Pulling the knife away, Cyrus spun me into his arms and crushed me to his chest. “You’ll be safe. I swear, nothing will harm you again.”

“But I can’t trust you.” I took the knife from his hand, and he let it go willingly. “You’ve already sent my heart to the Soul Eater.”

Cyrus released me from his embrace. “I’ll get it back for you.”

The relief on his face speared through my heart. You can’t feel guilty. He’s got this coming to him, Nathan told me. “I wish I could be sure,” I said, both to Cyrus and Nathan.

His gaze flickered from my face to the lacquered box he had cradled so protectively earlier.

Cyrus’s father tearing his chest apart.

Cyrus tearing mine.

I knew what lay in that box.

He smiled haughtily at me. “Of course, I knew you’d see reason and come back to me. But I also know you’re not foolish. So I’ve brought some collateral.”

He went to the table and lifted the box. “Here. Keep it safe until yours returns. But it will always belong to you.”

“What is it?” I asked breathlessly as he slipped the box into my hands.

“My heart.”

He pulled me to him and kissed me. I felt a tremendous sadness. I knew what it was to want love and have it constantly elude me. But Cyrus wasn’t like me. Where I had forced myself to fill my life with other things, he had simply tried to force others to love him. In the end, his quest for power and control would be his undoing. Because now that he believed he finally had love, he’d left himself vulnerable.

I lifted the lid of the box with my hand that still gripped the knife. I hesitated only a second, fortifying my courage with memories of every cruelty Cyrus had ever subjected me to. Leaning back, I kissed his cold, bloody cheek. “I’m so sorry, Cyrus.”

And I truly was. I was sorry he didn’t have a better life, sorry he couldn’t have been the man he should have been, and I was even a little sorry I couldn’t make myself love him, for his sake. But there was no time for regret. I plunged the knife into the box, through the dried-up object that was his heart.

Cyrus screamed.

It was done.

The flames started at his feet, but instead of traveling up his body, they burned from the inside out. He threw his head back with an anguished cry as blinding white flames shot out of his eyes, mouth and nostrils. His skin melted away, revealing the raw muscle beneath. A raging wind filled the room, stripping his bones clean, but still his scream went on and on. I clung to the marble table to keep from being swept away.

Cyrus’s bare skeleton hung suspended in the air. A ball of pure, blue flame burned where his heart should have been. Within seconds, the bones reduced to ash and blew away.