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The Kingdom of Burgundy, Year of our Lord, 1084
The air in the lower town was thick with the scent of woodsmoke and the sharp, acidic tang of the dyeworks. Finn Mikaelson walked a pace behind his sister, his expression a mask of practiced indifference.
To Finn, the world was a tiresome cycle of vanity; he was here only because Rebekah had insisted that their 'noble' house required better woolens to maintain their facade in the Burgundian court.
They reached a timbered storefront where a sign swayed in the wind. Finn followed Rebekah into the shop, his boots thudding on the floorboards. The air inside was thick with the scent of raw wool and cedar. At the far end of a long oak table, an old man was running his hands over a bolt of cloth. Finn noticed immediately that the man wasn't looking at his work. His eyes were a milky, sightless white, yet his fingers moved with a precision that only decades of muscle memory could provide.
Rebekah, draped in silks and playing the part of a high-born Lady, didn't seem to notice, or care, about the man's condition. She was impatient, her fingers tapping rhythmically on the counter.
"Master Girard?" His sister's voice was melodic but sharp. "We were told you were the only one in this province who wouldn't make us look like peasants. My four brothers and I require a full outfitting for the Bishop’s court. Surely you can set aside these... coarser projects for a moment?" The old man didn't look up, but his hands stilled on the fabric. He seemed to be listening to the weight of her voice.
"The Bishop’s wool is already on the loom, My Lady," a woman’s voice interrupted.
Finn turned his head. A woman emerged from a side room, carrying a heavy tally-stick and a ledger. She was older than the girls Rebekah usually surrounded herself with, perhaps in her late twenties. Her sleeves were pinned back, and her hands were stained a deep, bruised indigo.
She didn't bow. She walked directly to the old man, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder before looking at the newcomers.
"If you want the Master’s work, you wait for the Master’s time," the woman said. She looked at Rebekah’s fine dress with a flat, unimpressed gaze. "And currently, his time is spoken for. I can take your measurements and your coin, but I won’t have him insulted for working at the pace the wool requires."
Rebekah’s eyes flared. She had spent a lifetime running from a monster, and now that she had finally found a place to play 'Noble,' she expected the world to bend. "You speak with a great deal of iron for a shop-girl. Is this how you treat a Lady of the House de Mortain?"
The woman didn't flinch. She stepped forward, her posture as straight as a spear. "I am the one who keeps this shop’s books and ensures the dyes don't ruin the weave. If the 'House de Mortain' finds my father’s pace too slow, there are weavers in the market square who will grovel for your favor. I am not one of them."
Finn felt a sudden, sharp interest. He had lived for a hundred years in a world of people who either screamed or bowed. This woman did neither. He saw the way she stood straight, protective of the blind man and entirely comfortable in her own authority. She was a feme sole, a woman standing on her own, and she had more steel in her than half the knights Finn had met.
"Rebekah," Finn said. His voice was low, carrying the heavy weight of his own boredom and the cold reality of their situation. He stepped out of the shadows, his height making the small shop feel even more cramped. He looked at his sister, a warning in his eyes. "The woman is right. We are guests in a House of Guild. Act like one."
Rebekah let out a sharp, frustrated breath. She wasn't cruel, but she was spoiled by her new status. "Fine. If you want to spend your afternoon in a drafty dyeworks, Finn, be my guest. I’m going to find Elijah and Nik."
She turned on her heel and swept out, the bell above the door jangling in her wake.
Finn turned back to the woman behind the counter. He looked at the indigo stains on her fingers and then at her face. "My sister has forgotten that a title is maintained by conduct, not just blood," he said. He inclined his head, not a full bow, but a gesture of genuine respect. "I am the Seigneur Finn. And whom do I have the honor of addressing?"
The woman studied him for a long moment, her eyes searching the hollows of his face. She seemed to notice something odd about him, but she didn't look away.
"Sage," she said, her voice dropping some of its defensive edge. "I am Sage, daughter of Girard."
"Mistress Sage," Finn murmured. He felt a rare, strange pull in his chest, a flicker of life in the grey wasteland of his mind. "It seems I am in your hands, then. I suspect I am a very difficult man to fit."
Sage reached for a knotted measuring cord. "Every man thinks he is difficult, Seigneur. Most are just vain. Stand over there, in the light."
Finn stood exactly where she pointed, the weak afternoon sun filtering through the narrow, seeded-glass windows and catching the dust motes dancing around him. He was used to being a center of attention in grand halls, but under Sage’s clinical gaze, he felt like a different kind of specimen. He wasn't a monster or a lord here; he was simply a man that needed to be covered in wool.
Sage stepped into his space. She was shorter than him, but she didn't crane her neck; she moved with a brisk economy of motion that forced him to adjust to her. She smelled of the lavender she likely used to mask the sharp scent of the dye-vats and the earthy, honest smell of raw sheep’s wool.
As she stepped closer, the sunlight caught her face, finally pulling her out of the shadows. She had a striking, pale complexion, the kind that burned easily in the high Alpine sun, and a thick mane of cinnabar-red hair that was pulled back into a practical braid. Her eyes were a sharp, piercing blue, the color of a shallow glacial lake, and they were framed by a dusting of light freckles across the bridge of her nose.
"Arms out, Seigneur," she commanded, stepping behind him.
As she pulled the knotted cord across the breadth of his shoulders, her knuckles brushed the nape of his neck. The contact was brief, but Finn noted the calloused texture of her fingertips and the steady heat of her skin. She moved around to his side, her head tilted to the side as she squinted at the knots on her cord, her blue eyes scanning the breadth of his frame with a clinical detachment that he found strangely grounding.
"Drop your shoulders, Seigneur," Sage said, her voice muffled slightly as she moved to his side to check the span of his back. "You’re braced like you’re expecting a spear between the shoulder blades. I can’t get the measure of a cloak if you won't slacken the muscle."
Finn took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing his frame to relax. He felt the weight of his own shoulders drop. It was a physical effort to shed the tension he had carried since they crossed the border into Burgundy.
"Better," she muttered. She moved back to his front, her arms reaching around his waist to pull the cord tight against his ribs.
The proximity was purely functional, yet Finn couldn't help but notice the details of her work. Her fingers, though stained with the bruised purple of the indigo vats, moved with a nimble grace as she marked a specific knot on the string with her thumbnail. She was so close he could see the slight dampness on her brow from the steam of the shop and the way her blue eyes remained fixed on her task, entirely uninterested in his title or the finery of his clothes.
"There," Sage muttered, her fingers pulling the cord taut against his ribs. She didn't look up, her focus entirely on the knot she was pinching between her thumb and forefinger. "Most men of your station are restless. They shift their weight to look more imposing or they can't stop preening at their own reflection. You just... stand." She finally looked up, her blue eyes meeting his. Up close, the sharp color of them was even more striking against her pale skin. She didn't look at him with the curiosity or the fluttery modesty he was used to from the women at court; she looked at him like a builder assessing a stone. "You're like a monument," she noted, her voice flat and professional. "Quiet. And very still."
Finn looked down at her. He could see the way the sunlight caught the cinnabar strands of her hair and the faint smudge of blue dye on her temple. "I am in no hurry, Mistress Sage," he said, his voice a low vibration in the small space between them. "And I have little to boast about."
Sage snorted, a quick, sharp sound. She stepped back, finally breaking the proximity as she began coiling the knotted cord around her hand.
"Every man with a sword has something to boast about," she retorted, walking back toward her tall desk. "Usually, they just don't know when to stop. But if you're content to stay silent, it makes my work easier. I have enough noise in this shop as it is."
She picked up her quill, the feather scratching against the parchment as she recorded the measurements. She didn't wait for him to leave; she was already moving on to the next task, her eyes scanning the columns of her ledger.
Finn watched her for a moment as she worked. She was efficient, her attention already divided between the numbers on her page and the steady clack-clack of her father’s loom at the back of the room. He was struck by how quickly he had become secondary to the business of the shop. To Sage, he was no longer a Seigneur; he was merely another patron.
"Your sister spoke of four brothers," Sage said, not looking up from her ledger. The quill didn't pause. "I cannot clothe three men I haven't seen. Unless you all share the same frame, I will need them here before I cut the charcoal wool. And I'll need to meassure her as well." Finn shifted his weight, his boots creaking on the floorboards. He thought of Elijah’s meticulous nature and Niklaus’s inevitable impatience. "They will be here. I will ensure of it."
"See that you do," she replied, finally setting the quill aside to blow on the wet ink. She turned her head, her sharp, glacial-blue eyes pinning him where he stood. "Bring them tomorrow when the sun is at its peak. The light is best then, and I'll have the workspace clear. And tell them, I don't care how many titles they carry, if they move while I’m holding the cord, I’ll charge them for the extra yardage."
Finn inclined his head. A ghost of an actual feeling, something close to respect, stirred in his chest. "I suspect they will find your terms... refreshing, Mistress Sage."
"I suspect they'll find them irritating," she countered, a dry, knowing smirk playing on her lips. "Men of high birth usually do when they aren't the ones setting the rules." She stood up and walked around the desk, but not to escort him out. She headed for a stack of heavy bolts near her father, her movements strong and practiced. As she passed Finn, the scent of lavender and lye brushed past him again, a vibrant, living scent that made the grey apathy of his mind feel a fraction lighter. "Until tomorrow, Seigneur," she said, already reaching for a heavy roll of undyed linen.
"Tomorrow," Finn repeated.
He turned toward the heavy oak door. He remembered her earlier warning and grasped the iron handle, pulling it firmly until the latch clicked into place against the draft. Outside, the chill of the Burgundy afternoon hit him, the damp air of the lower town smelling of woodsmoke and old stone.
As he walked back toward the upper district, Finn found himself looking at his own hands. They were clean, pale, and lacked the honest, blue-stained marks of a trade. He had spent a century feeling like a hollow shell, but for the first time in a very long time, he found himself looking forward to the next day's noon bells.
True to his word, Finn returned the next day when the sun was at its peak. Unfortunately, he brought the rest of his siblings with him.
If the previous afternoon had been quiet, this fitting was a siege. The small timbered shop, felt dangerously cramped with the full force of the entire Mikaelson line crowded between the dye vats.
Rebekah was the ringleader of the misery. She treated the fitting not as a transaction, but as a royal audience. She commandeered Sage’s only chair, critiquing the "roughness" of the Burgundian linen and making Sage measure her three separate times because she was convinced the first two were "too generous" for her waist.
Elijah stood by the window, offering polite, smiling critiques that were somehow more insulting than open rudeness. Klaus paced like a caged tiger, looming over Sage’s blind father and making veiled threats about what would happen if the crimson dye wasn't vibrant enough. And Kol... Kol was simply a menace. He touched everything. He unspooled thread, rearranged the weights, and poked at the ledger until Sage finally snapped.
She didn't scream. She simply picked up a heavy wooden ruler and cracked it across Kol’s knuckles with a speed that made even Klaus flinch.
"Touch my ledger again," Sage had said, her voice cutting through the noise like a knife, "and I will dye your tunic pink. I don't care who you are."
By the time the bell finally chimed their departure, the shop was silent, but the air was thick with tension. Sage looked ready to burn the House de Mortain to the ground.
Two days later, the shop was quiet again.
Finn hesitated outside the timbered door. In his hand, the stems felt fragile, almost ridiculous against his strength. He was a creature of blood and shadow, over a century old, yet he stood on the cobblestones of the lower town feeling like a young apprentice who had forgotten his lessons.
He pushed the door open.
Sage was there, standing atop a small stool, wrestling a heavy bolt of undyed linen onto a high shelf. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, revealing pale arms dusted with the same light freckles that bridged her nose.
She didn't hear him enter. Finn moved with the silent, predatory grace of his kind. He crossed the floor in two strides. He kept his left hand, the one clutching the stems, tucked against his side. He reached up with his right, catching the falling end of the bolt just as gravity began to claim it.
To him, the heavy linen weighed nothing. It felt like paper. He held it suspended for a fraction of a second, fighting the urge to simply shove it into place with supernatural force. He forced his muscles to simulate strain, to move at a speed that was only impressive rather than impossible, and slid the bolt onto the shelf.
Sage gasped, a sharp intake of breath that Finn heard as clearly as a shout. She spun around on the stool, nearly losing her balance again.
"Mother of God!" she hissed, gripping the shelf for support. She looked down at him, her eyes wide, then narrowing instantly as the shock replaced itself with recognition. "You move like a ghost, Seigneur. Or a theif."
"I did not mean to startle you," Finn said, stepping back to give her room to descend. "The door was unlatched."
He watched her climb down, noting the way her pulse fluttered in her throat, like a rabbit’s rhythm. It made the hunger stir in the back of his mind, that old, monstros part of him he loathed. He pushed it down, focusing instead on the irritation radiating off her. She smoothed her apron, regaining her composure, though her cheeks were flushed.
She didn't seem to notice he was holding one hand behind his back, her focus was on his face. "If you have come to change the measurements again, you are too early," she said, her voice clipped. "The wool is still in the vat. I told your sister it would be a week before the shears even touch the cloth."
Finn felt a wave of exhaustion. It was the same everywhere he went. The assumption that he was merely an extension of his siblings' vanity.
"I am not here about the measurements," Finn said, his voice low. "And Rebekah is currently sulking in the upper town. You are safe from her whims."
"Then why are you here?" she asked, wary. She crossed her arms, creating a barrier. "If the order stands, our business is concluded until the fitting."
Finn felt ridiculous. He was over a hundred years old. He and his siblings had evaded their father for over a century, yet here he stood in a dusty shop, hiding wildflowers behind his back like a nervous boy. The absurdity of it almost made him turn and leave. But then he looked at the indigo stains on her hands, evidence of a life of honest labor, and he held his ground.
He brought his hand out from behind his back. The motion felt stiff, unpracticed. He held out the bunch of Alpine Asters and wild blue gentian. The stems were wrapped in a scrap of leather cord, the blooms vivid and impossibly blue against the gloom of the shop.
"I came to offer you these," Finn said.
Sage stared at the flowers. She didn't reach for them. She didn't blush or stammer as the court ladies did when presented with a token. Instead, her expression hardened. "Is this a jest?" she asked quietly.
"No," Finn frowned, confused by the coldness in her tone. "It is an apology. My family was... difficult. Their conduct was lacking. I thought to bring you something from the high ridges to make amends for the disturbance."
Sage let out a short, cynical breath. She turned away, walking behind the safety of her counter.
"Seigneur Finn," she said, leaning her hands on the wood and pinning him with a look of utter disdain. "I may have lived in this town my whole life, but I know how the world works. When a man of your station brings flowers to a woman of mine, it is not for an apology." She lifted her chin, defiant. "If you are looking for a mistress to warm your bed while you are in the province, you have come to the wrong shop. We sell clothes, not favors."
The accusation hit Finn like a physical blow. He froze, looking at the wildflowers in his hand, suddenly seeing them through her eyes. A nobleman, a shop girl, and a gift. It was a cliche. It was an insult.
He felt a flare of anger. Not at her. At the world that had taught her to expect this. He hated that she looked at him and saw just another bored, predatory lord. He hated that she was right to assume it.
"That was not my intent," Finn said, his voice dropping, heavy with the weight of his own sincerity. He stepped forward, placing the flowers on the counter. He didn't push them toward her. He surrendered them, opening his hand to show he wanted nothing in return. "I do not seek a mistress, Sage," he said, holding her gaze. "I find the court and its games... tiring. I find the people there vaporous. You are the only person I have met in this city who speaks the truth." He gestured to the blue gentian, feeling the need to explain, to make her understand that he saw her. "I chose these because they are not roses. They are not sweet, and they do not grow in gardens. They grow in the granite, where the wind is cold and the soil is poor. They are stubborn things." He looked at her, really looked at her, trying to convey a century of loneliness in a single sentence. "They reminded me of you. That is all."
Sage looked at the flowers on the counter. She looked at the jagged, hardy petals of the gentian. Finn watched the tension in her neck, waiting for her to throw them in his face. Instead, he saw her defensive posture slip, just an inch.
"Stubborn," she muttered, picking up the bunch. She inspected the stems, her brow furrowing. "You have a strange way of paying compliments, Seigneur."
"I am not known for my charm," Finn admitted dryly. "My brother Kol has monopolized that particular trait."
"Yes," Sage agreed. She looked up at him, and for the first time, the ice in her eyes cracked, revealing a flicker of amusement. "I can tell you are not." She sighed, and the sound seemed to carry away the worst of the tension in the room. She placed the flowers in a jar of water on the counter. "Well... They are better than the smell of the lye. And since you are here, and since you are apparently strong enough to lift a bolt of linen with one hand..." She gestured toward the back of the shop, where several heavy crates of raw fleece were stacked haphazardly near the loft ladder. "My apprentice has run off to the tavern," she said, her tone shifting back to business, though without the earlier bite. "If you truly wish to make amends for your brother's chaos, you can move those crates to the loft. Unless that is too much labor for a Lord?"
Finn looked at the crates. He imagined the dust, the lanolin grease, the physical effort that would soil his fine tunic. And then he felt something he hadn't felt in a century. A sense of purpose. A simple task, with a beginning and an end, for a woman who wanted his help, not his status.
A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. A rare expression that felt foreign on his face. "I believe I can manage."
Finn moved the crates.
It took him less than ten minutes to transfer the entire shipment of raw Alpine fleece from the damp floor to the high loft. For a human man, it would have been an hour of back-breaking labor, sweating and cursing the narrow ladder. Finn did it with a quiet efficiency, his breathing never changing, his velvet doublet remaining uncreased.
When he climbed down the ladder for the final time, dusting his hands, he found Sage staring at him. She wasn't swooning; she was squinting, calculating the weight he had just moved against the lean silhouette of his frame.
"You are stronger than you look, Seigneur," she admitted, sliding a mug of water across the counter toward him. It was a peace offering. "My apprentice would have spent the rest of the afternoon complaining about his spine."
Finn took the water. It was cool and tasted faintly of the iron cup. "I find labor... clarifying."
"Do you?" Sage raised an eyebrow, picking up her quill. "Then you are a rare breed of nobleman. Most find it beneath them." He was, in that, he was not a nobleman at all. He had grown up a villager in a settlement in the new world, after all.
"Most noblemen are fools," Finn told her in a flat tone, setting the cup down.
He left that day with the scent of raw wool clinging to his clothes and a strange, quiet hum in his chest that he hadn't felt in a century.
And that should have been the end of it. The measurements were taken, the peace offering accepted, and the labor done. Sage had been very clear that the dyeing process was a slow art; the wool needed to steep, the rinse needed to run clear, and the fibers needed to rest. She had told him, in no uncertain terms, that there was no reason to return for at least a week.
Finn lasted exactly two days.
He told himself it was necessity. He told himself he needed to ensure Rebekah’s specific shade of crimson was being respected. But when he walked through the timbered door, the air thick with steam and cedar, he knew it was a lie. He was there because the silence of the shop was the only place in Burgundy where the screaming in his head went quiet.
Sage looked up from a steaming vat, strands of damp hair clinging to her temples. She didn't bow. She didn't smile. She just pointed a wooden stirring paddle at him.
"If you are here to ask if the wool is dry," she said, wiping her brow with her forearm, "I will throw this ladle at you. It has been two days, Seigneur. Art does not bend for the House de Mortain."
"I am not here for the wool," Finn lied smoothly, closing the door against the chill. He looked around the chaotic shop, spotting a heavy barrel of lye sitting near the door, clearly waiting to be moved. "I was passing by. I thought perhaps your apprentice was at the tavern again."
Sage followed his gaze to the barrel. She hesitated, the stirring paddle lowering slightly. She looked at the heavy cask, then at Finn’s broad shoulders.
"He is," she muttered, frustration leaking into her voice. "Useless boy. That barrel needs to go to the scouring corner, and my father cannot lift it."
Finn unclasped his cloak, draping it over the counter. "Show me where."
And so, a pattern was struck.
The tunic took a full fortnight to finish, but Finn was there nearly every day. The excuses eventually evaporated, replaced by a tacit understanding. He was no longer a customer hovering impatiently. He was a fixture.
Finn Mikaelson, an original predator, became a part of the shop's ecosystem. He found he preferred the honest, acrid smell of the dye works to the cloying perfume of the Bishop’s court. The court was a nest of vipers, a place of veiled insults and poisoned wine. The shop was simple. A thread was either strong or it snapped. A color was either true or it faded. There was no deception here.
He became useful. His cursed strength, usually a weapon, was repurposed for the mundane. He lifted heavy beams for the loom. He stacked bolts of cloth on shelves that required a ladder for anyone else. He did these things quietly, earning his place in the corner of the room.
He even found a strange, quiet kinship with Girard.
The old man, blind and frail, had a perception that unnerved even Finn. One rainy afternoon, while Sage was in the back counting inventory, Finn sat near the loom, watching the old man work.
"You are a strange nobleman, Seigneur Finn," Girard said, his voice raspy but warm. His milky eyes stared fixedly at the air just above Finn’s left shoulder.
"Am I?" Finn asked, looking up from the piece of parchment he had been reading.
"Most men of your rank take up too much space," Girard murmured, his hands never stopping their rhythmic dance across the threads. "They stomp. They breathe heavy with their own importance. They smell of wine and metal. But you..." The old man tilted his head. "You are quiet as the grave. And you smell of the high air. Cold air."
Finn tensed slightly. "I prefer silence, Master Girard."
"It is a good quality," the old man decided, reaching out a hand. "Hand me the shuttle, would you? The walnut one."
Finn placed the tool into the old man’s hand. Girard nodded his thanks, accepting Finn’s presence as simply another fact of the room, like the draft under the door.
But it was Sage who drew him back.
As the weeks passed, the sharp edges of her defense began to smooth. She no longer called him 'Seigneur' with that biting sarcasm. She began to speak to him as a companion, sharing the petty grievances of the dyers' guild or her worries about the coming winter.
And Finn, a man who usually hoarded his words like gold, found himself speaking. He told her of the places he had seen, carefully editing the past century out of the stories. He lived for the moments when he could make her laugh, a real laugh, not the polite titter of a courtier, but a bright, unguarded sound that made the grey wasteland of his mind feel suddenly verdant.
"You cannot be serious," Sage said one afternoon, pausing with her needle in mid-air. "The King of France wore what?"
"Yellow," Finn said, his face deadpan, though his dark eyes gleamed. "Bright, canary yellow. From hose to hat. He looked like a giant, angry finch."
Sage threw her head back and laughed, the sound bouncing off the timbered walls. "And nobody told him?"
"He is the King, Sage," Finn said, watching the way the firelight caught the cinnabar strands of her braid. "Who would dare tell him he looked like poultry?"
"I would," she declared, biting off a thread with her teeth. "If I am to weave the cloth, I have a right to say if it looks ridiculous."
"I believe you would," Finn murmured, looking at the fierce set of her jaw.
He watched her work, her stained fingers moving with deft precision, and felt a tug in his chest so strong it was almost painful. For a few hours every day, within these four walls, he wasn't Finn the Original, the reluctant monster, the bored brother. He was just Finn.
.
He found himself dreading the sunset. He hated the moment the light began to fail, forcing him to stand up, smooth his tunic, and return to the shadows and the madness of his family.
"Same time tomorrow?" Sage asked that evening as he reached for the door handle. She didn't look up from her ledger, but there was a softness in her voice that hadn't been there a month ago.
Finn looked back at her, memorizing the curve of her neck in the candlelight. "Same time tomorrow."
The routine held until the week of the Madder Root. The shop smelled of copper and earth, and the work required a force that neither Sage nor her father possessed. Sages father had just gone to take his midday rest.
Finn stood at the heavy oak table near the drying racks, his sleeves rolled past his elbows. He was pulverizing a block of iron mordant, a greenish crystal that required a heavy pestle to crush.
The apprentice would have spent half a day sweating over the mortar to produce a cup of the powder. Finn did it effortlessly with the relentless pressure of his strength, the stone grinding to dust under his hand.
The smell of the shop was thick with it, the metallic tang of the iron mixing with the bloody, earthen scent of the madder root boiling in the main vat.
"You are grinding it too fine," Sage called out. She was perched precariously on her stool, wrestling with the stirring paddle in the great copper cauldron. "If it is dust, it clouds the water. It needs to be like coarse sand."
Finn paused, looking down at the mortar. "It is sand," he corrected, his voice flat. He tilted the bowl so she could see.
Sage glanced over, blowing a strand of damp hair out of her eyes. The heat from the vat had flushed her skin a vivid pink. "So it is," she admitted, turning back to her work. "You have a heavy hand, Finn. But useful."
"I am heavy in all respects," Finn murmured under his breath, though the rhythm of the work soothed him. The grinding noise drowned out the silence in his head. Here, crushing crystal stone to dust, he was useful. He was present.
"The dye is thickening," Sage muttered, frowning at the churning red liquid. "The root is catching on the bottom. I need to turn the batch before it scorches."
She shifted her grip on the long wooden paddle, stepping up onto the wet rim of the dais to get leverage. "If this burns, the Bishop will have my head, and I will have yours for distracting me."
"I am merely crushing rocks, Sage," Finn said, setting the pestle down. "You are the one looking."
"I am looking because..."
She leaned her weight into the stroke to dislodge the heavy wool at the bottom. The wood of the paddle gave a sharp, dry crack.
The shaft snapped cleanly at the neck. With her weight fully committed to the push, Sage pitched forward instantly, her momentum carrying her straight toward the boiling red maw of the vat.
Instinct took over.
Before he could stop himself, Finn moved with the inhuman speed of the monster he was. He crossed the gap between the table and the vat in a blur, stepping directly into the path of danger.
He slammed his body against the rim, catching Sage’s falling weight against his chest, blocking her from the liquid. But the violence of the stop sent a wave of the scalding dye sloshing over the copper lip. It washed over his left side. A deluge of boiling, red heat.
Finn involuntarily grunted, a short sound forced out of him as the liquid soaked instantly through his shirt. He felt the sear of it, the immediate, blistering heat that would have incapacitated a mortal man. He locked it behind a door in his mind where he also kept his hunger and rage.
He quickly felt the familiar, sickening itch of the curse taking hold. The flesh began to heal before the liquid even dripped to the floor. The pain vanished, replaced by the cold, crawling sensation of dead meat stitching itself back together.
"Finn!" Sage scrambled for purchase, pushing off his chest to find her footing. She looked down, horrified.
He stepped back, putting distance between them. His shirt was plastered to his left arm, wet and heavy, stained the color of deep arterial blood. Steam rose from the fabric in a thick, curling plume.
"Get it off!" Sage shrieked, the momentary panic making her voice shrill. She lunged for the cold water bucket. "Christ, Finn, that was boiling! It will take the skin!"
"It is fine," Finn said. He forced the words out evenly, flattening the tremor in his throat. He held his arm loosely at his side, though he could feel the fabric fusing to the skin and then, repulsively, separating again as his body rejected the burn.
"Fine?" Sage dropped the bucket, water splashing over her boots. "Are you mad?" She advanced on him, her hands reaching for his sleeve. "We have to get the linen off before it rots the wound. Let me see."
"Sage, do not," Finn warned. He stepped back until his hips hit the edge of the heavy oak table.
She ignored him. Of course she did. Because the woman was a stubborn as a mule. She closed the distance, her face set in a grim line of determination, and seized his wrist with a grip that would have bruised if not for his nature.
"I am not arguing with you," she snapped. "Hold still."
Finn went rigidly still against the heavy oak. He felt the heat of the burn pulsing in his arm, a thrumming agony that was already dulling, fading into the background hum of the curse.
She didn't try to peel the fabric. She grabbed her shears from the table, the cold iron sliding against his burning skin, and sliced the linen open. It fell away with a wet, sickening sound.
Finn braced himself, his breath hissing through clenched teeth. He expected the agony of the air hitting raw nerve endings, but as the sodden, crimson fabric fell to the floorboards, the pain hardly spiked.
Sage was staring. Her hand was suspended in the air, trembling, hovering inches from his forearm.
"God have mercy," she whispered, her face draining of all color until her freckles stood out like dark constellations.
Finn couldn't look at her face. He looked down at his arm, bracing himself for the revulsion.
It was hideous. The skin had been seared red and raw, a landscape of angry, weeping blisters and peeled flesh. It was the kind of wound that would have festered, taken a man's arm, or killed him slowly with fever. But he wasn't a man. Not really.
He watched, detached and self-loathing, as the angry, blistered red skin started to heal before their eyes. The dye had stained his skin crimson, but the wound was disappearing.
It wasn't instant. It was a crawling, disturbing process. But eventually, the raw edges of the burn reached out for each other, pulling tight. The weeping blisters deflated and smoothed over, and the angry heat faded from a violent red to a bruised pink, and finally to the pale marble of his natural complexion.
The whole process only took a few short minutes.
Sage made a small, choked noise. He felt her calloused fingers brush through the steam to touch the stained skin. She pressed her thumb into the muscle of his forearm. He held his breath, waiting for her to recoil, but she didn't.
"That..." Her voice was thin, reedy with shock. He watched her look from the bubbling vat to his arm. "That should have burned the skin off to the bone. The lye... the heat..." She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and searching. "I do not understand...?"
Finn squeezed his eyes shut. The physical pain was almost gone, only a dull throb now, but the shame was rising, hotter than the dye. He had exposed himself. She knew now. He was a monster standing in the light of day.
He pulled his arm back, snapping the limb against his chest as if he had been burned by her touch rather than the lye. He did not even try to offer her a lie. There was no lie in the world that could explain away flesh knitting itself together before a woman’s eyes. He looked at Sage, then at the door.
She stood frozen. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the pale, unblemished skin of his forearm where the raw meat should have been. She breathed in short, sharp gasps, the air rattling in her throat.
Finn felt the familiar, cold slide of the predator taking over. The solution was simple. It was the same solution his siblings used a thousand times a week. Take her mind.
He stepped toward her. The floorboards creaked under his boot. "Sage," he said. His voice dropped to that low, hypnotic timbre that bent the human will like wet clay. "Look at me."
Sage looked, her blue eyes locked onto his.
Finn gathered himself. He prepared to crush the memory, to smooth over the last five minutes until she remembered only a clumsy spill and a ruined tunic. He would make her docile. He would make her forget she had ever seen him as anything other than a bored nobleman.
He looked at the intelligence in her eyes, the spark he had spent a fortnight admiring. If he did this, he would kill that spark. He would be left talking to a hollow doll.
He couldn't do it. Not to her.
Finn broke the gaze. He turned away, sickened by his own instinct. "I cannot," he muttered to himself.
He grabbed his cloak from the counter and threw it over his shoulders. The urge to flee was physical now, a need to escape the judgment he saw in her face. He reached for the heavy iron latch of the door.
"You're healed." The voice was small, trembling, but it stopped him. Finn gripped the cold iron handle. He stared at the wood grain of the door. "The skin," Sage whispered. "I saw it..." Finn remained silent. There was no point in denial. "Turn around, please."
"Do not ask that of me," Finn said, his voice rough.
"Turn around!" She demamded, louder this time.
So Finn turned.
Sage had backed up against the loom. She held a pair of heavy iron shears in her hand, the blades pointed at his chest. Her knuckles were white, her entire frame shaking, but she held the weapon steady.
"What are you?" she demanded. "The lye covered your skin. I saw it. And now you stand there without a single burn." She gestured with the shears, a sharp, violent motion. "Are you a demon? A spirit?"
"I am a monster," Finn said flatly. He looked at the shears. They would not kill him, but the sight of her holding a weapon against him stung more than the boiling dye. "I am a dead man walking, Sage. I am a creature that cannot die."
Sage stared at him. The shears lowered an inch. She looked at the red stain on his shirt, then at the floor where he had thrown himself in front of the vat. "You burned," she said.
"It is just the dye."
"No," she shook her head, her eyes frantic, processing the impossible. "You were burned! Your arm! You felt it. I heard you. You were in pain."
"It passed."
"Why?" She asked the question that mattered. "If you are a monster... if you are a dead man... why catch me? Why burn yourself for me?"
Finn looked at her. He thought of the boredom of the court, the cruelty of his brother, the endless, grey wash of his existence. He thought of the way she smelled of lavender and the way she didn't bow.
"Because you were falling," Finn said. He opened the door. The cold wind of the alley rushed in, swirling the steam. "I will leave you, Sage. You will not see me again." He could her a sharp intake of relieved air behind him. She was glad to see him go. She was right to.
"Wait!" Finn froze, confused. She should have bolted up the door behind him, yet here she called for him to wait. He looked back. Sage had lowered the shears. She was leaning against the loom, looking pale and sick, but she pointed a shaking finger at the puddle of cooling red dye. "You have to clean it," she said, her voice wavering. "Monster or not. You made the mess!"
Finn looked at the woman. She was obviously terrified. She was holding a pair of scissors against an Original Vampire. And she was demanding he clean up.
He let the door latch click shut.
"I made the mess," he agreed softly.