Though it pained me, I had to lie to save my life. "I'll stay."

"Carrie, no!" Nathan shouted, the look on his face as devastated as it had been the night Ziggy died. He was afraid.

Trust me.

I prayed Cyrus wouldn't see through my ruse. "I'll stay," I repeated. "But I have to know I'll be safe."

Pulling the knife away, Cyrus spun me into his arms and crushed me to his chest. "You'll be safe. I swear, nothing will harm you again."

"But I can't trust you." I took the knife from his hand, and he let it go willingly. "You've already sent my heart to the Soul Eater."

Cyrus released me from his embrace. "I'll get it back for you."

The relief on his face speared through my heart. You can't feel guilty. He's got this coming to him, Nathan told me. "I wish I could be sure," I said, both to Cyrus and Nathan.

His gaze flickered from my face to the lacquered box he had cradled so protectively earlier.

Cyrus's father tearing his chest apart.

Cyrus tearing mine.

I knew what lay in that box.

He smiled haughtily at me. "Of course, I knew you'd see reason and come back to me. But I also know you're not foolish. So I've brought some collateral."

He went to the table and lifted the box. "Here. Keep it safe until yours returns. But it will always belong to you."

"What is it?" I asked breathlessly as he slipped the box into my hands.

"My heart."

He pulled me to him and kissed me. I felt a tremendous sadness. I knew what it was to want love and have it constantly elude me.

But Cyrus wasn't like me. Where I had forced myself to fill my life with other things, he had simply tried to force others to love him. In the end, his quest for power and control would be his undoing. Because now that he believed he finally had love, he'd left himself vulnerable.

I lifted the lid of the box with my hand that still gripped the knife. I hesitated only a second, fortifying my courage with memories of every cruelty Cyrus had ever subjected me to. Leaning back, I kissed his cold, bloody cheek. "I'm so sorry, Cyrus."

And I truly was. I was sorry he didn't have a better life, sorry he couldn't have been the man he should have been, and I was even a little sorry I couldn't make myself love him, for his sake. But there was no time for regret. I plunged the knife into the box, through the dried-up object that was his heart.

Cyrus screamed.It was done.

The flames started at his feet, but instead of traveling up his body, they burned from the inside out. He threw his head back with an anguished cry as blinding white flames shot out of his eyes, mouth and nostrils. His skin melted away, revealing the raw muscle beneath. A raging wind filled the room, stripping his bones clean, but still his scream went on and on. I clung to the marble table to keep from being swept away.

Cyrus's bare skeleton hung suspended in the air. A ball of pure, blue flame burned where his heart should have been. Within seconds, the bones reduced to ash and blew away.

The wind stopped abruptly, and I fell to the floor.

"That was, by far, the coolest thing I have ever seen," Max said in awe.

"Shut up, Max." I heard footsteps, then Nathan knelt down and pulled me into his arms. "Carrie, are you okay?"

I couldn't speak. I could only sob.

He crushed me in a hug that would have been smothering if I could have stopped crying to breathe in the first place.

"It's all over," he soothed, stroking my hair. "You did good."

"We have to get her heart back from the Soul Eater," Max said quietly. "Is there someone around here who can help?"

"Dahlia," I said, wiping my eyes. Without questioning me, Max and Nathan helped me to my feet, and we shuffled into the foyer.

Dahlia descended the stairs, her face streaked with tears. "Did you do it?"

I nodded.

"Then come get your heart."

She'd stuffed the grayish object into a Ziploc bag. She held it out to me, and I looked it over with uncertainty.

"That's the one," Nathan called. "I'd know it anywhere."

I took the bag.

"If I ever see you guys again, I'll probably kill you," Dahlia warned.

"Then I hope I never see you again," I said, and I meant every word.

I wanted to ask her if she'd stay at the mansion, or if she'd leave. More important, I needed to know if Clarence would be safe with her, since he'd rather stay here and die than face life outside these walls.

But Nathan and Max already headed toward the door, and I didn't feel like pressing my luck by hanging around any longer.

I didn't look back as we walked down the driveway, but I couldn't help imagining that Cyrus's freed soul glided through the watery afterlife beside me, all the way to the gate.

Twenty-Five

Something Ever After

It was a week before I could get through the day without crying. Most of the time, I stayed in Nathan's room, curled up beneath the covers of his bed.

Nathan stayed at my side when he wasn't overseeing preparations for the reopening of the bookstore. We didn't talk. I don't think I said a word to him until the sixth day, when my depression lifted long enough for me to decide that I had to ask about the vision I'd seen.

"How long were you married?"

Nathan sighed and lay on the bed beside me. "This is one of those unavoidable conversations, isn't it?"

"Yep." I reached for the mug of blood he'd left for me on the nightstand. It had begun to clot, but I drank it anyway, grateful that my appetite had returned.

Nathan cleared his throat. "Almost thirteen years."

"You loved her a lot." I laid my hand over his. I'm here for you. Let me in.

When he looked at me, his eyes were rimmed in red. "I love her."

The present tense shocked me.

He felt it, but he didn't apologize. "I don't want you to think I don't care about you. I do. The blood tie sees to that, I don't have a choice in that matter. But I can't let her go."

"You don't have to." A tear slid down my cheek. "Nathan, do you-" Love me?

"No." He knew what I'd meant to ask him. A glimmer of pain crossed his features. My heart should have turned to stone in my chest, but I knew he wasn't denying me. He was denying himself.

We lay in silence for a few minutes, nothing but tension connecting us through the blood tie. Finally, he rolled to his side to face me. "Now, there's still the question of where you stand with the Movement. Have you given that any more thought?"

Of course. I was about to tell him exactly where he could stick his precious Movement, but the words didn't make it past my lips before he spoke again.

"Because I'm getting out."

I suddenly understood the meaning of the phrase You could have knocked me over with a feather. "Are you serious?"

He laughed. "I've been on probation for more than seventy years now because I killed Marianne. I'll never stop being sorry for it, and if someone walked through that door right now and gave me the chance to switch places with her, I'd do it. But the Movement will never forgive me, and until they stop throwing it back in my face, I'm not going to be able to move on."

There was more. I felt it just below the surface of his regret. But I didn't push. There would be other days for that.

"That's a big change. I'll make one, too. I'll start looking for my own place," I said with a cheerfulness I didn't truly feel.

"No." His declaration was so vehement it scared me. Softer, he elaborated. "Carrie, you're my fledgling. I would never ask you to leave. I don't think I could survive if you did."

"It's not like I can't drop by and visit."

He grasped my hand. "Stay." I knew he couldn't say what he really felt. He didn't know what he really felt. But I did.

A sire had to love his fledgling. It was a painful truth of vampire existence. It was what made the blood tie so unbreakable. I suppose it would have been nice if he would love me without the connection between us, but he was wounded and complicated.

His emotional distance was almost a relief to me.

"You do know there will be consequences." Nathan rested his head against my shoulder. "If I leave the Movement, I'll be marked for death. If you don't join, you'll be, too."

"So I'll go from one death sentence to another. In fact, I've forgotten what it feels like to live without one." I set the mug back on the nightstand and wiggled down onto the pillows.

"What do you say we go out tonight?" he asked suddenly. "You haven't been out of this room for days."

"I could really use a shower," I admitted. "And it will do me some good to see some other people. Not that you're not fabulous in your own way."

"I'll go start the water." He bounded from the bed, a grin on his face.

"Wait," I called after him. When he stopped, I smiled sheepishly. "Bring me my heart?"

He nodded, but appeared confused. While I waited for him to return, I rolled onto my side and waggled my fingers at the goldfish in the bowl. Before, I'd considered his three-second memory span a curse, believing that developing a new outlook on life so often would always end badly.

At the time, I'd never imagined that things might get better with each three-second change, just like I'd never considered becoming a vampire could turn out for the better.

Nathan entered the room, holding the steel box he'd purchased to keep my heart safe. Inside, it was wrapped in layers of gauze and cloth and bubble wrap, and it rested in a nest of foam packing peanuts. Only Max had been privy to the careful packaging, because I'd still been healing from the injuries Cyrus had inflicted on me. Since Nathan had padlocked the box shut and thrown away the combination, I had to take Max's word that it was safe.

Nathan handed the precious package to me, his hands shaking. I smiled. "It's okay. Cyrus's heart survived all those years in a wooden box. Too bad it didn't splinter and kill him."

Nathan cleared his throat and gestured to the box. "What did you want with this?"

I took a deep breath. "I wanted to give it to you."

"No."

"Hear me out." I pressed the box into his hands. "It's staying with you. Not because you're my sire. Not because of the blood tie.

I'm going to stay with you because I trust you. With my life."

He looked away. "You know what I did."

"I do." Marianne's screams and pleas now haunted me, as well. "But I trust you."

Tears shone in his eyes, but they didn't fall. "Thank you. But I can't trust myself."

Later, when the sun had risen and Nathan slept at my side, I took his hand in mine. He'd started wearing his wedding ring again, either as a signal to me to forget about him or as an eternal punishment to himself. I guessed it was the latter.

But his self-inflicted penance was unnecessary. The Soul Eater was still out there, the Movement would soon enough learn of Nathan's defection, and God knew what else lurked on the horizon. I felt pretty confident that there was plenty of stuff out there to beat us down without his guilt having to plague us.

But I wasn't going anywhere.

I opened the drawer of his nightstand and slipped the box inside. I thought about my parents, and for the first time since their accident, I allowed myself to forgive myself. I'd come so far that I no longer recognized the person I used to be. I'd turned down the blind admiration and devotion Cyrus had offered me. I'd rejected his promises of power without consequence, because I now knew that a life without consequences was meaningless. And though I'd done things I wasn't proud of, I didn't regret them. In that regard, I was possibly stronger than Nathan.

Strength isn't about bearing a cross of grief or shame. Strength comes from choosing your own path, and living with the consequences.

And as long as I had the strength to keep living, I was going to do it without regret.