Amelia’s knees ached. She tried to stand up and walk, only to bump her head on an unseen stone ceiling. So she crawled and crawled until she could feel the space around her opening.

By that time, her knees were scored and likely bloody, but she couldn’t see them. The monster had attacked after she’d prepared for bed, and though the thick material of her sleeping gown had offered some protection, it hadn’t been enough. Her hands had also suffered.

It could be worse. She could be trapped alone with the beast.

She had woken alone, no pair of glowing eyes staring down at her. Amelia tensed at every imagined sound, expecting the golem to jump out at her. Had it abandoned her here to die?

All Amelia knew was it wasn’t here now—it might not even return. She had to find her own way out of the dark.

Fighting tears, she stiffened her spine. I’ve done it before, Amelia told herself sternly. She had made her way out of a stark and unhappy childhood, finding some measure of happiness with her best friend. It had been a pure but loving marriage. Then when she had lost Martin she had mourned him, finally reaching a place where she could live a life full of love and happiness with Gideon, the man she had adored almost her entire life.

Martin would have approved. In fact, he would have gloated and said, ‘I told you so’ a dozen or so times.

True, she had more or less fallen into the relationship of her dreams, but it took some courage to forget the scars of the past and accept love, didn’t it?

No one, not even a monster, was going to take that from her.

Her brave words fell to dust a few minutes later when she made her way into a big cavern where part of the ceiling had collapsed, letting in the moonlight.

The golem was sitting against a stone wall on a big boulder. It looked right at her and hissed, the sound sending a bolt of fear through her.

Oh, God. Oh, God. What do I do?

Amelia clutched her hands together, afraid to breathe, let alone move.

It hissed again and she trembled.

Stop. Don’t panic. She needed to think clearly or she would never get out of this—never see Gideon again.

Meeting the monster again was terrifying, but also revealing. Its massive size mocked her earlier resolve to destroy it. She didn’t have the strength—and then there was her child to think of.

According to Mrs. Spencer, the golem had taken some of Sir Clarence’s anima, so there should be enough of him in there to understand her.

“You should congratulate me, Sir Clarence. I’m carrying Gideon’s child.”

The banked hellfire of its eyes brightened to red glowing coals and the hissing grew so loud it hurt her ears.

Amelia clapped her hands over them and sobbed, immediately contrite. “I’m sorry.”

The creature didn’t respond, but the hissing abated. Sniffling, she racked her brain for what else the mistress had said.

Mrs. Spencer hadn’t been able to get close enough to get the chem, the script with the sacred words, out of the golem’s mouth. Would it let Amelia get close enough?

Sir Clarence had never been an affectionate or trusting man. Pretending it was him and trying to hug it wouldn’t work.

Amelia’s stomach roiled when she remembered the only time Sir Clarence had allowed—nay demanded—she be close to him.

After my lessons.

A pit opened in the bottom of her stomach, threatening to swallow her up. More than anything in her childhood, she had hated going to her guardian’s study to recite what she had learned in her lessons that day.

Her hands shook as she brushed an errant curl out of her eye. This is the only way to get close enough.

She wiped away the moisture that was making it hard to see and stepped forward, her head down, hands clasped in front of her, the way she had every time she’d done this as a girl.

“I’m finished with my tutor, Sir Clarence.”

She waited, and then inhaled sharply when it whistled and moved its hand to wave her over, exactly the way Sir Clarence always had.

Inch by inch, she stepped closer, her thrumming heartbeat deafening her. She couldn’t even hear her own footsteps.

The clay hand reaching for her was an abomination. She knew that. But buried inside the earthen automaton were the memories of a man—Sir Clarence—whose consuming lust she had been trying to evade her whole adult life.

She had to use that now. Amelia nodded to herself, reaching deep inside for the detachment she had discovered those long-ago afternoons in Sir Clarence’s study.

When she reached the golem, she curtsied. It leaned back, making room to let her sit.

Just like before. Sick with fear, she turned around and sat on the golem’s lap.

Buried memories rose. In her mind’s eye, she could see Sir Clarence’s hands opening her bodice, stroking her fourteen-year-old breasts. She’d already had a womanly shape by then, but Sir Clarence had insisted she was still a child—even when he was touching and weighing their fullness while asking, almost to himself, what he was going to do with her.

All the details she had avoided recalling for so long came rushing back—the sickly sweet smell of tobacco and stale peppermint. To this day, she couldn’t abide tobacco smoke. Then there was the way he would sit, positioning her so her backside would rub along his hard staff.

It had never progressed farther than that. Amelia had been so ignorant back then; she hadn’t even known what she was being spared. All she had known was that she abhorred Sir Clarence’s touch.

She had been too ashamed to tell anyone…even Martin. But he had found out anyway when he’d arrived home from school unexpectedly one afternoon. Martin had walked in on them. Sir Clarence had yelled at him and sent him away, but he’d come to her later and she’d burst into tears.

That was the afternoon he’d first promised to take her away.

Yes, that was it. It had been his idea at first. She had repeated the request so often in the following years, she’d forgotten that detail. For years, she believed it had been her plan from the start.

The golem hissed in her ear, and she started in fear. Of course. She had to recite her lessons. “Decem, viginti, triginta…”

As if on cue, the clay hands moved to her bodice, but the woolen gown didn’t have lacings.

Amelia opened her eyes wide. Now. She had to do this now before she lost her nerve entirely.

Turning around slowly, she rose to her feet in a slow sensual movement.

If she was right, there was a twisted little fragment of Sir Clarence in there that had been waiting, longing, for this moment.

“Happy birthday, Sir Clarence.”

The kisses she had been forced to give him once a year had been perfunctory—quick closed-mouthed pecks finished as quickly as possible.

This was not one of those. Amelia stared down at the golem, imagining she could see Sir Clarence’s whiskered face between her hands. Then she knelt with parted lips that it met with a slow heavy movement of its head.

Ignoring the sharp exhalation of air that accompanied the creature’s hissing speech, she met its clay mouth with her own. It didn’t have lips, just a slash of an opening. But it acted as she predicted—like a man aware of a woman.

A little more. Amelia gingerly parted her lips. Her tongue touched the edge of paper—the chem. Fortunately for her, it stuck, allowing her to withdraw it enough to grasp it with her teeth.

Snatching it back, she reared away before the golem—Sir Clarence—realized what she had done.

It seemed to know. It looked at the chem, crumpled in her hand, and hissed a final time before slumping over. The light in its eyes dimmed and died.

Amelia stared at the creature for a long moment. The hazy outline blurred, and she realized she was crying.

Whatever Sir Clarence had been in life, he hadn’t deserved becoming this.

And I didn’t deserve what he did to me. That was something she had never admitted to herself before.

She shed a few final tears and resolved that the golem would stay here. She wouldn’t let Gideon take it out. If he insisted on destroying it, he could send men here to do it, but this place—this would be Sir Clarence’s final tomb.

Picking up the hem of her woolen gown, she turned around and walked away, leaving her most terrible memories behind.