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I stood frozen, watching it all in awe.

Heartbreak didn't want a new vessel. It wanted two vessels in love. Without either one of us, it wouldn't feel love, and without love, it wouldn't find peace. I should have known this would happen. Heartbreak had shown me what it needed and its love for its vessel. Tristan was more than a host to Heartbreak. He was family—brother and father. I couldn't have taken Heartbreak in its entirety even had I wanted to. I wasn't enough for it.

Even as it tore through the room, I found it wondrous. It was beyond magic—a force of nature necessary to life. It wasn't just mindless suffering. It was alive, protective, and devastatingly loyal to the man who had carried it across seventeen centuries.

The room collapsed into madness.

Heartbreak circled the high ceiling, black tendrils cracking like bullwhips against the support beams and smashing Osric's delicate equipment to scrap. Sparks rained down. Warning sirens came from the transformer banks. It snapped its tentacles at Tristan's restraints. The leather cracked, but didn't break. Blood ran from Tristan's nose, his chest heaving as he strained at his bonds.

Several yards away, Fabian emerged from the wreckage of the workbench, looking like a corpse crawling out of his grave. A gash ran across his forehead, blood streaking his face, and his tailored coat hung in tatters. His frantic eyes shot from the violent vortex to me and then to Tristan.

“I was so certain.” Fabian swayed on his feet. “Why does it refuse her?”

“Shut it down!” Osric yelled from behind the console, trying to reach a master breaker while dodging whipping tentacles.

“I know one way to force it into a new host.” Fabian reached beneath his ruined jacket and drew a handgun.

“Tristan!” I screamed, slamming my fists into the barrier.

I remembered Mirana's advice to use my mind, will, heart, and empathy. Taking can be a weapon. And my weapon could surmount any barrier. I fixed my stare on Fabian and reached for him. His emotions created an aura around him I could sense, but I couldn't move past it. I needed to touch him to go deeper.

No! I could do this. Just because I'd never tried before didn't mean it wasn't possible. I'd felt my father's pain and Tristan's. I could reach Fabian. I had to. Love hardened my will into a spike, and I drove my mind straight into the storm of Fabian’s psyche.

The impact almost brought me to my knees. His mind was a nightmare of rotting bitterness, madness, and suffocating hatred. But beneath the thick crust of his obsession, buried deep under the malice, was the root: an eight-year-old girl with dark curls, burning with fever in his arms.

I didn't try to erase his pain. I didn't try to excuse Tristan. Instead, I used my empathy to strip away the centuries of distorted venom, forcing Fabian to feel the pure, unadulterated truth of his grief. I held the memory of Ismah up to his heart, washing it with quiet, tender sorrow—the love of an older brother, stripped of its poison.

The cost tore through my body. A sharp, burning ache exploded behind my eyes. I fell to the ground, and my vision swam with dizzying nausea as I absorbed the psychic recoil of his nine-hundred-year-old agony. This wasn't a force I could balance with my love. I couldn't accept it and mute the pain. All I could do was take it.

Across the room, Fabian gasped. His hand on the gun trembled violently. The manic fury in his eyes dissolved into sorrow. Tears carved tracks through the grime on his face as he looked at the ceiling, seeing not his enemy, but the little girl he had failed to save.

“Ismah . . .” he choked out.

But the sudden shift terrified him. The sheer shock of feeling his sister's loss without the armor of his hatred sent him into a blind, desperate panic. Knowing his vengeance was slipping through his fingers, his finger tightened on the trigger.

He was still going to shoot.

I had done all I could for Fabian. Refocusing, I ripped my empathic senses away from him and slammed them into Osric. Now, that I'd learned the way, it was easier.

Osric was crouched behind the console—calculating, cold, and entirely driven by possessive vanity. I found the core of his emotion: his desperate need for control, his terror of losing his prize, and the sudden, creeping horror that Tristan’s death would unleash Heartbreak permanently, obliterating the lab and killing Osric. Above all, Osric wanted to live.

I wanted to amplify his fear, but I didn't know how. All I knew was how to take. But taking could be a weapon. I had to target the emotions holding his fear in check. So, I latched onto his core of calm, his control, and ripped it away. As I grew calmer, steadier, Osric descended into panic. Breathing in deeply, I straightened my spine and pulled harder.

“No!” Osric shrieked, lost without his control. “You fool, you'll kill us all!”

Acting on pure, instinctual terror instead of his usual cold reasoning, Osric lunged from behind the console and threw himself against the operating table just as Fabian pulled the trigger.

The gunshot boomed.

The steel table flipped onto its side, taking Tristan with it. The bullet struck the corner of the metal surface with a ping, ricocheted off the dividing ward, and buried itself in the concrete wall.

The impact of the table crashing to the floor broke the compromised leather straps, and Tristan rolled free. He scrambled back behind the table for cover.

Fabian turned on Osric with a roar of fury. “Traitor!”

The two witches collided violently, grappling for the gun beneath the thrashing shadow of Heartbreak. Osric fought with the feral desperation of a man trying to save his own skin, wrestling Fabian’s arm toward the ceiling.

A second shot rang out.