Its unnaturalness did not leave my mind. It settled over me like a spider’s web, invisible and impossible to brush off.

Chapter Eleven: When from Sleep I First Awaked

TO MY SURPRISE—AND VAIN dismay—when I walked into Victor’s convalescence room the next morning, he looked better than I did. Whatever damage my sleepless nights had done to my face, his time here had erased all traces of his feverish delirium.

He was propped up by a pillow and was surprised to see me when I walked in.

“Elizabeth! What are you doing here?”

I bit back my impulse to berate him, to inform him I was there to save his foolish life. Instead, I pressed my hands to my mouth and rushed to his side. “Oh, Victor! When I found you, you were in such a low state. I feared I was too late.”

His eyes twitched. “You were the one to find me? I do not remember anything of the last few days. Weeks, perhaps.” He rubbed his forehead, eyes searching the air in front of him for some hint of what he had missed. “Did you…What state were my rooms in?”

I smiled gently, taking his hand from his forehead and resting my cheek against his much cooler fingers. “You certainly could have used a maid. I did not have much time to look around. We rushed you right here. I am so sorry to report that the same night we found you, the stove caught fire and burned down the building. All your things were lost. And to think—if I had not found you, you would have been inside the inferno!” I let tears pool in my eyes.

He dropped his head back against the pillow, but I knew every expression of his face. He was the text I had devoted my life to studying. It was relief, not despair, that caused him to lose his strength.

“My time here has been for naught anyhow. I sought to puncture heaven and instead discovered hell.” He closed his eyes. His eyelids were nearly translucent, traced with tiny blue and purple veins. I was reminded of the time when he mapped my own veins with his fingers, plotting the course of my heart with meticulous study.

“Victor,” I said, needing to speak to him before he fell back into sleep. If he wanted to remain silent on what his mad studies had cost him, I was more than happy to let him keep those secrets. We would never talk of them again. I had erased the evidence from the world, and perhaps Victor’s fever had erased them from his mind, too. But there was one mystery I could not set fire to and turn my back on. “Why did you never write? I was so worried about you that I sent Henry here just to find you. And then he left, too.”