Lucien's body was still warm when Nathaniel yanked the boy into his arms, shielding him from the sight.
"Look at me," he said gently. "You did what you had to."
The boy just stared at the gun, blood on his trembling fingers.
Alfreda wiped her blade clean and turned her back.
"This place is burned," she said. "Let's not waste any more ghosts."
Outside, the sky was bruised with storm clouds. Dano lay limp in the backseat as they sped away from the orphanage's smoking ruins, a pulse barely ticking beneath his neck.
They reached a safehouse buried beneath a defunct subway station—concrete walls, flickering bulbs, and the stench of antiseptic. An underground medic patched Dano up with gruff precision.
"He'll live," the man said. "But he'll need time."
Nathaniel sat by Dano's side.
Alfreda stood by the door.
"You should've told me what you knew," she said.
Nathaniel didn't look up. "Would it have changed anything?"
"Yes," she snapped. "I might've trusted you."
He met her gaze then. "Trust? After you stormed into my wedding, destroyed everything, and kept secrets of your own?"
She laughed bitterly. "You think this is about a wedding? I died in that fire, Nathaniel. Or at least the girl you knew did. You mourned a ghost and married a lie."
He stood.
"I mourned you, Alfreda. I lit candles every year. I blamed myself. I would've burned the world to find you."
"But you didn't," she whispered. "You rebuilt your empire on ashes."
That night, she packed a small bag and checked her guns. The locket Lucien had carried—one of many stolen from orphans—was clenched in her fist.
She was done waiting.
She would end this herself.
But before she could leave, the boy stepped in front of her.
"Wait," he said, holding something out.
An old silver locket.
Different.
Clean.
Inside—two girls. One with crooked pigtails. The other, smaller, smiling with missing teeth.
Her and… her sister.
"Do you remember her?" the boy asked softly.
Alfreda's breath hitched.
The floor beneath her seemed to vanish.
"Yes," she whispered. "Celia."
The name cut her like glass.
She dropped to her knees, holding the locket like it was the last piece of her soul.
Nathaniel watched from the doorway, something unraveling behind his eyes.
He stepped forward.
"The fire," he said quietly. "I was there. But I didn't leave you behind by choice."
She looked up at him.
"I went back in," he continued. "They told me you were dead. I carried out bodies. Burned my hands. I loved you."
Alfreda blinked tears away. "Then why marry her?"
"I had to," he said. "Politics. Bloodlines. But I never let go of you."
For a moment, silence.
Then she was in his arms.
Mouths meeting like fire and gasoline. Desperate. Starving.
He lifted her onto the table, tore at her belt. Her hands yanked at his shirt. A snarl of breath and tension exploded between them.
This wasn't love.
It was survival.
But it ended as quickly as it started.
She pulled back.
"I can't stay."
"Why?"
"Because if I stay," she whispered, pressing her forehead to his, "I'll lose the edge. And I need it sharp."
She left before dawn.
The Widowmaker would pay in blood.
And this time—she wouldn't be the girl who ran from flames.
She'd become the fire.