Karl turned away from them to continue towards the castle, the sounds of their footsteps fading into the distance. From inside his coat, he drew a cigar and ripped the tip off with his teeth, spitting it as far into the distance as he could. His confident, too fast gait began to slow as the flame licked up the tobacco.

He didn't know how long he had stood there with the naked swaying trees and howling wind screaming at him to keep moving. Despite himself, he turned to watch the outlines of Celia and Chris walking back towards the factory, huddling so close together in the distance he couldn't tell where he ended and she began. Someone like her, even if he was probably dead weight with his injuries. The way he pushed her body into his set his teeth on edge and any warmth he had felt in his chest leeched out into the winter air. Beneath the anger, he fought back the burning, muscle tearing sensation he got right before he shifted. It wouldn't do any good to shred the forest apart. Besides, there was no metal here to draw into him anyway.

He twisted the ring on his finger. He knew those thoughts were petty and the truth was far more complex and twisted than that, and that he was practically running to Alcina now to make sure she still breathed proved it.

But he had to wonder...how did that dumb bastard snag that blade? He had seen the handle sticking out of his vest before Chris drew it on him. It was from the Dimitrescu house. He knew because he made the damn thing, and the agent seemed awfully touchy on the subject of the daughters Dimitrescu.

He was about to turn back when he heard the rustling from above him. The bare trees did little to hide the black shadow, the beady red eyes trained on his friend and her companion.

Shit. He didn't have a gun, a bow, or anything to knock it out of there. He was surrounded by wood, and she had taken the weapons with her. His hammer was too big, too slow, and bulky. He had to think of something, it was probably only seconds away from launching itself into the sky and taking whatever information it gleaned from their conversation with it. He twisted his ring again.

His ring.

In less than a half a breath and with the tightest of movements, it was off his finger and in his palm. The spring snapped, and with deadly accuracy put the thing through the crow's eye just as it spread those midnight black wings. In a show of brutal excess, he ripped the invisible cord back, and drew the ring back through the corpse, shattering its spine. It dropped like a stone to the earth with a satisfying thud.

Better than a bullet.

He didn't bother to wipe the blood and bone fragments away before slipping it on his finger, hoping he had bought them a little time. He turned and walked on, oblivious to the three sets of red eyes that peered down from the branch of a nearby tree - creatures with wings itching to take flight.

XX

The first indication that shit had gone sideways was the open front door.

"Huh." That wasn't good.

The darkness of the interior took on a life of its own, seeming to tendril around the cracked open door which most assuredly should not be ajar. That was a bad sign that he hoped was not the first of many. He shifted his hammer on his shoulder as he cleared the door frame, trying not to slip on the ocean of blood and the black, oil liquid on the floor. Nearly directly in front of him was what appeared to be – or at least was at one point – a body. It was now a black and white crusted mass covered in black fabric.

Shit. Cassandra. Or was it Bela? He could never tell them apart. The body was so degenerated that it didn't matter if he ever could. He felt his heart rate spike as he bent over to prod the body with the handle of his hammer. It slid into the mass soundlessly.

Did Chris do this? Did Ethan? Is he still here?

Another black mass. Would he find Alcina's body in that room? No. It was another daughter. Now where was she? Was he prepared to find out?

He began his walk through the halls he used to call home, hoping he didn't stumble on the body of the woman who, in his youth, he ached to call Mother.

xx

He found her in her bedroom. From the doorway, he could see the back of her favorite chair, her arm hanging over the side, a cigarette burning, untouched in her hand. She was still alive. The ashes defied gravity as they clung to the burning cherry. He wanted to call out to her. To announce himself. To tell her he was sorry, or that she deserved it, or make any sound at all...but he just couldn't bring himself to do any of it. He leaned his hammer on the door jamb and let out the breath he had been holding.

"They're gone." The ashes finally lost purchase and scattered to the ground.

"Was it Ethan?"

She loosed a laugh that was more like a scoff. "Was it? That man was her means. But it was Miranda." She bit out her name.

"Where is he?" He stepped into the room, trying to ignore the feelings that flooded back to him by just standing there. The same dull paintings hung on the wall. The same furniture he remembered as a boy.

"He's gone too." She took a drag of her cigarette and waved her hand as she spoke. "Scampered back to Miranda no doubt."

He rounded the chair to face her, but her eyes didn't track to him. She was so still she could have been mistaken to be carved from porcelain had she not exhaled the smoke from her cigarette. Lazily, she tilted her chin up away from his face. He had never seen her like this. Like she didn't own the air in the room. Like she didn't command time itself.

He had seen so many sides of her. Had felt the cool of her touch as she stroked his head to chase his nightmares away. Heard the snarls of annoyance and snap and crunch of bone as she tore into the throats of the servant girls in the basement. How her eyes would nearly glow as she would delight in their screams of torment. How he had seen her take to the skies.

Never like this.

In her lap, she held something obscured to him in her gloved hand.

She didn't look at him when she spoke. "She took them from me."

"I...I know."

He jammed his hand into his coat pocket, and ran the pad of his thumb along the crudely formed ring that had once been the necklace that led him to Celia. It seemed like ages ago. Maybe, if he had never met her, this might have been different. Maybe in that reality, he wouldn't have to feel the guilt. Darker and more violent than his own pain. Guilt that he had brought Ethan to Miranda. That one action had shifted the tides for her, and what ultimately led to Alcina's daughters ending up as piles of black biomass in her foyer.

Maybe, he would have found a reason to make the conversation about him. A reason to tell her he was glad Ethan sent those bitches to hell, to tell her to get fucked, and that he didn't care, just to make her feel as empty as he had all these years. In what amounted to only hours; years of pent-up anger and pain and rage had nearly vanished from him, replaced. He searched - trying to find it, just to see if he could finally take advantage of the chance to say what he had been holding in for so long.

But instead, he simply said, "Get up."

She ignored him. "And in all the years I had them, did I tell them? I can't remember. Did I tell them I loved them? Did they know? And Daniela...my sweet Daniela. So like me. So like you..."

She let the cigarette fall from her hands, but she didn't seem to notice that either. "Gone. They're gone. Taken."

"Not just my girls. She paused, her eyes moving to meet his. Her eyes were as red as the rouge on her lips. "All of my children." She didn't have to say it. And if she tried, he wouldn't have let her. He didn't want to hear it, and didn't need to. "And I let her." Her fingers moved to reveal the object that she was turning over and over in her lap. The old teacup. The one he had stolen from his mother's set to bring to her. Long before that night. Before he was taken to Miranda. The memory crashed into him so brutally his knees felt weak. That he was ever that young, that she kept it all this time. "I let her. I let her take you and twist you and use you. But it was me, Karl. It was me that broke you."

He swallowed the emotions, and instead of dissolving, they ignited fire in his stomach so intense that the metal in the room started to vibrate.

If she noticed, she didn't react.

He wanted to tell her, tell her he still saw her as that unmovable, unshakeable mountain of a woman. But the desolation in her eyes sliced him so deeply his words died on his tongue.

"But this won't break you, Alcina. Get up."

She scoffed and continued as if she had not heard him speak. "All this time...I took them for granted. I'm no different than Ethan. Only now can I truly hear the truth behind the lies I've told myself. They haunt me..." She looked up at him, gaze catching his. "As your words still do." A few single tears broke like those ashes from her cigarette and trailed down her face.

It was breaking, the stone armor crafted of cruelty and blood, and her sorrow poured from all the fractures. Her weakness. The pit in his stomach grew heavier, the weight of it pulled him down to one knee. They were so alike.

"This isn't the end for us. You are still here; we are still here." He knelt in front of her, taking her wrists in his hands. "I'm still here."

He put his hand over hers, the one that grasped the old teacup. He barely recognized her, and himself. They were just two people, and for the first time since walking out of this room all those years ago, he didn't let the anger and hurt dominate him. Emotions that would have consumed him, he saw now he was only steps away from it. Being swallowed by the darkness of the sins that were forced on his blackened soul and maybe, after he ripped Miranda out of the world he would have tried to step into that gaping, sucking void he left. For the power of it. He was not a good man, and certainly no hero, but now he knew he didn't need to devote the rest of his too-long life chained to the legacy of Miranda's bullshit. They had given her enough.

He had met her, and when he whispered those words he hoped she didn't hear, he meant them. Because that was the way it should have been. And now, he had a chance at that. And if he could find a purpose beyond this fucked up life they shared, so could she.

Driven by a different resolve, he spoke to her, unsure of how his words would land.

"We have our chance now. To take our revenge. To wipe her out. It won't bring them back. But we'll be free. And that bitch won't succeed, especially not off our backs. If we get that kid away from her, we can break her fucking cycle. One less family she would have destroyed. We can't make up for what we've done, but we can do something for ourselves. Alcina...it's our second chance."

xx

She stared at him, and she repeated the words in her head over and over again as she tried to decipher them. Repeated those words until the meaning of them sliced through the fog and she felt that striking moment of clarity. Her breath caught and she stifled a gasp, as though she had finally reached the surface of endless, suffocating black water.

And he was there, that little boy, staring back at her. That little boy who had loved her so fiercely and then hated her even more so. His eyes were as bright as the day she met him, like little glowing stars lit them from the inside like a silver flame.

"I didn't, Karl. I didn't tell them. But I can tell you. I -"

"Don't." He warned.

But it was too late. Words that weighed heavy as lead, locked inside her heart, corroding it, rotting it until there was nothing left to keep them there and they were spilling out. "I could apologize, but I can't. I wouldn't know where to start. For letting her do what she did to you. For not stopping her before that first drop of blood was spilled by your hands. For not keeping you." She quickly added, "Safe. For not keeping you safe."

"For not killing her before any of this could happen."

She didn't dare read his face.

"Alcina. I know." He gripped her hand in his and stood as to help guide her to stand with him. "Now get up. Stand up and come with me. And let's kill that bitch together."