The candlelight trembled across the walls like breath held too long, the room thick with silence and something sweeter—something red. You were curled in the corner, eyes wide, lips parted as though you’d scream but forgot how.

He found you like that. Broken in the way glass still catches light.

“My poor girl,” Hannibal said, his voice low, reverent. “They hurt you.”

You didn’t speak. You didn’t need to. He crossed the room slowly, his coat still damp with rain, and knelt before you as if in prayer. His fingers grazed your cheek, soft as confession. And then he stood. You were home now, safe. But Hannibal still had a job to do. Prey to hunt.

The man who touched you had been someone once. A stranger, now faceless in Hannibal’s mind, reduced to flesh and mistakes. He did not deserve a name.

Hannibal found him easily—he always did. In a forgotten alley, beneath humming streetlights, he let him beg. Let him understand, for a heartbeat, what it meant to suffer beauty and defile it.

“I am what you made me,” he whispered into the man’s ear as the life drained from his eyes. “And she is what you’ll never deserve to remember.”

It took hours before the wind carried him home. The door creaked open and closed without a sound. You were still in the corner, knees pulled tight, staring at shadows.

He crossed the floor without hesitation. Blood still clung to his cuffs.

“Come,” he said, kneeling beside you again. “He’s gone.”

You didn’t ask what he meant.

He pulled you into his lap, your body trembling against his, and pressed his lips to your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. Devotion, unholy and eternal, bloomed in his chest like rot beneath roses.

“I would love you to death,” Hannibal whispered. “But I think I love you more than that.”