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With my confirmation, he presents two boxes to me, tied neatly with white lace bows—the edges stained in crimson.
“Don’t touch,” he orders as he yanks on the end of one of the ribbons and the cardboard flaps unfold at a snail’s pace.
It’s a ceremonial unveiling.
And the room morphs into a frightening funhouse around me—bits and pieces of this eerie monument to past devotion, dancing with flashes of an exploding Dodge Viper and an indestructible ship that succumbed to an unforgiving sea.
All of it swirls and spins until the box pops open and a blackened muscle greets me.
“The hearts,” Liam explains.
Ahh … now, the when someone rips your heart out comment from him makes sense. Easton used me, played me, and let my brother die. And Pruitt orchestrated that murderer’s return at the expense of my capture and, most likely, my eventual death.
They shattered the most vulnerable piece of me, so Liam stole it from them.
It’s a new slant on romantic overtures. But fitting.
My own heart thrashes everywhere—temples, throat, ribs, toes—beating with a zealous vigor.
In part due to the grotesque nature of the repulsive organ staring back at me, urging me to pass out, to leave this wake behind.
But also because, surprisingly, I respect this for what it is—a gift. After Ben died, I barely noticed this thumping rhythm inside my chest. It was weak and aching and primarily a source of torment—the very reason I sought out heart palpitations through thrilling expeditions.
So, the Lancasters’ hearts, cut out and shoved in a box, seem apropos.
Even more so when I consider Ben—the future he lost, the moments ripped from us, the fire that has consumed my family. For him, I can swallow any distaste and celebrate the modicum of restitution this provides.
Maybe, in some twisted way, I was made for this.
To play their game.
Ignoring my lightheadedness, I spin on my heel to face the half-moon of knights. “On behalf of my family, I thank you for slaying the bastards responsible for my brother’s death and the peril I recently faced. I am profoundly grateful. I’ll present these hearts to my parents. I know they’d want me to extend my appreciation.”
The room dissolves into exuberant rejoicing. It seems I passed.
Ivy and the guys all embrace me but also do their best to mingle so we can conclude our obligatory meeting and go home. I flatter and hobnob with the other KORT chairs, my refined social decorum in overdrive, as though being presented an engagement gift of two men’s organs is entirely normal. And as they all scatter into conversation and Liam anchors me to his side, an overwhelming haze descends upon me.
It isn’t the horrid atrocity I just witnessed or Ben’s death or my parents’ approval that has my mind rollicking through a frenzy of thoughts. None of the usual stressors are plaguing me, and neither is this drafty sanctuary with its emblems of carnage.
It’s my warfare with choices—how, since I was a preteen, I viewed them as a suffocating restraint. Soon, that constraint warped into a noose, framed by impeding death. Even the examples I held on to from my Catholic CCD classes screamed of it.
Eat the forbidden fruit or ignore the slithering snake licking at your neck.
Never look back or turn to salt.
Obey the king’s absurd edict or be devoured by lions for your convictions.
Whether regarding temptation, an inability to let go, or an unwillingness to cave to someone’s narcissistic control, all of it resulted in a measure of death.
Death of self or spirit or dreams.
Hope.
I held that long before Ben died. At least a decade before my morbid fascination with the SS Thistlegorm. It was always there, etched into my bones. Perhaps that’s why it was so easy for me to relinquish control over my future and extinguish any flickering desires. On some level, I always expected to bury a part of myself.
But oddly, standing in a sanctuary transformed to glorify executions, I am utterly liberated.
My fingers glide over Liam’s jaw, his golden scruff prickling my palm with a delightful tingle. He splays his hand across my lower back, pressing me against him as his midnight-forest hazels—glimmering like sea glass tonight—teem with so much love that it cocoons me inside a contentment I’ve never known.
