Three days passed since Damian's strange confession. Three days of Jace walking on eggshells, trying to understand the new rules of a game that kept changing.
Damian was... different. Not kind that word didn't exist in his vocabulary but hesitant. He stopped demanding the morning inspections. He stopped making Jace kneel for meals. He still came to the bedroom at night, but his touches were uncertain, almost questioning, as if he were waiting for something Jace didn't know how to give.
It was unnerving. Jace had learned to navigate the brutality, to anticipate the violence, to perform the submission that kept Luca safe. But this? This strange, watchful quiet? He didn't know what to do with it.
On the fourth morning, Damian didn't go to his study. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed where Jace was still lying, staring at the ceiling.
"Get dressed," Damian said. His voice was neutral, but there was something underneath it tension, maybe. Or nerves. The idea of Damian Moreau being nervous was almost laughable. Almost.
Jace sat up slowly. "Where are we going?"
"I didn't say 'we.' I said you." Damian stood, walking to the window. "You're going to see Luca."
The words didn't make sense. Jace blinked, waiting for the punchline, the trap, the test he would surely fail.
"Master?"
Damian flinched almost imperceptibly at the title. "Don't. Just... don't call me that today." He turned, and his gray eyes were tired in a way Jace had never seen. "You want to see him. I know you do. So go."
"Why?"
The question hung between them, raw and honest. Why would the man who had beaten, conditioned, and owned him suddenly offer mercy?
Damian's jaw tightened. "Because I'm trying something new." He crossed to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. "One hour. A guard will be outside. If you try to run, if you try anything stupid, the deal's off and Luca goes back to the cell. Understood?"
Jace nodded slowly, still waiting for the blade to fall.
It didn't. Damian left, and the door closed softly behind him.
Luca was in a different part of the house now a small bedroom on the second floor, its window barred, its door locked from the outside. When the guard opened it and gestured Jace inside, Luca looked up from the chair where he'd been sitting, his eyes going wide.
"Jace?"
The door closed behind him. They were alone.
Jace stood just inside the room, suddenly uncertain. This was the man who had betrayed him, lied to him, set this whole nightmare in motion. This was also the boy who had held him when his father died, who had laughed with him through countless stupid nights, who had secretly sold his soul to Damian to give Jace a chance at freedom.
"I don't know why I'm here," Jace said quietly.
Luca stood, taking a step toward him, then stopping as if afraid to get too close. "Are you okay? Is he... is he hurting you?"
The question was absurd. Of course Damian was hurting him. But the bruises had faded, and the new damage was invisible etched into his psyche, not his skin.
"He's... different," Jace said. "Since you were here last. Something changed."
Luca's face crumpled with guilt. "This is my fault. All of it. If I hadn't gone to him, if I hadn't lied to you, if I hadn't been such a fucking coward..."
"Stop." Jace's voice was sharper than he intended. Luca flinched, and something twisted in Jace's chest. "I don't have the energy for your guilt right now. I just... I needed to see someone who remembers who I was."
Luca's eyes filled with tears. "I remember. God, Jace, I remember everything. The way you used to laugh. The way you'd fight anyone who looked at me wrong. The way you'd fall asleep on my couch and I'd just... watch you, because I couldn't believe someone like you trusted someone like me."
The confession hung in the air between them. Jace stared at him, pieces clicking into place.
"You loved me," he said. Not a question.
Luca nodded, tears spilling over. "I still do. I never stopped. That's why I went to Damian in the first place. I couldn't stand watching you drown in debt, watching you break under the weight of your father's mistakes. I thought if I could just fix it, if I could just make it better, maybe... maybe you'd see me. Maybe you'd choose me."
"Instead, you gave him the key to my cage."
The words were brutal, but they needed to be said. Luca recoiled as if struck.
"I know," he whispered. "I know what I did. And I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make it right, even if you never forgive me. Even if you hate me forever."
Jace looked at his best friend the liar, the coward, the boy who loved him enough to destroy him. The anger was still there, a cold coal in his chest. But beneath it, buried under layers of pain and betrayal, something else stirred.
Recognition. Memory. The ghost of a boy who had once been capable of trust.
"I don't hate you," Jace said slowly. "I don't know what I feel. But I don't hate you."
Luca's sob was ugly and raw. He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to contain it, but it spilled out anyway years of suppressed love and guilt and terror pouring out in a single, broken sound.
Jace crossed the distance between them. He didn't hug Luca he couldn't, not yet but he put a hand on his shoulder, a ghost of the easy affection they'd once shared.
"We're going to get out of this," Jace said quietly. "I don't know how. I don't know when. But we're going to get out."
Luca looked up, hope and despair warring in his eyes. "How? He owns us. He owns everything."
Jace thought of Damian's strange confession in the study. The hesitation in his touch. The way he'd flinched at "Master."
"I don't think he knows what he wants anymore," Jace said slowly. "And when the man in power stops knowing what he wants... that's when things get dangerous. For him."
Luca's eyes widened. "Jace, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking," Jace said, his voice dropping even lower, "that the monster might be having second thoughts. And second thoughts are weaknesses."
The guard knocked on the door. "Time's up."
Jace squeezed Luca's shoulder once, then stepped back. "Hold on," he said. "Just hold on. I'll find a way."
The door opened. Jace walked out without looking back, but for the first time in weeks, there was something other than emptiness in his chest.
It wasn't hope. Hope was too dangerous, too fragile. It was something harder, sharper the first spark of a plan.
And in the bedroom behind him, Luca sank to his knees and prayed to a God he wasn't sure existed to give Jace the strength to do what he couldn't.
That night, Damian came to Jace's room. He didn't touch him. He just sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.
"How was he?" Damian asked.
Jace considered lying, considered playing the obedient doll. But something in Damian's posture the slump of his shoulders, the weight in his voice made him tell the truth.
"Broken," Jace said. "Like me."
Damian was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly: "I did this."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even an admission. It was just... a fact. Stated plainly, without justification or excuse.
Jace didn't respond. There was nothing to say.
Damian turned to look at him, and in the dim light, his eyes were unreadable. "What would it take?" he asked. "To fix this. To fix you."
The question was so absurd, so impossibly naive coming from a man like Damian, that Jace almost laughed. Almost.
"You can't fix me," Jace said. "You broke me on purpose. There's no glue for that."
Damian's jaw tightened. "What if I let him go? Luca. What if I let him walk out of here, free, with enough money to start over somewhere far away?"
The offer was a test. It had to be. Jace searched Damian's face for the trap, the cruel twist waiting to spring.
He didn't find it. Just exhaustion. Just a man staring at the wreckage of something he couldn't name.
"Why?" Jace asked.
Damian looked away. "Because I'm tired of winning."
The answer was so unexpected, so nakedly honest, that Jace felt something shift in the frozen landscape of his heart.
"You let Luca go," Jace said slowly, "and I'll... I'll try. To be real with you. To stop performing. I don't know if I can. I don't know if there's anything left of me to be real with. But I'll try."
Damian met his eyes. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Damian nodded. Once. Short and sharp.
"Tomorrow," he said. "He goes tomorrow."
He stood and walked to the door. Before he left, he paused, his back to Jace.
"I don't expect your forgiveness," he said quietly. "I don't expect anything. But I needed you to know that I... that this isn't what I wanted. Not in the end."
The door closed. Jace stared at it, his heart pounding.
For the first time in months, the cage door had creaked open, just a crack.
And on the other side, for the first time, the monster looked almost human.