“Victor,” you murmur with a soft smile, reclining into the lounge chair as he leans over you, his breath warm against your neck. His lips find the tender skin just beneath your jaw, and you tilt your head back into the cushion, a quiet sigh slipping past your lips.

A low hum vibrates in his throat as he shakes his head, the sound caught somewhere between amusement and denial. He presses his palm gently over your mouth, silencing any protest, while his other hand settles firmly on your waist, drawing you closer. The fragile quiet between you is broken once more by a guttural groan echoing from the bowels of the tower below.

“Victor,” you whisper against his hand, your tone edged with concern. “I really do think you should check on him.”

His shoulders sag as he exhales a reluctant sigh. “Must I?” he mutters under his breath before straightening to his full height. With one final, lingering look at you, eyes soft and reluctant, he murmurs, “I will return shortly, my love.”

It had only been a few days since the creature’s creation, yet the tower had not known true peace since. The being, half born of brilliance, half of arrogance, still struggled to comprehend what it meant to live, to move, to simply be.

And yet Victor, the man who had given it life, treated its existence as a passing experiment, abandoning it in fits and starts. Each time he left, the creature’s patience frayed further, its groans echoing louder through the stone walls.

So, every few hours, Victor was forced to descend into the lower chambers, to soothe it, to teach it, to reassure it that it was not alone, only to return moments later, as if the whole ordeal were a tiresome ritual. Like a mother tending a restless newborn, though with none of a mother’s tenderness.

Nearly twenty minutes pass before the door creaks open again. Victor steps back into the room, the flicker of candlelight catching the faint exhaustion in his face. Without a word, he shuts the door behind him and begins unbuttoning his shirt. One by one, the candles go out beneath his breath until only the moon remains to cast its pale light across the room.

“Now,” he murmurs with a faint, knowing smile, dropping his shirt to the floor as he returns to your side, “where was I?”