So, I spent the day walking through the whole of Moldavia, waiting for him. To come to grips with the fact that I’d seen exactly what he was.

Disgust and terror should have caught up to me by now—sent me into the tailspin I’d been so worried would overtake me. But the moment that heart had found its home, all my fear of losing control, of losing my mind, had fallen away. Something inside of me had clicked.

Last night, he’d left me standing there in the conservatory. I’d let him go, too, stepping aside as he’d brushed passed me. Because, well, he had let me go. Released me when I’d needed him to. And the way he’d caught my elbow, keeping us connected that way . . .

While I did believe he’d wanted me to remove the rose, I also now believed he’d held me those few extra moments for the same reason he’d allowed me to touch him in the first place.

How long had it been since he’d experienced any tenderness?

That question repeated itself the most during the quiet hours that passed between the sunless dawn and the early afternoon, all part of the same unending night.

Then, just when I thought I’d have to stoop to calling out to him in order to get him to come back and speak to me, another shift took place in my chest. One that told me he’d come back and that he was near again.

Jumping up from the velvet-upholstered balloon chair on the second floor, I hurried down the hall and to the top of the grand staircase. Stopping there, my heart hammered at the sight of him standing below in the foyer.

He still wore the split iron mask whose name I’d yet to ask, even though I didn’t really need to. Wasn’t it obvious which part of him this mask represented? The divide itself. That narrowing rift between his worst self and his best.

“You’re back,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied.

“You were gone for an entire day.”

He only nodded, causing anger to wind through my confusion.

“It was so quiet here. Your masks . . . they’re all gone now. Not that I missed them, but for a while I felt like I might go crazy.”

“Yes,” he said again through a soft laugh that kept me from breaking and unloading on him, berating him for abandoning me to this empty tomb of a house. Because that “yes” held too much understanding. I’d been alone for one day. Him, though . . .

“Why?” I asked.

This time when he spoke, he angled toward me. “All morning it has rained. The snow that has fallen on this side of Moldavia for over a century has begun to melt. Previously, the moths could be found around any corner on the property. Yet they have vanished. There are now live roses growing in the conservatory. My masks are, as you have already observed, nowhere to be found.” He gestured to his chest. “My plague of blood is gone. What is more, I feel your presence in this house. I can tell where you are. No heart has ever done so much. Because of that, I am certain it all bodes something catastrophic.”