Read Chapter 20: The Prisoner

The crypt smelled of cold stone and something else—something that made Étienne’s teeth ache. Copper, maybe. Or the wet-metal stink of old blood that had soaked into rock and refused to leave. His headlamp cut a white beam through the dark, catching the low vaulted ceiling, the rows of empty stone shelves where bodies had once been laid to rest.

Claire moved beside him, her breath fogging. Giancarlo limped at the rear, rifle held loose, his face slick with sweat even in the cold.

“There,” Claire said, pointing.

At the far end of the crypt, a shape sat against the wall. Human. Man-shaped. Legs folded, arms resting on bent knees. At first, Étienne thought it was a statue—some forgotten saint or mourner carved in pale marble. But then the shape shifted, and a low sound escaped it. Not a growl. A whimper.

Étienne’s heart stopped.

He knew that sound. He had known it his whole life, buried so deep in his chest that hearing it again felt like a wound reopening. He stepped forward, and his headlamp caught the face.

Gaspard.

His brother’s face was thinner than Étienne remembered—gaunt, almost skeletal. His hair had gone white, cropped close to the scalp. His skin was translucent, the faint blue tracery of veins visible beneath, pulsing with something sluggish and wrong. And his eyes, once the same dark brown as Étienne’s own, were now filmed over with a milky cataract. Blind.

But it was the chestplate that stopped him. A sheet of beaten metal, blackened with age, bolted into Gaspard’s sternum. Crude leather straps wound around his torso, cinched tight. Beneath the metal, something moved—a twitching, writhing pressure, like a caged animal trying to push through skin.

“Étienne.” Gaspard’s voice was a rasp, dry as ash. His head tilted, blind eyes searching. “I knew you’d come. I heard your boots on the stairs. You walk heavy when you’re afraid.”

Étienne’s throat closed. He took another step. “Gaspard. What did they do to you?”

A wet laugh rattled out of his brother’s chest. “They? No, Étienne. She. Dr. Vannier. The one you’ve been chasing. The one the village called a saint for healing their sick.”

Claire stepped closer, her voice sharp. “Dr. Vannier was a man. The doctor who vanished eighteen years ago.”

“That’s what she wanted you to think.” Gaspard’s fingers twitched against his knees, nails blackened and thick. “She wore his name like a coat. Used his record to hide in plain sight. But Vannier was a woman, and she was brilliant, and she was terrified of dying.”

Étienne forced words out. “The shaper. The creature that controls the wolves—the thing in the Loom.”

“That’s her.” Gaspard’s blind gaze found Étienne’s face, unerring. “She didn’t make the beasts, Étienne. She made me. Took me off that mountain, stitched wolf blood into my veins, spliced me until I didn’t know where I ended and the beast began. She wanted to extend life. Her life. Mine. Anyone she could get her hands on.”

Claire’s voice was barely a whisper. “The hospital. The patients.”

“Test subjects,” Gaspard said. “All of them. And when they failed, she fed them to the beasts she’d already created.” His jaw worked, a muscle jumping. “The creature in the pass is not our enemy. She is. The beast is just a symptom—a dog she trained and then lost control of.”

Étienne knelt in front of his brother. He reached out, hesitating, then touched Gaspard’s shoulder. The skin beneath his fingers was wrong—cold and clammy, too loose. Gaspard flinched, then leaned into the touch.

“I’m sorry,” Étienne whispered. “I should have found you. I should have——”

“You were fifteen.” Gaspard’s voice cracked. “You couldn’t fight her. Neither could I.” His hand shot out, catching Étienne’s wrist with surprising strength. “But you can end this now. Do it quickly.”

Étienne’s blood ran cold. “What?”

“The beast is in me, Étienne. It’s been in me for twenty years. The chestplate holds it down, but it wakes. It wakes, and when it does, I can’t stop it from hurting people. I’ve tried. I’ve cut myself, starved myself, driven spikes through my own hands to stay present.” He squeezed Étienne’s wrist. “She made me into a cage. And when the cage breaks, everything inside gets out.”

“No.” Étienne shook his head. “We can free you. The Loom, the keys—if we can reach the heart——”

“There is no freeing me.” Gaspard’s voice was flat. Final. “I’ve been dead since the day she took me. What’s left is just a thing wearing my face, waiting for its master to come back.” His fingers tightened. “Please. You’re the only one who can.”

Étienne stared at his brother’s ruined face. He thought of the diary. The drawings. The boy he’d lost. He reached for the hunting knife at his belt, and Gaspard’s lips curled into something that might have been a smile.

“Good,” Gaspard breathed. “Good. Make it——”

The bullet took Étienne in the shoulder.

The crack of the shot echoed off the stone walls like a thunderclap. Étienne staggered, a hot lance of pain tearing through his arm, blood spraying dark against the floor. He went down on one knee, hand clutching the wound, head snapping toward the crypt entrance.

A figure stood in the doorway. Tall. Cloaked in black. A wolf skull sat over the face, hollow eye sockets black as pitch, the jaw hinged to reveal the shadow of a woman’s smile beneath.

Gaspard screamed.

“No! You said you wouldn’t come back here! You said——”

The figure stepped forward, lowering the smoking pistol. The voice that came from beneath the wolf skull was warm. Almost maternal.

“I lied, my darling boy.”

Étienne forced himself to look up through the haze of pain. The acolyte. The one they’d tracked through the château. But there was something wrong with the voice—something familiar.

Claire shouted, raising her rifle, but the acolyte moved faster. A second shot, and Claire’s weapon clattered from her hand, splintered.

Gaspard was shaking now, his whole body convulsing. The chestplate rattled. Beneath it, something howled.

The acolyte knelt beside Étienne, close enough that he could see the faint lines of a woman’s face through the dark gaps of the wolf skull. She tilted her head, studying him.

“You must be Étienne,” she said. “Your brother talks about you in his sleep. All that guilt. All that grief.” She laughed softly. “He thought you’d kill him. I thought you might too. But you hesitated.” Her hand reached out, and her fingers—warm, human—traced the wound on his shoulder. “That’s going to cost you, I’m afraid.”

The pistol came up again, and Étienne’s vision went red and white as the world tilted sideways.