I ran out of the room, to the front door, ignoring Cyrus’s call of, “Carrie, wait!” I took the steps two at a time, burst through the door at the bottom before I took a breath. I dragged the chilled night air into my lungs, wanting to drown in it. From here, I couldn’t hear Nathan crying out, but the memory haunted me. It was worse now that I knew what caused it. The thought of Nathan forced to kill his wife every second, the wife he still loved so much he could not let her go, was too much for me to fathom. I stumbled to the van parked at the curb and leaned my forehead against the side, not bothering to stop the shuddering sobs that racked my body.

Behind me the door opened and closed, and I knew it was Cyrus just from the sound of his footsteps. He put one hand on my shoulder, and I spun at his touch, startling him.

“I don’t think you’ll become a monster,” I blurted, a bit too loudly, but I didn’t care who heard. I just needed to get some of the crushing, confusing emotion off my chest. “I don’t want you going to him because I don’t want you to die! I don’t know what I’d do if—” I choked on the rest of my words, but they echoed in my head. If I lost you again.

Though I hadn’t spoken them, Cyrus heard them. He stared at me, hard, his blue eyes, which had always looked so cold boring into me with an intensity he could have been pretending.

I thought of Nathan upstairs, struggling and in pain. I thought of the agony Cyrus must be going through, over what his father had done to him and the girl in the desert. I wanted the pain to be somehow deeper in me, fearing I wasn’t feeling it enough to truly understand. And then I realized that was all I had been doing—feeling all that horror and guilt until it felt normal, numb.

When Cyrus kissed me this time, it wasn’t passion and anger overcoming him. His hands tangled in my hair, his mouth crushed against mine as if through touching me he could erase my pain. He did care that he had hurt me in the past, and now he sought to make up for that.

I didn’t resist him. I still loved Nathan. He was my sire; it was impossible not to feel something for him. But too much lay unresolved between Cyrus and me. It wasn’t betrayal, it was closure.