“Cedric!” Nicole exclaims. “Are you alright?”

“Does it look like I’m alright?” the Lord asks. He clutches his eye patch, wincing in pain.

“What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?” Panic seeps into her voice.

“Just go get Aaron. He’ll know what to do,” he said, his face crumpling in pain.

“I don’t know where he is,” she said, bending down to him. “Maybe I can take a look at what’s hurting you.”

“No!” he yells. “Please, get Aaron. I need him.” Blood leaks out of his eyepatch.

“Aaron isn’t here. I can help you,” she insists.

He inches away from her, writhing in pain. “Aaron! I need you!” She grits her teeth. Why was he still calling for his butler like he could hear him? Unless demons had super hearing or some special connection she was unaware of.

Fed up with the Lord’s stubbornness, she holds him down. “Let me help you, dammit.” She yanks off his eye patch and gasps.

She had expected to see a black pit where the Lord’s eye should be after hearing the story of how he lost it in a duel. Instead, he had a normal eye. Well, as normal a Venetian red, bleeding eye could be. She instinctively covers it with her hands, unsettled by the blood.

“What are you doing? I told you to call Aaron,” the Lord said, trying to shove her hands away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Just as she was about to get up, her hands began to glow, a blue light emanating from her fingertips. Heat gathers in her palms, the warmth spreading to the Lord’s face. She yanks her hands away, watching the blue light heal the Lord’s eye.

Cedric looks at her, mirroring her shock. “How-”

“I have no idea,” she said, stepping away from him. “I’m not sure what I just did.” She looks down at her hands and wiggles her fingers, expecting the blue light to come back. Her hands remain normal, free of that mysterious magic that had just graced it a few minutes ago.

“My Lord, you called?” Aaron asks, arriving on the scene. The butler held the head of a strange eyeless monster, his gloves soaked in black blood. He lets it hang from his hands like a fashionable bag, casually handling it as if it were an accessory.

“Everything is alright now,” the Lord said, regaining his composure. He stands up, dusting off his clothes.

Aaron faces Nicole. “What happened here?” There was a dangerous edge to his voice. She keeps her eyes on his gloves. If she didn’t say the right words, it would be her blood staining the fabric next.

She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Her eyes dart between Aaron and Cedric, and that’s when it hits her. The Lord’s eye, the one hidden beneath his eyepatch this whole time, looked exactly like Aaron’s reddish-brown eye. That means that underneath Aaron’s eyepatch there was a dark hole where his eye should be. The butler had sacrificed his eye for the sake of the Lord. Maybe it was related to the monster head he was holding in his hands?

“I had a bit of a mishap,” the Lord explains to the butler, stepping in for her. “But Miss Walker here saved me from harm.”

The butler regards Nicole with mild surprise. “You saved him?”

“Yes,” she said. “Is that really so hard to believe?”

“You did try to kill him,” he said, taking no care to hide the snark in his voice. He turns toward the Lord. “I apologize for not being here sooner. I was handling some of the Nefastus.” He holds up the monster’s head. Blood drips from the beast’s severed neck and hits the carpet.

“No need to apologize. Fighting those creatures is difficult,” the Lord said. “But at least I know that Alice’s offer wasn’t baseless. The Family really does want me back.”

The butler’s eye widens. “The Family came to get you?”

Cedric nods gravely. “My sister decided to pay a little visit.” He points to the cut on his cheek. “Next time they might send more force.”

The butler quickly whips out a handkerchief, wiping the leftover blood off of the Lord’s face. He dabs Cedric’s cheek gently, taking great care not to hurt him. Nicole rolls her eyes.

“Why do they want you back?” Aaron asks.

The Lord shrugs. “I’m not sure. Alice said they needed me to manage new members but I doubt that’s the only reason.”

“Why do you call them the Family?” she asks, interrupting their conversation. “I thought Alice was your biological sister.”

“She is,” Cedric said. “But she’s part of something bigger.”

“Like what?”

“Oh just a cult my parents started,” he said calmly as if he were discussing the desserts served for tea.

“A cult? What about the monsters?” She points to the head that Aaron was holding.

The Lord sighs. “The Family is a highly dangerous organization, nothing a girl like you should be meddling around with. It’s been a long night. You should sleep.” He picks up his eyepatch from the ground and ties it around his head.

“You don’t need that anymore. Your eye is fixed,” she said, pointing to the eyepatch. “Will you answer my questions in the morning?”

Cedric’s face is expressionless. He keeps the eyepatch on. “Goodnight Miss Walker. Aaron, isolate that Nefastus head, won’t you? We can’t have monsters respawning in the manor.”

“As you wish, my Lord,” the butler said, bowing. The men walk away, leaving Nicole in front of the guest room.

She enters the room and flops on the bed, exhausted from the night’s ordeals. She holds her hands in front of her, staring at them. Where did that power come from? Did Lillian sneak this ability into her? And what sort of cult had Cedric been a part of? And the monsters - why won’t anyone explain those to her? The gears in her head turn furiously, trying to come up with an answer.

Her quest had developed into something far more complicated than she initially thought it to be. ‘Kill the demon’ was an easy enough task but Aaron’s eye was in Cedric’s body, which explains why the key vibrated in his hands. Did that mean she had to kill the Lord too? She had seen a whole other side to him tonight, something more vulnerable. Or was that the exhaustion talking? No, Lillian said she only had to kill the butler.

Piano music drifts in from the other side of the door, the song a soothing lullaby. She pulls the covers over her body, letting her head sink into the pillow. She sighs, her aching body finally getting relief after the strange ordeals of the night. The sheets cocoon her, wrapping her up like she was a caterpillar ready to become a butterfly. She drifts off into sleep, entering a vivid dream.

In this dream, she sees Cedric kneeling by a circle of fire at the center of a pentagram, his eyepatch nowhere to be seen. Alice rests a hand on his shoulder and she whispers in his ear, red eyes flashing. Cedric’s own eyes are cloudy, brewing with conflict. Whatever it was his sister wanted him to do, he wasn’t happy with it. He shrugs off his sister’s hand and leaps into the fire in a single fluid motion, disappearing into the flames.

Nicole feels her heart pounding, her legs moving as fast as they could to rescue the Lord. But her panic was for naught. He emerges from the fire unscathed, the fire parting for him. Only, it wasn’t just him that had emerged from the flames. He drags out a body, a man covered in ashes, and props him up.

She moves closer to the pair, Alice nowhere to be seen. Cedric wipes the filth off the man’s face and presses his lips to the stranger’s mouth, breathing life into him. The man’s eyes snap open, fixing Nicole with a piercing amber gaze. She takes a step back, intimidated. He was an exact copy of Cedric, sans the eye color.

He grabs the Lord’s hand and they walk towards her, their steps in sync. She knows she should run away from the men, but her feet remain glued to the ground. She looks down to find herself in the middle of the pentagram, bound to a pyre.

“Burn the witch,” said the version of Cedric with amber eyes.

“Isn’t she worth more to us alive?” asks the Lord. His silver eyes rake over her body as if to undress her with his gaze.

“Nonsense. If we kill her, we get her power.” He strikes a match and lights the pyre, blowing on the flames so that they would reach her quicker.

“You don’t have to kill me,” she begs the men. “I’ll do anything you want. Please, just don’t let me die.” Tears run down her cheeks, sizzling in the flames.

“Anything?” The Lord holds her stare with his stormy eyes. “Do you really mean that?”

She nods vigorously. “Anything.”

The version of Cedric with the amber eyes scoffs. “I just want you to die.”

“But I saved your life today,” she said “Remember when Aaron couldn’t come? I healed your bleeding eye.”

“Because you’re a filthy, sinful witch,” he hisses.

“Nothing wrong with sin,” the Lord said, his gray eyes playful. “The only problem I have with you sinning is who you sin for.”

Nicole’s skirt catches on fire. “I sin for no one.”

“You sin for that goddess,” said the other Cedric. “You do her bidding. And if I had let you, you would’ve killed me.”

“So what if I sin for her? That doesn’t mean I deserve to die,” she retorts.

“Repent,” said the amber-eyed Cedric. “Swear your loyalty to me and we will free you.”

“Then we can sin all we want. Together,” said the Lord with silver eyes.

Her head swivels between the two Cedrics, distracted by their different eye colors. The Cedric on her left had eyes of fire while the one on the right had eyes like stars. Their forms merge, forming a single Cedric with both eye colors. Fire and storm. Day and night. Rage and lust. That was the dark side of the Lord, the one he kept under careful control so that the world only saw a meticulous, beautiful man. Little did they know that a beast laid beneath the skin of the proper Lord.

Cedric walks into the fire, standing on the pyre next to her. “Will you repent, Miss Walker? Will you live to see another day by my side?”

The flames at her feet turn blue, burning her legs. But for some reason, she didn’t feel pain. Instead of her flesh crisping, an icy numbness took over her body. The blue fire engulfs her, making her cold inside out. She wakes, shivering, to find Aaron standing over her.

“Wake up, Lady Walker. Your lessons begin today,” he said, setting down the bucket in his hands.

She touches her face. Wet. Her whole body was soaked in ice water. “Did you splash water on me?” The outrage in her voice makes the butler smile, at least as close to a smile as the butler’s face could contort itself.

“Were you expecting me to ask nicely? Now get up,” he commanded. “We’re already running late.”

“I refuse,” she pouts. “You had no right to wake me up that way.” She crosses her arms. She could still feel the cold fires from her dream take over her body.

“I’ll do it again if you don’t get out of bed right this second,” he warns. He picks up the bucket, which was still filled with water.

She catapults herself out of bed, falling on the carpet. He grabs her collar, pulling her up.

“Tsk,” the butler said. “You’re still in maid’s clothes. Get dressed. If I don’t see you come out in five minutes, I’m bringing the ice water in.” The door slams behind him.

She immediately heads for the wardrobe and rummages through the clothes. What was a lady supposed to wear? There were plenty of dresses. Just as she thinks of putting one of them on, Nicole spots a different outfit in the wardrobe. She smirks. Perfect. Aaron was definitely going to think twice about calling her a maid in these clothes.

She puts on the layers of clothes as fast as she could, the memory of the ice water making her tremble. When she’s finished, she leaves the room to find Aaron waiting outside. The bucket of water rested near his feet but he also had something else nearby. He cracks the riding crop in his gloved palms, relishing the extra layer of discipline.

“I’m dressed,” she said, approaching the butler. “Will we begin our lessons now?”

His eyes bulge out of their sockets when he spots her outfit. “You-”

“Something wrong?”

His face turns red. “Women aren’t supposed to wear pants, especially if they’re ladies from important families. Change this instant into something more proper, young lady!”

“If I recall, the Lord said I wasn’t a lady yet,” she said, fiddling with the cuffs of her sleeves. The gesture seems to tick Aaron off even more.

“Change or I won’t teach you,” he said through gritted teeth.

“What’s wrong with pants? You’re wearing them.” She points to his legs, pretending to seriously try to prove her claim.

“They show your legs.” His face grows redder, shifting from a shade of light rose to scarlet tomato.

“And what’s wrong with my legs? We all have them.” She could practically see the steam coming out of his ears from having to explain this. Maybe he’d finally see how illogical it was to force women to wear skirts.

“Your legs will arouse sinful thoughts in the Lord,” the butler said. She could see how much effort it took for him to utter that blasphemous sentence and not strike her with his riding crop. She covers her mouth, trying not to laugh.

“Then let him deal with them,” she said. “I don’t see how that’s related to my lessons. Unless you’re having sinful thoughts about me.”

He straightens up. “You offend me, Miss Walker. I am incapable of having sinful thoughts about you.”

Ouch. Did he just call her ugly? But she remembers the way Cedric fed him the soup. A smile parts her face. He most definitely had sinful thoughts about the Lord.

“There’s nothing funny about sin,” the butler said, noticing her change of expression. “But since we’re already running out of time and I’m on strict orders to teach you, I’m afraid you’ll have to follow me to the study room instead of changing into proper lady’s clothes.”

She cheers inwardly and follows Aaron to the study room, which was only two doors away from the guest room. She surveys the rows of school desks and a black chalkboard in front of the room. The Lord could definitely run a boarding school at the manor if he wished to.

“Take a seat, Miss Walker,” Aaron said, placing the riding crop on the teacher’s desk. “We’re going to start with some Latin lessons today.”

She finds a seat near the back of the room, wanting to distance herself from the demon. His eyes narrow in disapproval.

“Near the front, Miss Walker. You won’t do much learning over there,” he said. “I know you dread Latin, but I promise I’m going to make it very easy for you. Once you get the hang of it, no language will be difficult to learn.”

She groans, dragging her feet to the front row. Her bracelet buzzes, signaling her proximity to Aaron. She could kill him today if she wanted. In fact, it was probably better for her to be in the front of the room. If she fired a shot, it would definitely kill him. She just had to wait for the right moment.

“There. Now doesn’t the board look better from here? Take out a pen and paper from your desk. I’m sure you know the drill about classroom learning. It’s no different than being in the colonies.” He picks up a piece of chalk and begins to write on the board. “We’re going to start by learning some roots. This should be a review since you said you’ve learned Latin before.”

She was already bored out of her mind and the lesson had barely started. She takes off her vibrating bracelet. Should she kill him now?

He keeps his back facing her as he scrawls the roots on the board. “I hope you’re getting this down, Miss Walker. It’s very important foundational knowledge for the rest of the course.”

She stares at her bracelet. Somehow, she was able to shift it from a sword right before class started. She was lucky Cedric hadn’t confiscated it. Nicole had one more transformation left on the multi-weapon before it burned out. And who knew if there was going to be a better opportunity to kill the demon? It was now or never.

“Gun,” she whispers, watching the metal shift in her palms.

“Did you say something, Miss Walker?” Aaron asks. “Wait till I finish writing these roots to ask questions.”

She holds the weapon in her hands, fingers shaking. She raises the gun, aiming the barrel at the butler’s back. It was time to go home, away from all this Victorian madness.

Nicole takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.