“I would be wary of the chemicals,” I said to Mary as she lifted the still-full syringe. “You do not know what they do.”

She scowled, as though her ignorance was more offensive than the chemicals themselves. She found a large leather folio full of loose papers. Her eyes widened as she opened it. “Victor forgot his research.”

The monster—the man—Henry—not Henry—Adam reached into his own rough cloak. It looked as though he had fashioned it out of a boat’s sail. From some pocket he withdrew a similar book. “I have his old one.”

“Where did you get that?” I recognized it from the horrible trunk in Victor’s first laboratory. And then I remembered. “You were there that night. I almost burned you to death.” I hung my head in shame. “I am sorry.”

“You did not know.”

“No, I am sorry for so much more than that. I was not fair to you—to Henry—in life. His first life. But whatever part of you is Henry, I used you. Not as cruelly as Victor used you, but I let you remain in love with me because it made me feel safer. Not because I had romantic feelings to return. I do not know that I have ever had those feelings, or that I could. They seem a luxury of safety and security.”

I paused, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to look at the monster. I would accustom my mind to him until my eyes no longer recoiled. I found Henry’s eyes in the midst of that ruined face, and I focused on them alone. “I put you in the path of that demon. And I provoked him deliberately to get him to come home, or to allow you to marry me and secure my future that way. I did not care which way it happened, which meant I did not truly care about your feelings. I used you. And for that I am sorry. I will always be sorry.”

“I understand now being trapped,” he said, his words slow and measured, each delivered with precise care around a swollen and clumsy tongue. “I am trapped by this body. There is no place for me in the world, no refuge I can find. I cannot even depend on the kindness of others, because it will never be freely offered to me.”

Mary worked her way across the glass-strewn floor to us. She took the first journal from Adam and stacked it with the second under her good arm. “Well. We have his research. We have his funds. We have his laboratory. It will be a while before he can set up again.”

“I say we do not give him the opportunity.” I looked around the home that had never been mine. The home I had always been desperate to be safe in. The home that, as a Frankenstein, I finally had claim to.