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I let the moment swell. Let rumor be made flesh.

The Romanovs and Virellis would resolve not at the negotiating table, but on a stage slicked with spit, cum, and blood, and I was nothing if not a man who honored tradition.

Following her to the altar, my boots thudded on the stage. I took off my suit jacket, tossing it to the ground before I rolled up my sleeves. I felt the hard pulse of my own life in my teeth, the smile building behind them.

Never before had I wanted to devour and protect something so much at once.

Harlowe’s eyes were fixed on a ghost in the rafters. The slip she wore was nothing now, already torn down one side, and I saw in her hunched angle how the pain resonated deep, and how she craved it to keep her from crumbling into ash.

Hands behind her, she didn’t look at me when I approached, and that was a kind of provocation, too.

I reached forward and, with the barest whisper, touched her earlobe, grazing the black hair that framed her bruises. I circled to her front, palms up, inviting her to lash out. When she didn’t, I pushed her to lie back on the altar, then took her hands and lifted them overhead, guiding her wrists to the heavy iron rungs bolted to either side of the altar.

She didn’t resist, and I respected her for that. I respected her for not flinching even when the cold bit into her. I worked quickly, buckling the thick leather cuffs around her wrists and cinching them to the wood, leaving her stretched and exposed, nothing but her breath and resolve holding her upright under the scrutiny of a city full of monsters.

In the front row, the crowd pressed in, carnivorous with curiosity. I could feel their heat, their hunger, but they were nothing compared to the current between Harlowe and me.

I stepped back, rolling my shoulders, and let my gaze devour her, and cataloged every wound, and every shadow. She dropped her chin, her jaw trembling just a fraction where blood and adrenaline finally collided. Reaching down, I worked the torn silk up over her hips, and then left it bunched at her waist, the pale slip a flag of surrender I would never allow her to raise.

“She needs a brand,” someone whispered in the crowd, and the words rippled up to the high beams, exposing the collective, secret wish of the crowd—see her suffer, see her break, see if she could stand and be proud at the end.

She would. That was the point of her.

I ran the flat of my palm up her thigh, slowly, deliberately, ignoring the way the crowd hissed at the violence they thought might come next. I left my hand on her leg just long enough to make the room’s pulse slow to a quiver.

The stage swallowed every breath, the dark alive with teeth and envy. I tilted her face up, thumb under her chin, and let her see me. The hush in the cathedral was so total it became its own kind of violence.

“Tell them what you are,” I said, loud enough for the crowd but too soft to be overheard by God.

Harlowe’s eyes blazed, sapphire glass catching the candlelight as she studied me. I could see the rational part of her brain fighting this moment, but the animal couldn’t. She needed to be destroyed. It was the only thing that made her feel real.

And then I saw her decide.

She made a show of struggle, wrists twitching against the cuffs, chin up, but her eyes never left mine.

“I’m the offering, and the monster gets to take what he wants.”

A hard shiver ran through the room. I felt it in my backbone, the way a wolf feels the tremor of prey even before it’s chased. I bent over her so our faces were haloed together for the crowd.

We were animus and anima, a curse and its fulfillment.

I ran my hand up her side, fingers pressing hard enough to tally each rib, each stuttering breath.

She made no sound. Not yet.

Looking at the audience, I let them eat the sight—Giovanni Virelli’s daughter, a dark angel, splayed out under my hands, marked in colors that matched nothing but her father’s worst fears.

“You came for a crucifixion,” I told her.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said, so soft only I could hear the shake in it.

Without a word, I pressed her shoulders back into the altar, letting the collective desire of a hundred strangers buoy her body’s refusal to fold. I hooked her ankles over the edge and splayed her out. Then, just as in the old country, when the fathers of fathers branded their daughters to prove ownership, I pulled the knife from my belt.

Harlowe’s eyes widened, not in terror, not even in shock, but in a mute and absolute euphoria. The crowd gasped. She didn’t. She only bit down on her lower lip, as if unwilling to betray even a molecule of pain to anyone but me.

I brought the knife to just above her skin, and the blade kissed the flesh at the divot of her hip. This wasn’t for their benefit. This was for me alone.

She held her body so still, so rigid, that I could almost see the shapes of the prayers she choked back. The knife didn’t touch her, not yet, but the specter of it, the near-miss of being branded alive, was enough.