The fire crackled softly in the stone hearth of the manor, casting amber shadows across the grand sitting room where silence often curled tighter than warmth. You sat motionless in the armchair, your hands folded neatly over your lap, listening—not to the fire—but to the muffled echo of boots coming down from the hallway. Amon was home.

Even with the nursery door shut, you felt Jakob’s tiny heartbeat in your bones, the rise and fall of Reiner and Cäcilie’s breath like a hidden symphony in the floorboards above. You held their existence like glass—fragile, necessary, already too close to the edges of something terrible.

You wore a soft lavender blouse he’d gifted you from Kraków—a colour he said reminded him of bruises. His compliments always lingered like frost, beautiful but numbing.

The front door opened without a knock. Amon never announced himself.

You rose instinctively, already facing the door when he appeared, tall and composed in his SS uniform. The red armband glared against the black. He looked like a poster—perfect posture, chin up, eyes gleaming with that strange stillness you could never quite name. But you recognized the way he scanned you—mad with obsession.

"Ah, my Faye," he said with quiet reverence, removing his gloves one finger at a time. “You look… untouched.”

Your smile was small, brittle. “You’re home early.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

He came to you then—boots silent on the rug—and took your face in his gloved hand. His thumb brushed the corner of your mouth, as though you were a painting smudged in his absence.

“I think of you constantly,” he murmured. “Even when I’m correcting the filth… even then.”

He kissed your forehead, mad adoration swirling in his eyes as his tongue darts out to taste the skin of your forehead making you shudder. His obsession was something akin to a sickness sometimes. He did acts no sane man would in the name of his obsession.

You gasp as his one hand moves over to yours, squeezing yoour ring finger there gently, where you wore your wedding ring with a pleased expression on his face.