The days that followed were a study in exquisite torture.
Every mundane action was now charged with a new, electric significance. When Elara passed him a scalpel, her fingers brushing his, it was not just a transfer of a tool; it was a brand. When she read to Clara, the soft cadence of her voice was not just a comfort to his sister; it was a siren's song that pulled his attention from his work, forcing him to simply watch the movement of her lips. When she slept on her blanket beside his, the soft sound of her breathing was a rhythm he matched his own to, a lullaby that kept him awake, hyper-aware of the few inches of cold stone between them.
He, Dr. Alistair Finch, a man who had always prided himself on clinical detachment, was becoming utterly, irretrievably unhinged.
It was an obsession, and he knew it. He could diagnose it in himself with a chilling clarity. The symptoms were all there: the constant, intrusive thoughts, the physiological responses, the quickening pulse, the dry mouth whenever she entered a room, the irrational fury at anything that threatened her, the compulsive need to be near her.
He found himself cataloging her. Not as a subject, but as a man consumed. The precise way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The small, almost invisible freckle just below her right eyebrow. The particular scent of her lavender soap, the faint, metallic tang of the basement air, and something uniquely, maddeningly her own. His mind,which had once held only the precise diagrams of the human body, was now a gallery dedicated to her.
It made no sense to him. He had never been this man.
A memory surfaced, unbidden and sharp. Himself at twenty, in a pub near the university. His classmates, flushed with cheap ale and cheaper lust, had been laughing uproariously about a visit to a brothel. They'd clapped him on the back, urging him to join them next time, to "unclench for once, Finch." He had merely smiled a thin, cold smile and returned to his textbook on vascular surgery. Their desires had seemed to him not just base, but a baffling waste of energy and focus. The female form was a fascinating biological machine, its mysteries to be solved under the bright light of science, not groped at in a darkened room.
He had felt nothing but a distant contempt for their grubby yearnings. He had believed himself above it. Better than it.
Now, he understood nothing.
Why her? Why this woman, who was a living catastrophe, a complication that could see him hanged? Why did the sight of the pale, delicate skin at her wrist make him want to both map its veins with his instruments and press his lips to its pulse? Why did her intelligence, her quiet strength, her devastating resilience, feel like a key turning in a lock deep inside him he never knew existed?
The darkness in him, the part that could dig up a corpse without flinching, that could plan to cut into his own sister, recognized a kindred spirit in her. She had looked into the abyss, too. She had survived it. She was not a simpering society miss. She was a creature forged in a fire as hot as his own.
But it was more than that. It was a desperate, clawing need. It was a physical ache.
Lying awake in the dark, listening to her breathe, he was tormented by images. Not just of kissing her again, but of things far more specific, more primal. The weight of her body against his. The feel of her hair tangled in his hands. The sound she might make a gasp, a sigh, his name, if he were to finally close that infinitesimal space between their blankets and show her with his hands and his mouth the storm she had unleashed in him.
The thoughts shocked him with their intensity. They were not the thoughts of a rational man. They were the thoughts of a beast, possessive and raw. He wanted to devour her, to absorb her into himself so completely that no one could ever take her from him. Not Silas Vane. Not the law. Not even death itself.
The obsession was kind, he realized one night, the thought so dark it made him go cold. It was a kinder master than guilt. It was a brighter fire than despair. Fixating on her, on the curve of her neck, the light in her eyes when she looked at him, was a welcome escape from the constant, grinding fear for Clara, the ever-present shadow of the gallows.
He began to understand the lengths he would go to. The thought experiments he conducted in his mind were chilling.
If Silas Vane walked through that door right now, what would he do? A month ago, he might have tried to reason, to bluff. Now, he knew with a cold certainty that he would reach for the nearest sharp instrument and plunge it into the man's heart without a second thought. He would dispose of the body with the same clinical efficiency he disposed of his medical waste. He would do it not just to protect them, but because the man was a threat to what was his.
The realization should have horrified him. Instead, it felt like a simple, factual assessment of his capabilities. He had already crossed so many lines. One more meant nothing.
This was the darkness Mrs. Dobbs never saw. This was the man behind the kind, reclusive doctor. A man of extreme focus and terrifying capability. A man who, once he fixed on an objective, would move heaven and earth to achieve it. And now, his objective was her.
He watched her across the room as she helped Clara sip water. Her movements were so gentle, so patient. She looked like an angel of mercy. And he, the man who loved her, was plotting murder in his heart for her sake.
The contradiction should have torn him apart. Instead, it felt perfectly coherent. She was his redemption and his damnation, all wrapped in one.
She must have felt the weight of his gaze. She looked up, her hazel eyes meeting his. She didn't smile. She just looked at him, and in her eyes, he saw not fear of his darkness, but a reflection of it. She saw the obsession, the possession, the dangerous glint of a man pushed to the edge.
And she did not look away.
In that moment, he knew. She was not a passive victim in his story. She was his accomplice. She was as bound to him as he was to her, not by chains of guilt or circumstance, but by something far stronger and more terrifying.
They were two dark stars, locked in a gravitational pull that would either save them or destroy them completely. There was no middle ground. There was no going back.
And Alistair Finch, for the first time in his life, did not want to go back. He wanted to fall.