“Do you remember the name of the spell Bella told us about last night?” Max asked, the proverbial look that could kill on his face.

Cyrus and Bella answered at the same time, in two different languages. Cyrus’s words were the ones I could understand. “Dark Night of the Soul.”

Fully awake now, Bella stood beside Max and tried to take the book. “You are going the wrong way, it is in the back!”

I turned to Cyrus, dismayed to see he wore only a towel draped low across his hips. “We think we know what your father is doing to Nathan.”

“I told them exactly what he’s doing. They didn’t believe me, until she ran across it in that blasted book.” He rolled his eyes. “Apparently, my word is only good if I can back it up with written proof.”

“What is he doing?” I took his hands in mine, not caring what Max would think. “Please, Cyrus. I have to have him back.”

“Do you love him?” The words sucked the air out of the room. Even Max and Bella stilled.

I swallowed what felt like a ball of razor blades. “Does it matter?”

We stared at each other a long moment. In Cyrus’s eyes, I saw the hurt he felt at losing the girl in the desert, and the hurt he would feel if he thought there was no chance I’d ever return to him.

I felt the word leave my lips before I thought to say it. “Yes.” The admission sliced something open inside me, and I felt the poison that had festered there for the past two months spill free and evaporate. “Yes, I do love him.”

Whatever had opened in me corresponded to something closing off in Cyrus. He shrugged as though indifferent to the entire conversation, and looked away. “Dark Night of the Soul goes way back. It started out as a spell to test the faith of a shaman or mystic. Basically, it forces them to live the most troubling, painful moments of their life over and over. The only thing that keeps them from going mad is the strength of their mind and their belief in the training they’ve received. For example, a very religious person might call on the Judeo-Christian God for strength when enduring such a trial, and their very faith would break the spell.” He stopped, a hard set to his jaw, but the emotion in his eyes was unreadable.

“But if you used it on someone who had no hope to begin with…” I knew instantly what Nathan’s Dark Night entailed. “He’s killing her.”

“Over and over again,” Cyrus agreed grimly. “Father wouldn’t let him off too easily.”

“But why?” Bella asked, looking up for a moment from the book. “What purpose does it serve to make him insane?”