The chains had become part of him.
That was the thought that circled Jace's mind in the endless grey of the warehouse. Not attached to him. Not binding him. Part of him. Like his skin, his bones, his heartbeat. He couldn't remember what it felt like to stand without them, to walk without the weight, to exist without the cold kiss of metal on his wrists.
They fed him now. Not because he asked he never asked but because Viktor's men had orders to keep him alive. A tray appeared twice a day. Sometimes he ate. Sometimes he didn't. It didn't seem to matter either way.
The door opened.
Jace didn't look up. He'd stopped looking up. The faces that came and went blurred together guards, strangers, the occasional glimpse of Luca's shattered expression before someone dragged him away. None of it mattered.
But these footsteps were different. Slower. Deliberate. The kind of footsteps that belonged to someone who had nowhere else to be and all the time in the world.
Viktor stopped in front of him.
"Still alive," Viktor observed. "I'm impressed. Most people would have broken by now."
Jace said nothing. His voice felt like a foreign object, unused for so long it had forgotten its purpose.
Viktor crouched, bringing his pale eyes level with Jace's. He reached out and tilted Jace's chin up, forcing eye contact. The touch was almost gentle the gentleness of a predator examining prey.
"Look at you," Viktor murmured. "So hollow. So empty. Damian did quite a number on you, didn't he? And then I finished the job." He smiled. "We make quite a team, Damian and I. Breaking beautiful things."
Jace's throat worked, but no sound came out.
Viktor's thumb traced along his jaw, slow and contemplative. "You know what I don't understand? What he sees in you. You're pretty, yes. But pretty is common. Pretty is everywhere." He tilted his head. "There's something else. Something that made Damian Moreau the coldest man I've ever known throw away an empire."
He released Jace's chin and stood, walking a slow circle around the chair.
"I've been watching you. The way you don't scream. The way you don't beg. The way you sit in those chains like they're just... furniture." Viktor's voice dropped, almost admiring. "You're not broken. Not completely. There's still something in there. Something that keeps you from shattering."
He stopped behind Jace, close enough that Jace could feel the heat of him.
"I want to know what that something is."
Jace closed his eyes. He thought of Damian the way he'd knelt in front of him, trembling, and whispered I love you. He thought of Luca shattered and weeping, destroyed by his own love. He thought of his father, gone but not forgotten, who had taught him that pride was the only thing worth keeping when everything else was stripped away.
"That something," Jace whispered, his voice a raw scrape, "is none of your business."
Viktor laughed a real laugh, surprised and delighted. "There it is. The fire Damian fell in love with." He circled back around, crouching again. "You're going to be fun to break."
"Then break me." Jace met his eyes. "Or stop talking."
Viktor's smile widened. He reached out and, with impossible gentleness, brushed a strand of hair from Jace's forehead.
"Soon," he promised. "But first, I need you to watch something."
He gestured. Two guards stepped forward, wheeling in a cart. On it sat a screen a tablet, connected to something.
Viktor turned it to face Jace.
The screen flickered to life. Damian sat in a white room, white walls, white floor, white light his face hollow, his eyes empty. He was mouthing something, over and over, soundless.
"What's he saying?" Viktor asked softly. "I've been trying to figure it out for hours."
Jace watched Damian's lips move. Watched the shape of the words.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
A sob tore from Jace's throat—the first sound he'd made that wasn't forced, that wasn't performance, that was pure, raw grief.
"There it is," Viktor murmured, satisfied. "That's what I wanted to see."
He turned the screen away, and Jace lunged against his chains, desperate, screaming.
"NO—PLEASE—LET ME SEE HIM—"
Viktor watched him struggle, watched him strain against the metal, watched him fall apart. His expression was clinical, detached, almost bored.
"You want to see him?" Viktor asked. "Then give me what I want."
"What?" Jace's voice cracked. "What do you want?"
Viktor leaned close, his lips brushing Jace's ear.
"I want you to forget him. I want you to look at me the way you look at him. I want you to choose me not because I force you, but because I make you feel something Damian never could."
He pulled back, pale eyes burning.
"Can you do that, Jace? Can you learn to love a monster?"
Jace stared at him, chest heaving, tears streaming down his face.
"Never," he whispered.
Viktor smiled. It was the worst thing Jace had ever seen.
"We'll see."
He stood, gesturing to the guards. "Take him to the other room. The one with the bed. And bring Damian's recording. I want it playing on a loop."
The guards moved forward. Jace fought kicking, screaming, clawing but they were stronger, and the chains made everything harder.
As they dragged him out of the warehouse, past the cart with the tablet, past Viktor's cold smile, one thought echoed in his mind:
Damian. Damian. Damian.
He held onto the name like a prayer, like a lifeline, like the last piece of himself he had left.
And somewhere, in the white room, Damian kept whispering into the void.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Neither of them knew if the other could still hear.
But they said it anyway.
Viktor stood alone in the empty warehouse, the echoes of Jace's screams fading into silence.
He should have felt satisfied. The boy was breaking. Damian was breaking. Everything was going according to plan.
But as he stood there, staring at the chair where Jace had sat for so many hours, he felt something else.
Empty. He felt empty.
He thought of Damian's words in the white room: "You've never loved anything in your life. Not me. Not anyone. Just yourself."
It wasn't true. He had loved Damian. Once. In the beginning, before ambition and hunger and the endless need for more had consumed everything else.
He had loved him, and he had lost him, and he had spent the years since pretending it didn't matter.
But it did matter. It always had.
Viktor turned and walked out of the warehouse, his footsteps echoing in the dark.
He had won. He had everything he'd ever wanted.
So why did it feel like he had nothing at all?