DAGON MANSION

CHAPTER THIRTY: RAW EMOTIONS

When Theolinda's words settled into the cell like a cold fog, Ryan felt the ground hollow beneath his feet. The world slid away — marriage, daughter, purpose — all blurred into a single, terrible image: Mia's lips on another man's, a little wolf's insolent mouth stealing what had been his. For a long breath, he forgot everything and became the old, hated thing the town knew him for: a monster with a hunger for ruin.

The monster recoiled almost at once, chased away by a conscience that had been sutured by a year of nights and soft hands. He was not the same man who once reveled in violence. Still, the betrayal — real or imagined — struck like an iron rod.

His hands went to his chest as if to hold his heart within his ribs. Theolinda moved toward him with the slow terror of someone who has loved a man through storms. She paused when she saw his face, blank as a pale moon, and then the sound came: a cry that had nothing of the prisoner and everything of the boy who had learned only harsh lessons.

Ryan's fists found the stone of the cell. He struck until the skin split and stung. He ripped the thin sheets from the bed and hurled them into the air, like flags of surrender and accusation, then sagged to his knees as if all strength had drained away. He was a thing of appetite and regret — no longer a monster, not yet whole — and in that ruin he dreamed of annihilation: the planet, the universe, all dimensions undone if that could unmake the wound.

Tears slid down Theolinda's face. She sat beside him and took his head into her lap as if he were the child he felt he was. When she watched him plead, plain and choking, there was nothing left of the guarded woman who had once loved from a distance.

"Forgive me, Theo," he rasped.

She drew back, searching his eyes until what she saw there became a man she both feared and loved. "I forgive you," she said at last, her voice small and iron-tough at once. "But you must forgive yourself."

He rested his forehead against her thighs. "Help me," he whispered, the plea a confession.

She stroked his hair. Around them, the visiting room hummed with the indifferent machinery of prisons and the small mercies two people make for one another in the dark.

At the office of Georgiana Key, the next morning, the world was quieter, arranged in the civil geometry of art and gentle question. The room smelled faintly of lavender and old paper; the furniture had the slow dignity of things that keep secrets well.

Mia watched Scarlett settle at the little table, coloring with a concentration that was almost worshipful. Georgiana — a woman of forty with hair like pale wheat and eyes that had learned to hold both judgment and mercy — spoke to the child in soft, exacting tones.

"Do you like to draw?" she asked.

Scarlett's smile was a flash of sun. "Yes. I like it a lot."

"Draw how you feel," Georgiana suggested. "Sometimes pictures say the words we cannot."

When Mia returned, half an hour later, Georgiana asked to speak with her. The woman's face was gentle, but her voice held the careful authority of someone accustomed to guiding broken things toward wholeness.

"There is violence in her drawings," she said, placing the small, jagged images on the table like clues. "Anger, yes, but also a separation wound — a child missing her father. There is exposure here to forces children should not see. I am prepared to begin therapy immediately: reinforce her vocabulary for emotion, show her ways to speak anger without breaking the world."

Mia nodded until her throat ached. "Do whatever it takes."

Georgiana's hand fell to the papers, the motion decisive. "There is another matter. Her... abilities. They compound the problem. If Scarlett can bring harm as fast as a child's shouting, the work of therapy will be twice as hard. We must consider whether those powers can be contained — or removed."

Mia's breath hitched. "Removed?"

"If not removed," Georgiana replied, "then masked. The child must learn other means to power herself. We will look for those who understand such things in the broader world: wise women, guardians of craft. For now, we will begin the slow work of language, safety, and trust."

She left Scarlett in Xena's care and returned to her office, where Randolf waited like a silent animal. He rose when she entered, apology on his mouth that trembled as if with hunger and fear.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he said. "I should not have kissed you."

Mia set her hands on the table and let the apology land. "It was impulsive," she answered. "We are both human. But do not repeat it."

He bowed his head. "I promise," he said, and in that promise there was more than civility — an offering, a promise framed in heat and restraint. Randolf thought to himself in the strange and stubborn logic of the lone: I will not kiss unless she asks. And she will want it someday. The thought haunted him with a tenderness he could not yet bear.

Later that day, Mia went to see Ryan alone. The visiting room smelled of disinfectant and waiting. He rose at her approach, each movement measured, as if he might break.

"Where is Scarlett?" he asked, voice ragged with worry.

"In therapy," she said, voice tight, "with Georgiana Key. She—she was violent. We thought it best. She attacked a boy who had called you a murderer."

The world changed in Ryan's eyes at that simple, small confession. Rage, despair, and a protective hunger congealed into a single, raw sound that was almost laughter.

"Mia," he said at last, and the syllable thudded against the walls like a small bell. "I cannot see this. You must keep her safe."

"I'm trying," she answered, and she meant it with the ferocity of a woman who had spent nights taking care of her daughter. "But the school—there was no supervision. I have already decided she will not return."

Ryan's fury cracked into a laugh that hurt both of them. "You kissed him," he said suddenly, the small, ferocious wound flaring. "You — you kissed the fucking wolf while my child is ripped by fear and school children taunt her. You—"

Mia flinched as if struck. "I—Ryan, it was nothing. Randolf was comforting; he is kind."

"Kind?" The word dropped like ice. He planted his fists on the small table and leaned in, voice low and terrible. "Do not make me your soft target, Mia. I was not a murderer like some people say because they like to exaggerate. But when you let others get close to me, when my daughter bleeds and you invite some monster to—"

His sentence dissolved into a fracture of sorrow. In his face, something fragile, dangerous, utterly human, shone: a man who loved too wildly and feared the loss of everything he had not yet earned.

Mia's eyes filled. She wanted to knit the pieces back together, to be reasonable and kind and whole. "I will protect her," she whispered, a vow that carried the weight of the small world she had been given.

Ryan's hands trembled in his lap. For a moment, there was only the sound of the clock and the distant hum of the prison. Between them lay everything broken and everything possible.