Chapter 16: JUST PEOPLE Reaction

For the next few days, the house echoed with sounds no one dared to name—moaning, screaming, laughter with no joy behind it. Behind closed doors, Ayoka stopped surviving. She began becoming.

The door to Viktor’s chambers rarely opened, save for food or drink. But the walls of that old estate—too ancient to keep secrets—let everything slip. Anyone passing by the east wing could hear it. Not just the rhythm of tangled bodies or the creak of bedposts, but the words exchanged in the dark.

Ayoka’s voice rang out first—clear, fierce, and unrepentant. “Harder, Viktor… I done told you I could take it—now don’t go treatin’ me like I’m made of glass.”

A pause. Skin meeting skin. The ragged gasp of breath caught between ache and ecstasy.

Then Viktor’s voice, low and razor-smooth, cut through: “Your mouth runs like a river, but your body… your body don’t know how to lie.”

Another thrust. Another tremble. Ayoka laughed breathlessly, voice tipped in wild delight. “You’re mine when you move like this. Don’t go pretending you ain’t.”

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His breath hitched, warm against her neck. “Then stay alive long enough to keep claiming me.” The words hung heavy in the hallway, like thunder waiting to crack.

Celia, the upstairs maid, returning from the washhouse with linens in her arms, froze mid-step as Ayoka’s voice spilled again from behind the door: “Say it. Say I’m the only one who leaves you this undone.”

Celia’s hands clenched tighter around the sheets, cheeks blooming with heat. “That woman,” she whispered under her breath, “ain’t seducin’ him. She’s unravelin’ him.” She fled down the hall before her knees gave out.

Moments later, Thomas trudged past, hauling a crate of wine. Old, grizzled, and rarely rattled, even he paused as Viktor’s voice cracked the silence: “You’re not runnin’. Not this time.”

He shook his head and muttered, “Either they’ll be wed before winter… or buried ‘neath the same stone.”

And then came Madame Lyra. She didn’t need to walk past that hall—but she did, as always. Her cane clicked soft against the stone, her gaze unblinking as she heard Ayoka cry out: “Mark me again. Let ‘em all see who I am now.”

Russian followed, whispered against sweat-slick skin. Then a moan, the sound twisting at the edge of rapture and ruin. Lyra paused, lips pursed as if praying—but not for salvation.

“She’s not just his whore,” she murmured. “She’s his reckoning.” Then she walked on, as if she hadn’t just passed through a prophecy

in progress.