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* * *

—

As the afternoon slowly faded, I despaired of catching up to Victor on the mountain. I hated to come up here alone on such a bleak and terrifying mission. All my happy memories of the day we had spent hiking were being replaced by cold dread and seething anger.

Hours passed and I found not so much as a footprint. I was about to turn back, when far ahead, on the glacier, I saw a figure moving faster than should have been possible across that deadly terrain. I ducked behind a massive boulder lodged in the ice. My heart raced. I was torn between screaming and laughing. I struggled to contain my delirious emotions.

It was the monster.

There was no other explanation. And though my soul curdled at the thought of such a creature existing, it also meant I had not been hallucinating, and that Justine was beyond a doubt innocent. Because there was no question in me that that thing, that unholy creation, was what had killed William.

I clutched my knife—and then all my exultant triumph at being right crashed around me like ice falling from the eaves of a house. If the monster could move like that here—and was as tall and powerful as I had seen it to be—what did I hope to accomplish with my kitchen knife?

My zeal to protect Victor had not been accompanied by a similar portion of sense. I should have told his father. Should have raised the alarm in the city, gathered a militia with swords and torches. Even a pitchfork would have been a better weapon than my sad little knife.

I peered around and watched as the monster drew closer and then stopped. In spite of the speed of its movement, there was something awkward and ungainly about it. Its feet did not bend as they should. It ran on the pads of its feet, like an animal. The knee joints were too high, the femurs too short. The arms, too, did not move naturally with the body, remaining still at its sides as the legs did all the work.

I shuddered to think what the monster would look like up close in the daylight—what seeing it in full truth would reveal. How could Victor have created such a thing? How deep must he have been in his own tortured mind to ever conceive of it?

As though summoned by my thoughts of him, Victor approached the monster. It waited in place for him, letting Victor struggle across the ice. I wanted to jump out. To shout for Victor to shoot from that distance. But he was wiser than I. Pistols were good only at short range, accuracy and power traded for convenience and stealth.

I trembled, waiting for the monster to attack. Wondering how I would help when it did.

Instead, it remained motionless as Victor walked up to it. Victor shouted, his words muted into unintelligibility by the wind. I could see him screaming, raging at the monster. Why did he not just shoot it?

But…what good would a bullet do against the sheer bulk of the thing? Even wounded, it would be more than a match for Victor. He was no smarter than I, with my knife. Apparently Victor had reached the same hopeless verdict. His shouting subsided, and he shifted, turning away from the monster. Doubtless he could not bear to look at it.

After several minutes of this—Victor appeared to twitch occasionally, to nod or shake his head as though they were in conversation—Victor’s shoulders slumped. He rubbed his face, running his hands through his dark curls. Then he pointed away from himself, back up the mountain, and hung his head.

The monster…left.

It turned and loped away, straight up the icy plain, covering in mere minutes a distance that would have taken me an hour.

His shoulders still lowered, Victor began the long, slow walk back toward the house. What had I just witnessed? What had transpired between man and monster?

Whatever it was, I was certain Victor had not won.

* * *

—

I did not try to beat Victor down the mountain. Trusting that he would not check my room that night, I gave him a large head start and then followed. My entire frame trembled with cold and exhaustion. But my brain burned with questions. In the morning, I would confront Victor.

I would have the truth.

All our lives, I had never pushed him to give me a full story. I had let him maintain his dignity, let him dwell in the gift of my grace. But I could not do that this time. Not after what I had seen. In order to protect him, I had to know the truth of all things.

Whatever power this monster had over him, I would discover it so I could break it and free Victor.

And then I would kill the creature.

* * *

—

I collapsed into my bed just before dawn, as physically tired as I had ever been in my life. When I awoke that afternoon, I dressed in all white. It was my uniform. My costume, as Victor’s Elizabeth. I wanted to remind him who I was—that I was his, that I had always been his, and that he could trust me with whatever terrible secrets he sought to protect me from.

When I went down to the dining room, I found only Judge Frankenstein.