I shifted uncomfortably. "Bella said that if you didn't feel guilty anymore, since Marianne forgave you—"

The teakettle gave a low, mournful whistle, and I hurried to remove it before our dinner burned.

"Well, that sounds simple enough. But it's not easy to forget that you've killed the woman you loved." His voice startled me. I hadn't heard him come into the kitchen.

More startling was the fact he'd said "loved," past tense. Though the look on his face made it clear he'd done so on purpose, I didn't know if he was trying to make me believe it, or himself. I took two mugs from the cupboard and poured the blood into them. "Maybe, since we're trying to make these great strides in our personal relationship, you could talk to me about it."

"I could." He took his mug and headed back to the living room.

I ground my teeth. "Well, are you going to?"

When I followed him, I found him sitting in his chair again, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. "The Soul Eater is my sire. He knows everything about me."

"Through the blood tie?" It seemed so strange, that although Nathan and his sire were enemies, they were still bound, "Do you hear him?"

He looked up, his eyes rimmed in red from fatigue. "If he wants me to. And he can hear me. He knows how to hurt me. He did it with Marianne, and he could do it again."

"With your memories of Ziggy?" The thought hadn't crossed my mind until now. No wonder he was afraid. "Nathan, if that happens, we know how to stop it. You won't have to go through what you did before."

"When he put that spell on me, I didn't know it was a spell. I was reliving the night I killed Marianne, over and over. I could live with it, because it isn't as though I hadn't already lived it on my own every night. But Ziggy…" Nathan looked away. "Once was enough."

"The Soul Eater was only able to control you because you felt responsible for Marianne's death. You're not responsible for Ziggy dying," I pointed out.

He laughed bitterly. "Have you noticed my habit of blaming myself for things I can't control?"

I remembered the look in Nathan's eyes as he'd pleaded with me outside Cyrus's mansion to keep Ziggy safe, and the way he'd cradled his dying son in his arms when I failed. If Nathan was peripherally responsible for Ziggy's death, I was the central figure in his demise. I'd been the one who'd inadvertently marked him for death.

"You could blame me," I said quietly, but I added a smile in case Nathan was more comfortable interpreting it as a joke. "I had more of a stake in it than you did."