“Hush, hush, time to be sleeping. Hush, hush, dreams come a-creeping. Dreams of peace and of freedom. So smile in your sleep, bonny baby.”

Quentin stirred as the lullaby crept through his thoughts, but the pain it caused made him whimper, and his eyes flew open.

Mama’s hand stilled on his forehead, and her bright blue eyes creased with worry. “Go back to sleep, Tintin.”

He wanted to stretch, but the fear over how much it might hurt made him stop. “I can’t.”

She brushed the hair from his face and smoothed it away from his head. “You must rest.”

Quentin swallowed down a knot of terror. “I’m useless, aren’t I?”

Mama stiffened. Her expression shifted to something angry, if only for a moment. “You are not useless, Tintin. Not now, not ever. Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because I’m always like this.” He tested each of his arms, slowly straightening one and then the other to see which one was more useable. His left protested less, so he used that one, and slowly brought his hand up to his face so that he could wipe his eyes. “I can’t do anything without injuring myself. How am I ever supposed to take over from Father if I cannot even put one foot in front of the other?”

She withdrew her hand and sat stiffly in her chair. “None of this is your fault. None of it. Don’t ever blame yourself.”

“I’m supposed to be the heir apparent to the Duchy of Oxford, Mama.” Quentin lay his arm back down with care and gave up on trying to withhold his tears. What was the point? He was damn worthless, and crying about it just let everyone else know how completely unsuited to the task he was too. “How can I do that when I’m this bloody stupid?”

His mother shot to her feet and stalked away from him. Her usually impeccable demeanor was suffused with a barely-contained rage which held her shoulders stiff and balled her delicate hands into fists. “Quentin, please. Don’t say such things. This won’t last forever. You’ll get better. You always get better.”

“And then I get worse.” He grit his teeth and tried to sit up, but the pain was too much.

What the hell could he have fallen on that made his arse hurt this much, for God’s sake?

“But it isn’t your fault,” his mother argued. “It’s never your fault, Tintin.”

“It’s mine.”

Quentin turned sharply at the sound of Father’s voice. Father who wasn’t there. Father who had appeared.

Mama faded away as the dream twisted.

“It’s my fault,” Father said, his deep voice brooking no argument. “I did this to you, Quentin. I did this to you, but you always forget, don’t you? And when your mother tells you that it was all an accident you believe her. But I did this.” Father loomed over him and placed a hand to Quentin’s chest, pinning him down in his bed. “You think you’re accident-prone. You think you fell off horses, tripped down stairs, got run over, and whatever other rubbish excuses you’ve given over the years, but haven’t you ever stopped to wonder why all of your scars are in straight fucking lines, Icky? Not once?”

Quentin struggled to breathe. The pressure against his chest made his wounds crack and bleed. He felt the wetness seeping across his skin, trapped by bandages. “Please,” he breathed. “Stop.”

“I beat you, Icky.” Father’s colorless eyes came closer. Blood spattered his chest, dripped from a line across his cheek, ran between them in an endless stream which terrified and aroused. “I took a crop to you as part of a ritual, and that ritual lasted thirteen years. I beat you until your skin broke and you bled. I beat you until you blacked out, shut down to protect yourself. I beat you until you were broken, I hit you so hard that your blood is on me, Icky. And then when I was done beating you, I raped you.”

Quentin screamed. He reached for Father, tried to push him away, but his fingers slipped in blood and he couldn’t find a hold.

“I raped you,” Father snarled in indignation. “All to give you the power to use magic, just like I can. Just as my father did to me. Are you listening to me, Icky?”

Quentin’s screams couldn’t drown out Father’s words.

“Thirteen years!” His father bellowed at him. “Jesus Christ, Icky, aren’t you the least bit angry?”

Quentin’s eyes snapped open and he beat at thin air as he screamed until his lungs had nothing left to give.

There was nobody there.

His arms fell to the table in front of him and gripped the edges tightly. It was real. It had to be real. Who dreamed of sitting on trains?

I’m on a train.

His breathing was ragged, and every single intake was a struggle. The wind which streamed through the car tugged at his hair, his jacket, and flung sheets of newspaper and uncollected sandwich packets from one end to the other and then back again.

A train! Get a hold of yourself!

The image of his father looming, pinning him down, crushing him with his superior weight, lingered. He felt hands on him which weren’t there, smelled blood which was fresh and altogether absent.

It was a nightmare.

Just a nightmare.

He sniffled as he wiped wetness from his cheeks, and fought to bring the winds under control. He’d already destroyed a hotel room. If this went on much longer he’d be responsible for ruining a train carriage too.

Windsor had to be in here somewhere, too. This had gone beyond the potential for collateral damage and into the realm of harming a living creature.

Quentin screwed his eyes shut and counted down from ten, but he kept hearing his father’s words.

Or were they Freddy’s?

They echoed around his head, snatches of broken sentences half-remembered, and he screamed again to drown them out but it didn’t work. Nothing worked.

The train shuddered. He fell forward in his seat and put his arms out in time to catch himself on the table, then looked around, bewildered.

There was a station outside his windows.

Run.

Get away.

Be safe.

He pushed himself from his seat and scrambled through the carriage. He hit the button for the sliding doors with such force he thought he heard something snap, but the doors opened for him, and he sprinted from the train, shoving his way through anyone who didn’t move aside for him.

He ran. He vaulted the ticket barrier, and he ran. With no idea of where he was, no care for who saw him, he bolted through the train station in search of open air, and once he found it he kept going.

He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t control the storm. All he could do was try and take it away from anywhere it could do harm.

* * *

He had no idea where he was going. He’d sped past some sort of multistory car park and some shops and houses, then the moment he caught sight of green he sprinted toward it, barely avoiding cars and bikes when he launched across a main road.

Quentin ran into the park and straight through it, until he could find enough open space to keep away from anything breakable, then he sank to the ground and dug his fingers into cold, mushy grass. Damp seeped through the knees of his trousers and the wind howled around him without mercy.

But nobody else was here. Not in the centre of this park on a miserable November day. Oh, there were cars in the car park, but their owners were most likely in whatever buildings bordered the green. This wasn’t picnic weather, no matter how stubborn the British could be about these things.

It was the best that he could do under the circumstances.

Hands fell on Quentin’s shoulders and pushed him to the cold, wet floor. The stench of his own blood was in his nostrils and on his tongue, metallic and salty, pervading his thoughts until all was red.

He was a child.

He was a teenager.

He was an adult.

He was nothing.

Hands slipped through the blood on his back and squeezed his backside. They pressed and probed and invaded where they shouldn’t.

He couldn’t scream any more. It didn’t stop him trying. Reality had become nothing more than chaos. He felt his sanity bleeding away, and nothing he could do would stop it. The earth around him rippled, sending clods of mud into the air.

Candlelight flickered in the darkness and then blew out. His body shuddered with pleasure as the wind tore around the dark chamber.

The pain remained, but his cock was hard, and pressed into the blood-slick floor again and again as the pressure built inside him. He wasn’t there, wasn’t present, wasn’t in his own body, he just had to survive this and it would all be over.

But if it felt so good, could it be so bad?

Candelabras crashed to the ground in the black of the void. Glass shattered. The wind howled in triumph.

A wave of heat rippled through his body as he came, adding to the moisture trapped under his body.

His father grunted as he spent, and his weight crushed Quentin down.

“Never again,” his father whispered weakly into his ear. “This is the end, Quentin. I promise.”

Quentin said nothing.

Because he wasn’t there.

He was here now. He didn’t know where here was and it didn’t matter. All he knew was that his mind had broken, and there was no way to put it back together again.

The anger inside him was in control now.