wrist, twisting hard. He cursed as the knife slipped from his grasp. It clattered once against the boards and she swept it up by the hilt.
Barty stumbled back, eyes wide now, real fear taking hold.
“Stay back!” he snapped, scrambling, trying to regain control. “You stay back, witch!”
She advanced on him slowly. Her limp was still there, the faint drag of her step–they were there before Adam, before her child came to be–but it didn’t slow her. It only made the rhythm of her approach more steady and deliberate and certain
“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore,” she snarled.
He backed away again, nearly tripping over a crate, his eyes wheeling in his face, his once elegant hair strewn across his brow.
“You’re a freak,” he spat, though his voice shook. “Just like him. I will–”
“You’ll what?” she cut in, her grip tightened on the knife. “Still take what’s yours?” she asked softly.
He faltered, his Adam’s apple working and for the first time…he looked small.
“Try it,” She dared, her voice steady now, cutting through the darkness. “Go ahead, do it.”
But his bravado was false, his courage deserting him. His mouth worked like a fish as it drowned on dry land and then he turned and ran.
But not far.
He slipped on the damp boards, his boots losing purchase. His shoulder struck a stack of crates, sending one crashing to the floor as he stumbled and fell hard onto his back.
The breath whooshed from his lungs and before he could recover…
Evie was on him.
She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t think twice. Raising the knife Barty had used against her, that had plunged into her own body minutes earlier, she swung it down.
The sound of it punching through the layers of skin and fat and muscle was wet and hideous and beautiful.
He screamed beneath her, raised his hands up to try and shield his face, his chest, but it didn’t stop her. She brought the knife down again with a scream of fury that burned her throat.
Again. And again. And again.
Each strike fueled by years of fear, of silence, of helplessness forced upon her. Each blow carving something out of her that had been left there by him, by Ned, by every moment she had been made small by these men who had seen her as only a means to an end, only as a convenient body to abuse or long to use.
“You don’t–!” she gasped between strikes, her voice breaking with fury. “Ever–get–to–touch–me–again!”
The blade rose and fell, rose and fell, her movements relentless, driven by something deeper than rage. Sshtunk, sshtunk, sshtunk.
Barty splintered, broke apart beneath her, his screams turning to wet, gurgling gasps.
And then finally…nothing. No sound, no breath…just quiet.
The knife hovered in her hand, trembling, silence rushed in, broken only by her ragged breathing.
She stayed there, straddling him, staring down at what remained of the man who would have raped her, would have cut her child from her body, her chest heaving, her hair fallen loose around her shoulders, her hands and face slick with blood.
“Evie.”
She twisted around, the knife still clutched in her hand.
Adam stood at the end of the corridor.
Blood soaked his clothes, his hands, dark and drying. His coat was torn, his shirt ruined, his pale patchwork skin visible through what remained, but his eyes…
His eyes burned, but not with the blind fury she had heard in his howls of rage. They were molten, fixed on her, the left a perfect disc of the golden lantern light.
His dark lips parted, his throat visibly working as his gaze slid off her face and down to the scene, taking it in, taking her in. The blood coating her hands, splattered across her skin, thick and heavy where she had been stabbed, the wound now just an angry pink scar.
Then down, to the knife in her hand…and the body beneath her, the unrecognizable remains of Barty Daniels.
Then his eyes lifted once more and locked onto hers and for a heartbeat, she didn’t move and neither did Adam, the silence broken only by their harsh breathing.
Then he stepped forward, slowly and carefully and when he stood before her, he knelt, his hands held palm out as though she was a skittish young mare that might startle and bolt.
“Mit hjerte,” he murmured, gently, quietly. “Evie.”
Her name, in his voice, broke the last of the storm inside her. The knife slipped from her fingers, clattering softly to the floor.
“I couldn’t stop,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I couldn’t–”
“You survived,” he said, closing the distance between them, his hands stretching for her, firm and steady, lifting her gently away from the body, pulling her against him despite the blood, despite the gore. She began to shake, violently. A sob welled in her throat, breaking through. The first tear slid down her cheek, through the blood streaked there.
“You fought,” he murmured. “You won. You kept yourself safe, you kept our child safe. That…that is all that matters.”
She buried her face in his throat, smelling the blood, the gunpowder, his own skin, his own scent, and clung to him.
And for the first time since walking into the boardroom and seeing Barty…
She felt safe.