Her lips were still seeking sanctuary against his when the sound began—not a single interruption, but a series of them.
Clap... Clap... Clap...
Slow, deliberate, and isolating. It was the sound of an audience of one, passing judgment.
Gisela jerked back, the connection severing with a gasp. She turned.
Henry stood in the archway, his hands meeting in that steady, dreadful rhythm. The torchlight from the hall beyond carved his face into a mask of cold, analytical fury. His gaze was fixed on them, taking in the intimate distance, the shared breath, with the focus of a coroner.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic pulse screaming of danger. She swallowed, the sound loud in her own ears.
"Hen… Henry," she stammered, the name a confession in itself.
He ceased his applause and let his hands fall. His eyes, dark and glittering, held hers as he advanced. She instinctively retreated until her back met the unyielding stone of the alcove wall.
"Why stop?" he asked, his voice deceptively soft, almost curious. "Please, continue. I am merely a spectator." His gaze flicked to Sebastian, and the veneer of calm cracked, revealing a bottomless rancor. His fist clenched at his side, the knuckles bleaching white.
"And you…" Henry hissed, the words dripping with venom. He closed the distance to Sebastian in two swift strides. He did not throw a wild punch; he seized his brother by the collar, yanked him forward, and drove his fist into Sebastian's stomach with a brutal, precise economy. The air left Sebastian's lungs in a pained whoosh. Another blow, to the jaw, snapped his head back with a wet, cracking sound.
"Henry, please stop!" Gisela cried, lurching forward to clutch at his arm. He shook her off without looking.
Sebastian offered no resistance. He absorbed the violence, slumping against the wall before sliding to the floor, a martyr to his own defiance. Henry stood over him, his chest heaving.
"She needed to be loved, Henry," Sebastian rasped through bloodied lips, a faint, ghastly smile touching his mouth. "I was willing to give her that."
"You still have a tongue to lie with," Henry snarled. The rage distilled into something pure and terrible. He drew back his foot and drove his boot into Sebastian's ribs. A sharp cry was choked off as blood bloomed on Sebastian's lips, a dark ruby against his pallor.
"You're hurting him!" Gisela sobbed, the world narrowing to the horror before her.
Henry went very still. Slowly, as if moving through deep water, he turned to look at her. The rage she knew was gone, replaced by something infinitely colder and more terrifying. His eyes were black pools, his dark hair damp with a cold sweat. He looked less like a man and more like a principle of wrath given form.
"I'm hurting him?" he repeated, his voice a low, silken threat. He took a step toward her. She pressed herself against the stone, nowhere to go.
"Henry, please, let me explain—" she pleaded, tears streaming down her face.
"Explain?" he echoed, now standing directly before her. His scent—sweat, violence, and cold iron—filled her senses. "What fascinating explanation did you fabricate? Did you trip and find his mouth breaking your fall?"
His hand shot out, not to strike, but to encircle her throat. The force was crushing, deliberate. Her head bumped against the wall. As she struggled, the rough cloak gaped open, fully revealing the torn dress and her exposed skin beneath the unforgiving torchlight.
His eyes dropped to the revealed flesh, and the fury in them reignited into an inferno. "He did this," Henry stated, his voice trembling with a new, more possessive anger. His thumb pressed against her windpipe. "Didn't he? He tore your dress while he had you. He touched you." It wasn't a question; it was an accusation he was making real by voicing it.
"N-no—" she choked, her vision spotting.
"He put his hands on what is mine." The words were a guttural growl. His free hand, the one that had just beaten his brother, rose. It did not ball into a fist. It moved with a shocking, almost ceremonial slowness before the back of his hand connected with her cheek.
The impact was a bright, silent explosion of pain. Her head snapped to the side, a sharp cry torn from her bruised throat.
"ANSWER ME!" he roared, the sound raw and animal, finally unleashing the full force of his wrath.
"No!" she wept, the word a sob of pure terror.
He stared at her for a long, terrifying moment, his breath ragged. The storm seemed to pass, condensing back into a lethal, controlled calm. "We are leaving. Now."
His grip shifted from her neck to her wrist, his fingers locking like a manacle, squeezing until she felt the small bones grind together. He dragged her a step away before pausing to look back at Sebastian, who was struggling to push himself up onto one elbow.
"This is not over, brother," Henry said, his voice once again chillingly even. "I will finish this. And if the only way to purge your presence from my world is to mount your head on the gate as a lesson, I will consider it a necessary renovation of the family estate."
Without another glance, he turned and hauled Gisela into the darkened corridor. She stumbled after him, her body wracked with tremors, the taste of blood and salt on her lips, dragged not toward a resolution, but into the deepening night of his unforgiving reign.
"Go. Inform my mother I am departing," Henry commanded a guard, his voice a lash of cold steel. He did not wait for acknowledgment. His grip on Gisela's arm was a vise of bone and will, dragging her across the courtyard. Her slippers scraped and stumbled over the rough stones, each step a forced march to an unknown sentence.
At his carriage—a monolithic, black-lacquered prison on wheels—he wrenched the door open. With a final, brutal shove between her shoulder blades, he propelled her inside. She fell against the far seat, a tangle of torn velvet and coarse wool cloak. He followed, filling the space, and slammed the door shut, plunging them into a darkness thick with the scent of old leather and his rage.
He thrust his head out the window. "Move this carriage. Now!" The order was not given to servants but roared at living tools. The coachmen, rigid with fear, scrambled.
Inside, Gisela huddled, one hand pressed to the throbbing pain on her neck, the other clutching the cloak closed. Her sobs were silent, shuddering things, stolen by the sheer terror of his presence.
Then, action. A whip-crack, sharp as a bone breaking. The horses screamed in protest—a raw, animal neigh that tore through the night. Their iron-shod hooves struck the cobbles with a frantic, staccato violence, sparks flying in the dark. The carriage lurched forward as if launched from a catapult, the sudden force throwing Gisela back against the seat. The world outside became a blurred, roaring tunnel of darkness and wind.
They were not traveling. They were fleeing. Back to England.