“Yes,” I whispered again.

He stayed still. Silent. And dead.

And, inside my chest, my own heart at last ripped itself in two.

EIGHTY-THREE

Lucas

No sooner had I done it than I realized it had been the wrong plan.

He’d been wrong. I had been wrong.

Seeing Stephanie draped over the now empty shell, I also understood the most important fact of all. Something I had overlooked perhaps because I simply had not wanted to believe it.

Stephanie loved him back.

Erik must have been telling the truth about wanting to keep Stephanie safe. But her current state told me he’d been wrong to think she had mistaken his love for her own. Would he have asked me to do what he had if he’d known?

“Stephanie, I’m sorry,” I told her as I neared her, still not certain if she would hear me. At first, she didn’t look at me. “He . . . told me to.” I touched her arm, but she jerked away, confirming what I’d feared. That she could now only hate me as deeply as she had cared for him.

The next instant, though, she pulled away from the body. She stood and, flinging her arms around me, she sobbed into my chest.

“He told me to,” I whispered again, my own voice cracking as I embraced her in return. “I didn’t realize.”

The truth was, I hadn’t wanted to realize.

But how did I apologize for that?

I looked over to where Rastin sat exhausted on the floor. But instead of watching me or Stephanie, his own stare roved over the walls of the conservatory, the mostly decapitated roses, the vines of which still clung to the glass.

He shook his head once, like something about that—the roses specifically—didn’t add up.

The others now filed in through the door of the conservatory that Stephanie had left open. The one that her link with Erik must have allowed her to open. Patrick frowned at Charlotte, who took the scene in with as much sorrow and shock. Wes’s eyes flicked to me and Stephanie.

Rastin started to rise, and Patrick hurried to help him to his feet.

As Rastin stood, he nodded once to Stephanie, then lifted a finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” I soothed Stephanie, rubbing her back and drawing her slowly away from the body, which Rastin approached with caution, his movements stiff and difficult, one hand over his own heart.

He knelt beside Erik. But, as if Stephanie had sensed something was amiss, she pushed from me, turning on the medium.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. Gently, I held her back. “Don’t touch him,” she snapped as Rastin lifted free the dagger that I’d thrust through the mummy’s heart.

She pulled from me again, and this time I let her go. She approached him—Erik—and retook her own kneeling spot next to Rastin.

“The vines,” Rastin told her. He gestured toward the glass walls with the blade, his voice marveling. “They live.”