“By not ideal, she means it will definitely work, but it’s crazy. And you’ll probably go along with it. At least, if you’re any kind of fledgling you will.” Max stood and paced behind the couch, but offered no further comment.

“Does someone want to tell me what I’m supposed to be going along with?” I stood and moved away from Cyrus, too aware of his nearness. I knew Max and Bella had noticed it, as well.

So did Cyrus, apparently. He went to the other side of the room entirely, leaning on a bookcase to put as much space between us as he could.

“The Dark Night of the Soul only works if someone has a shameful memory or a regret,” Bella began, looking to Max as though inviting him to jump in anytime. “Max told me you knew better than any of us what that memory would be.”

Cyrus scrubbed a hand over his face, appearing wearier than I’d ever seen him. But I wouldn’t excuse him from hearing what I had to say.

“I got a fly-on-the-wall view of the night Nathan was turned.” I focused on Bella’s clear, unprejudiced eyes. If I looked at Cyrus and saw his remorse, or at Max and saw his anger, I wouldn’t be able to continue. “Cyrus showed me, by combining his blood and Nathan’s. Nathan had taken his wife, Marianne, to see the Soul Eater, thinking he was some kind of faith healer.”

I recounted the whole tale in the graphic details I’d seen, and the back story I’d heard from Nathan himself. Marianne had been young and beautiful once, until cancer had ravaged her body and left Nathan with precious few options to save her. He’d taken his weak and emaciated wife to Brazil on the word of a doctor who’d recommended Jacob Seymour as a faith healer. Nathan couldn’t have known, but the Soul Eater had set a trap for them on the night of the Vampire New Year, a trap Cyrus had helped plan. When they’d arrived, Marianne and Nathan had learned too late the kind of monsters they’d fallen in with. Cyrus had brutally used Nathan in front of his dying wife. I shut my eyes as I recounted his horrified screams and the way he’d pleaded with Cyrus, not to stop for his sake, but to do whatever he wished and only leave Marianne alive.

As I spoke, Cyrus slid to the floor, sobbing openly, and Max glared down at him with hate-filled eyes.

“His father made him do it,” I said quietly when it seemed Max would stalk across the room and tear Cyrus limb from limb. “Leave him be.”