The whole house heard her scream. Not the elegant cry of a woman scorned—but the primal, cracked wail of something coming undone. It was a sound so violent, so deep and raw, it could have put banshees and sirens to shame. She screamed for her father like she was summoning a curse itself, and every velvet-draped corridor carried her voice like it was haunted.
Genevieve had long since shifted from planning to delusion.
She didn't scream—this time. Instead, she stood utterly still, eyes flicking over the room like a clock that had lost track of its own ticks. Her breath was shallow. Her posture tense. Her mind? Spiraling.
Every word. Every look. Every move that had worked—until it didn't.
She hadn't just manipulated Viktor. She had poisoned the very roots of his house. She'd ensured the famine reached his family's winter stores two weeks before the druids arrived. She delayed their sacred rites. Withheld names. Unwound charms that would've protected the older brother.
She was only meant to break the brother.
But then she saw Viktor—and realized she could have both. Why settle for one fractured heir when she could shape the entire bloodline in her image? Their house was old, proud, and fading. She would bring it to heel, dress it in velvet, and parade it like a reformed beast.
And yes, some of it was fae instinct. The hunger to own, to bind, to collect what gleamed prettiest under candlelight. But even if she hadn't been fae, noble women had long mastered the art of silent dominion. They were trained to conquer behind lace and lineage, to inherit through smiles that buried whole empires.
She didn't want love. She wanted legacy. And it didn't help that the Shadow Man had backed him. That strange, ancient thing with ink-stained whispers and eyes that saw beneath time. Viktor hadn't just gained affection—he'd been anointed.
That stung most of all. Because she'd done everything right. Twisted every thread. Dug her claws in with silk and blood. And still he drifted.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't hers. Not anymore.
Her father—if you could call him that—had once called the Barinov brothers her playthings. He encouraged her hunger. Gave her dolls made of real bone and land deeds with velvet bows. But that changed when the Shadow Man began favoring Viktor.
Suddenly, her father tightened the purse strings. They had money—mountains of it—but the lavish excess began to fade. New silks stopped arriving from the west. Fewer slaves were gifted into her hands. Her seasonal wardrobe was delayed for the first time in decades. He bought less. Offered less. Said less.
Genevieve, used to being the center of his empire, bristled.
When she asked why, he only murmured, "I got word. Times might change."
She hadn't understood. How could she? Her father was power incarnate—a man who whispered in the ears of dukes and devoured generals for breakfast. He wasn't just her father. He was the man entire villages feared in silence. He had raised her to rule, to consume, to deserve everything simply because it existed.
But ever since the Shadow Man cast favor on Viktor, something shifted. Her father—her grand, omnipotent father—had started saying no. More and more. Like something spooked even him.
Whispers grew. A new president rising. States in quiet rebellion. Old spells being pulled up by the roots. People watching ships and roads like omens. Traders hesitating. Scribes leaving towns early. It was like the world was holding its breath.
And worse—her father's name had crept into the prayers of the resistance. Harriet Tubman—just a mortal woman—had stolen three of his finest blood-trained girls last winter. They weren't just expensive. They were critical.
Those girls were supposed to go to an ancient vampire clutch and a bonded werewolf triad as part of a dark deal. Mated. Ugh. She rolled her eyes at the very idea. Mated mates were weak—fools chasing softness and fairy-tale endings instead of real power.
She hadn't noticed it then. But looking back, maybe her father was afraid of change. Or maybe he'd finally realized that power wasn't eternal, not even his. Genevieve—so soaked in her own lace-draped delusions—couldn't fathom that a war might be creeping up on her perfectly set table. She couldn't see what Viktor had likely noticed long before: the tides were shifting, and fast. If her family didn't cut back now, they wouldn't just lose their silks or their slaves. They'd lose everything. But Genevieve? Her true focus was still on Viktor. His betrayal had hurt in more ways than one. She'd never believe the world could slip away from her. Not until it did.
Her eyes snapped toward Viktor, simmering with grief and rage. Somewhere behind that fire was a flicker of something else—memory. She remembered when he'd eaten those eggs she made him. Simple, over-spiced, served in a chipped bowl. He had cried. Actual tears. Said no one had cooked for him like that before.
She clutched that memory like a shard. Then she snapped it in two.
"I am the lady of this house!" she shrieked, stomping across the rug like every step might crack the floor. Her wings flared behind her, radiant and erratic, trembling with old magic as her voice rose. She snatched a mirror from the mantle—small, framed in gold leaf and bone—and kissed it.
The surface shimmered, then expanded into a tall, gleaming portal that pulsed with shadowlight. But she wasn't admiring herself. Not truly.
Genevieve stared into the mirror like a priestess seeking a vision. She didn't see her own rage-wracked face. She saw a future—one where she was right. Where Viktor came crawling back. Where Ayoka vanished like a fever dream. Where the house bowed again under her silk-draped reign.
Genevieve stared into the mirror like a priestess seeking a vision. She didn't see her own rage-wracked face. She saw a future—one where she was right. Where Viktor came crawling back. Where Ayoka vanished like a fever dream. Where the house bowed again under her silk-draped reign.
She stared into the mirror as if it would bend to her will—but the vision flickered. The golden-glow future collapsed, pixel by pixel, into something far less kind.
There she was—alone, disheveled, her wings torn and her house crumbling. Viktor did not crawl. Ayoka did not vanish. The mirror dared to show her truth: that she had lost.
Her true face flickered across the surface—not glamoured, not beautiful, but twisted in grief and obsession.
With a roar, Genevieve smashed the mirror against the floor. Shards scattered like glass stars, cutting into the rug and her pride.
And Viktor? Viktor just smiled. Not cruelly. Not kindly. But with a calm that almost looked like relief. After all, he had written to her father months ago—quietly, carefully—warning that Genevieve had been using her fortune-telling profits on frivolous obsessions. The letters had been formal, clipped, and laced with concern.
Whether Sabine's father got involved directly or merely whispered to the right ears, Viktor couldn't say for sure. But he knew the rumors had spread. That Sabine—sharp-tongued, independent Sabine—was seen as serving under Genevieve's name, even if not by choice. That alone might've stirred something in Sabine's bloodline.
Now, watching Genevieve unravel, Viktor wasn't just enjoying the chaos—he was absorbing it like a long-awaited encore. She crouched among the mirror shards, breathing hard, her fingers twitching toward one gleaming piece. But Viktor moved first. He plucked the sharpest sliver with his gloved hand, turned it thoughtfully in the candlelight, then pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to its edge. A pulse of shadow magic rippled across the shard—inky, smooth, intimate.
When he handed it to her like a sacred token, Genevieve took it without hesitation and ran her tongue along the blade's edge. Her blood didn't flinch. She didn't either. Viktor tilted his head, watching her with an expression caught somewhere between disgust and nostalgia.
Had she always been like this? He remembered those eggs she used to make him—not chicken or goose, but dragon eggs, stolen before the hatchlings could even breathe air. She cooked them anyway, over-salted, slightly burned, served in a chipped bowl like it was a kindness. He had cried after the first bite.
Had she always been like this? He remembered those eggs she used to make him—not chicken or goose, but dragon eggs, stolen before the hatchlings could even breathe air. She cooked them anyway, over-salted, slightly burned, served in a chipped bowl like it was a kindness. He had cried after the first bite.
He had once believed certain types of dragons were just beasts of legend—mighty, noble, distant. But those eggs? They weren't laid by scaled beasts with no names. They were born of people like him. People who bled, who dreamed, who mourned. Kin, not monsters. When Genevieve made him eat them, he had known immediately—deep in his marrow—that those were dragonborn. Souls like his. Futures like his.
And she didn't even have the decency to hide it. She hadn't tricked him. She hadn't lied. She just smiled and served them, like it was a gift. She hadn't bought them from animal-like creatures. She had gone out of her way—painstakingly, proudly—to acquire the unborn of their own kind.
It wasn't just cruel. It was calculated. Like feeding someone pieces of their past to see if they'd break. Like proving that love came with ash and silence. And he—he had cried. Not from hunger. But because, somehow, he'd let her convince him it was care.
But now she sat there, clinging to glass, glaring like he was the villain in some opera she wrote herself. And for the first time in years, he had one up on that cursed family.
He sipped, shadows curling at his feet, and whispered, "Thanks for the show." Maybe he meant it for her. Or maybe, just maybe, he was thanking the Shadow Man—who surely was watching with glee from some dark corner beyond the veil, relishing the collapse of legacies. A little chaos was always good for the soil, after all. And tonight? Tonight the garden was flooded.
The air shifted, as if the house itself held its breath in amusement. A whisper of old lore drifted to the edge of Viktor's senses—that when the Shadow Man grinned, it meant a reckoning was unfolding exactly as it should.
He walked back to his chair and taken an seat, crossing one leg over the other with precise, aristocratic calm. Shadows licked at his boots, curling upward like waiting hounds. With one hand, he lifted his wineglass again, the other slowly drawing the last whisper of magic from the broken mirror. It hissed in protest—thin and sharp—but submitted, folding into his palm like smoke.
He gave the glass a little swirl before taking a sip, savoring the bitter taste like it was aged revenge.
"I built this with you. I stood beside you when no one else would. And now you go crawling to that... that stage-struck pastel-scale?"
Genevieve watched his every move with unblinking fury. As he drank, her breath quickened. She lurched upright, pieces of mirror still glinting at her knees, and marched across the rug until she was inches from his face.
She spat the insult with venom. "Dragons were never meant to roll over for painted pets."
She lunged for his favorite bottle of wine, lifting it to smash it—but Viktor's shadows moved faster. They caught the glass midair, gentle and firm, placing it back with eerie grace.
Viktor drank the first glass slowly, letting the bitterness coat his tongue like victory. Then, without so much as a word, he poured himself another—casually, regally, one leg crossed over the other. The glass clinked softly as he raised it again.
"Say something!" Genevieve demanded, the tremble in her voice betraying her unraveling.
Genevieve stared—eyes wide, breath heaving. Her fingers trembled before she dropped to her knees with a theatrical gasp.
She licked the floor where the shadows had been.
"You see what you've done?" she hissed, voice jagged and cracked. "Look at me. Look at what you're turning me into. After everything I gave you."
She spun back onto her feet, arms thrown wide like an unhinged prophetess in velvet. "I gave you the future! Titles! Ritual! And you squander it on some bed-warm bloodline nobody."
Viktor, still calm, sat in his chair like a man watching an opera he'd seen too many times.
"Жалкая," he said aloud in Russian, the word slicing through the air like a blade. (Pathetic.)
Genevieve was pathetic—and she looked it too, shaking in velvet and fury. Most fae were, he thought, when they started losing things they believed they owned. Even Puck, for all his riddles and riddled loyalties, knew better than to cling like this. "This whole charade. It's almost artful. If desperation had a perfume, Genevieve, you'd drown us in it."
He took a long, elegant sip, and without looking at her added, "We all know what kind of world this is. Dragons have always held more power than the fae. Your people needed us when your wings started getting plucked. Don't forget who rebuilt your broken courts.""
She turned sharply. Blinked once. Then laughed.
Like he'd gifted her the best joke in months.
"I'm pathetic?" she echoed, every syllable sweet and slicing. "Darling, you're the one lusting after someone beneath you. A stage girl. A glorified maid. I'd call her a courtesan, but let's be honest—she's a whore who doesn't get paid. At least I play to the future. You? You fuck the help."
His glass hit the desk with a quiet knock. Viktor's hand twitched for a second, aching to slap the venom from her lips—but he held still. Not because he feared the fallout, but because he knew Genevieve. She would've moaned through the pain and called it foreplay. No—she liked throwing words, so he threw his back like knives dipped in silk. He didn't have to raise a hand to break her. Words would do just fine.
Viktor rose from his chair with deliberate grace, his height now eye-level with hers—no longer a passive spectator, but a man reclaiming his space.
He stood close enough for their breaths to mingle, his shadow brushing hers on the rug. "At least I'm not addicted to prophecy like it's morphine," he said, voice low but cutting, eyes locked on hers. "You call yourself a villain, but you've always been a follower. You've never had a vision—you just dress yourself in whatever era's bones you think make you relevant you think makes you relevant."
He leaned in, just enough to let the edge of his breath ghost her cheek. "You've always known how to fuck it up, Genevieve. And you always do.""
Her mouth curled like wilted fruit. Genevieve had once been a prodigy—born with curses on her tongue and hexes in her breath. She'd crafted spells so potent not even the old gods dared test her. Back then, people didn't just avoid crossing her—they refused to speak her name without spitting salt. But lately, it felt like something had changed. Her grandmother had begun visiting more often, always with that knowing look and a veiled smile. More watchful. More controlling.
"You think I don't know how to curse you?" she hissed, clinging to the old bravado even as the edges of her world frayed.
He chuckled. Slowly.
Viktor thought back to that night—Sabine's voice had been sharp when she asked, "Where is Baba Yaga?" It had been a joke, mostly. But also not. There was truth in why the old witch never came near the house. And there was truth in what the Shadow Man had whispered to him during one of those velvet-shadow visits: "Genevieve is about to be under more locks and keys."
He didn't know what was said between them—the hag and the ink-stained prophet—but he could guess. Lately, it felt like even Genevieve's own blood was getting tired of her playing the child. She wasn't some sprightly fae ingénue anymore. She was ninety-three. And sooner or later, she'd have to stop pretending that immortality meant she could dodge accountability.
"Oh, I know you know," he said. "That's the problem. You can't. Not anymore." He leaned forward, lips curled in mock amusement. "Your little grandma put a lock on your mouth the day you tried to hex the baker's daughter for selling better croissants."
Genevieve shrieked, shoving books off the shelf with a violent sweep. "You're lying! My grandmother would never do that!" she snapped, fury twisting her voice. But even as she shouted, the tremble in her fingers betrayed something else—doubt, quiet and clawing. Her denial hit the air like a cracked bell, loud but unconvincing.
Viktor didn't even flinch. He set his wineglass aside, a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. "And don't forget," he said with a knowing laugh, "the Shadow Man put you and your father on the Pactum Maleficarum et Ridiculum." Genevieve blinked. Her lips didn't move. But something behind her eyes began to flicker. A glitch in her pride. She started to really listen, if only for a second—because deep in that tangled mind of hers, something whispered that this couldn't possibly be true. Not her. Not them.
"You know how hard it is to get on that thing? That's like getting disinvited from Hell's high tea. "Viktor stood straighter, lifting his glass like he was about to deliver the third act of some grand, ghost-lit play. He let the words curl around the room like velvet smoke.
"That list was made for ancient curses and back-alley gods," he said with theatrical bite, "not for two lace-tripping aristocrats who think every whisper is applause."
Genevieve started to listen—truly listen—but in her head, it couldn't be real. This was still her house. Her world. She clung to denial like it had a title and a seat at court. But as Viktor spoke, the shadows around the room began to stir—first subtly, then with mounting grace, like dancers stretching before a grand performance. They curled up the walls, coiling near the ceiling like silent spectators. The house was holding its breath. The performance was beginning. And Genevieve? She felt her world closing in, one echoing word at a time.
Viktor continued, the showman now. "You think calling people 'low' works when you've been living among immortals this long? Mortals might flinch, sure. But the rest of us? We remember. We watch. And we never forget what you tried to pull."
He paused, letting the tension stretch just long enough to sting.
Then, the shadows stirred—and this time, not like servants or spies. They reached for instruments hidden in the walls, in the ceilings, behind the paintings. Bongos, tablas, marimbas, taiko drums, udu pots, balafons, and bamboo flutes emerged, each pulled by hands formed of smoke and myth. Every beat, every note, carried the rhythm of a different land—Congo, Haiti, Thailand, Russia, Brazil, Egypt, Greece. The music swelled like a storm-tide crashing through velvet halls.
Genevieve felt it. In her ribs. In her bones. In the marrow of her wings. The sound didn't just echo—it pierced. It found the parts of her that had buried doubt beneath silk and titles. The rhythm was relentless, shaking the cobwebs of her delusions loose, beat by beat, breath by breath.Viktor was putting on show for his life.
"Skin tones only matter until the shadows stretch too long. And when it's not the color of your flesh, it's the cut of your jaw, the shape of your chest, the curve of your hips. Silly, isn't it? How fragile their hate becomes when you change nothing but the lighting."
Then Viktor moved.
He stepped forward, took Genevieve's trembling hands in his, and pulled her into a slow, deliberate waltz as the music surged. The shadows responded like a ballroom orchestra—filling the room with a crashing storm of rhythm and legacy. Around them, the space shimmered. Rugs dissolved into stone mosaics, curtains turned into stained glass, and chandeliers became molten constellations. They weren't in the study anymore. They were dancing across centuries.
Genevieve spun, spun again—caught in the momentum, forced to follow as the shadow ballroom unfurled around her. Each turn blurred the lines between reality and ritual. The guests appeared like mist: dancers formed from shade and bone and memory. And among them—smirking, spinning—was the Shadow Man himself. Dressed in tailored finery, his steps were elegant, his laughter rich. He offered her no malice, only rhythm.
All of them shared shards of mirror, clinking glass like wine flutes, each one catching and refracting Genevieve's cracked delusions.
And at the crescendo, Viktor's voice rose above the storm, fierce and thunder-laced:
"But we immortals—we're no better at times! We dress up our prejudice in prophecy and tradition, lace it with bloodlines and curses, but it's still the same rotten root underneath! Superiority always finds a new face to wear!"
He spun her one last time—and let go
He spun her one last time—and let go. Viktor smiled faintly, cold and elegant. "You'd think immortals would know better, but we still have 'mortal' in our names." Genevieve thought she had fallen onto the ballroom floor—but it turned out she was still in the room.
He let the shadows lean in around him, curling like attentive guests. His voice dropped to a near-whisper, the kind that made rooms lean closer.
"We might put on human forms," he said, eyes locking on hers. "I might look like some brooding Russian prince, and your father might seem like a genteel Southern lord in fine linen and gold-tipped boots. But if you look past that—and think, truly think—you'd know we are no men. Just like you, Genevieve, are no woman. Not really. Not anymore.
Because soon this slavery thing—it always falls apart. It always does. Someone might try to replace it, might polish it up and call it something new, but I've been around long enough to know the truth. It never lasts. Yeah, you might throw some words at me, call out parts of what I've done or who I've been—but what's that got to do with you, Genevieve, when you're the one about to vanish like smoke in a hurricane?"
The words settled like ash. And still, he smiled.
Viktor remembered the story well—Genevieve's father had tried to enslave the woman and her partner while they were visiting the Shadow Man in America. Something about being her younger brother. That woman had nearly cast her father into a Lovecraftian gate, if not for her elven lover's intervention. The Shadow Man, back then still willing to extend trust, had let the pair stay with him. That incident marked their first true strike with the shadows.
Now, in the immortal world, a "true strike" wasn't just a punishment—it was a rite. An old, often unspoken tradition observed by those who'd lived too long to play mortal games forever. When immortals stepped too far out of bounds, ignored the balance, or wrapped themselves so deeply in mortal lies that they forgot who they were, the strikes began. Everyone had their own variation of the rule. Every clan. Every bloodline. But the Shadow Man? His rules were the oldest. The sharpest. And the ones no one wanted to cross.
Genevieve, of course, made things worse. She had tried to seduce the elf, thinking him fae—a common mistake, even among immortals. Arrogance blurred the lines. Fae or elf, it didn't matter. Genevieve's arrogance made her blind. She even attempted to steal a statue of a stone-carved baby that the couple was guarding—an artifact wrapped in mourning spells and ancient protection. Her father had to rip through time and space to stop her, dragging her back just as the wards began to crack and something unholy stirred in answer. That earned them their second true strike.
But the final offense? Her father tried again—this time using mortal contracts, slavery codes, and backdoor law to ensnare the woman and her elven mate all over again. Just so Genevieve could have her new toy. A new whore wrapped in silk and illusion. Had the elf not stepped in, the ritual would have claimed not just lives, but lineages. And with that, they hit their last strike—before getting kicked off the Pact of Ix-nay Illegance-ay, or what Viktor liked to call "The Acts of Dahlia Belladonna."
It was ironic. A powerful Southern gentleman groveling beneath mortal law. A man feared by gods, now trying to twist paperwork like a desperate merchant.
And Genevieve? She still didn't learn.
Viktor took another sip of wine, bitterness and memory swirling together like ash in a storm.
Viktor took another sip of wine, bitterness and memory swirling together like ash in a storm. He sighed—low and drawn out—as the fireplace burst briefly into a crackling blaze, casting long shadows that danced like phantoms on the walls. A fox servant emerged from the velvet dark, eyes glowing, fur impeccable. She bowed deeply before approaching Genevieve.
"Your father requests your presence," she said, her voice sharp but not unkind—like silver striking glass.
Genevieve sneered and attempted to shrug the servant off, but the fox didn't flinch. "He insists," she repeated, more firmly.
Wings twitching, mouth tight with protest, Genevieve turned and left, each step a thunderclap of wounded pride and barely concealed rage.
Viktor didn't follow her. Didn't stop her. Instead, he turned back to the fire, eyes catching the flicker like it was a final curtain call.
Villains, he thought, always wanted grand finales—curses, collapses, declarations. But truthfully, they ended better like this. Loud, but quiet. Bittersweet.
He smirked faintly. He had enjoyed the show. A little too much.
The shadows coiled and sank into the hearth like ink poured into silk. The fire dimmed, then died. Silence took its place, rich and heavy.
Viktor let his head fall back, exhaled, and shut his eyes.
He'd need his strength. Because once morning came, there would be Sabine—and questions best not left unanswered.