Wednesday stood frozen, heart slamming mercilessly against her ribs, the echo of Adrian's footsteps gone before they'd even begun. No dragging footsteps fading down the corridor. Just gone. As though the shadows had peeled open to swallow him whole. Like he'd never been there. Like she'd imagined the entire thing.
Her fingers twitched around the hilt of the sword still slick with his unnatural blood. She hadn't dropped it. She couldn't. The metal was an anchor, the last proof that any of it had happened at all.
Her tongue brushed across her lips before she could stop herself.
Still cold. Still tainted.
There was a taste in her mouth like rusted iron and candle soot.
She hated the heat blooming in her chest. Hated that her breath was uneven. That her pulse still mimicked the rhythm of a caged animal furious, alive, exposed.
Adrian's black blood was still drying in streaks on her fingertips and fencing sword, now sticky with ichor that wasn't red, wasn't human, and refused to behave like any proper bodily fluid ought to. It gleamed black like oil, refracting the candlelight in warped, slippery hues.
She turned sharply, forcing her legs to move. One step. Another. A slow retreat from the chamber that had suddenly grown too small for her.
Her lips still tingled where he had touched her. Where he had kissed her. It hadn't been romantic. It hadn't been anything so banal.
It had been a claim.
She didn't belong to anyone. Certainly not to Adrian. And yet his presence lingered like perfume on her skin, stubborn, invasive. Whatever he was, he hadn't just wanted her attention. He'd wanted access.
Back in the corridor, the air had shifted. It smelled different like rain just before it fell, sharp and metallic. The temperature hadn't dropped, but Wednesday felt colder somehow. Emptier. Her boots echoed on the stone floor as she walked, but the sound felt… duplicated.
Like something walked beside her.
Adrian's voice returned to her mind "But have you ever truly embraced it?"
Wednesday's jaw tightened. She had. She'd lived inside darkness her entire life. Slept beside it. Carried it like marrow in her bones. But what Adrian had brought what he was felt like another kind of dark entirely. It was layered.
Reaching the base of the stairs, she climbed them like she were walking out of someone else's skin.
Adrian's blood was still on her fingers. The sword still in her hand. And the worst part the part that curled low and sharp in her gut—was that she didn't want to wash either off just yet.
At the top of the landing, she stopped.
Her fingers hovered near her lips again—don't then balled into a fist. Control. She still had that.
Didn't she?
But it trembled in her grip.
And for the first time in a very long time, Wednesday Addams didn't know if she wanted to hold on…
or let it break.
So she walked back to her room in silence. Didn't lock the door. Didn't turn on the lights.
Instead, she stood in the center of the room, wrapped in shadow, heart still thrumming with something that felt too alive.
She hated it. She craved it.
Her fingers lifted again, brushed the place on her lips where his mouth had been.
She didn't flinch this time.
Then, softly, like it didn't matter like it meant everything she whispered to no one:
"Next time, don't disappear."
And this time, in the dark, no one answered.
But it felt like he was listening.