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I nod. “If it’s what she wants, yes.”

“And then you can turn Larimar,” Ramsay says to him.

If it’s a success, is what Ramsay doesn’t add, but he doesn’t need to. We all know what hangs in the balance.

“Where’s that knife?” Abe asks. “We need it again.”

Everything after that happens rather fast.

Maren is made to sit down in a chair. There’s a quick discussion of how she should die. At first, Ramsay insists that he’ll stab her in the heart, but then he changes his mind, and Priest says he’ll do it. Then, Abe suggests that a stabbing in the heart might result in instant death, let alone trauma to Maren, so the best way is to sever an artery so that she bleeds out fast. That gives enough time for her to slowly die but not quite pass over.

Of course, while all of this is going on, I’m wrestling with the fact that this was all my idea, and if anything goes wrong, it will be my fault. I wanted to become a Vampyre, but I didn’t want to bring Maren into it this way. I wanted to discuss it with her privately first, to see if it would work on me. I wanted to be the sacrifice, not her.

But that’s not the way it turned out.

And now, I’m so damn scared that maybe this isn’t the best idea. Maybe there needs to be another instance of this working other than the one that Abe provided. Maybe all these hopes about Syren blood taming the monster are just reaching for something.

“I should go first,” I blurt out as Abe holds the knife, set to make a cut along her neck with surgical precision.

Maren gives her head the barest shake, mindful of the blade below it. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have fallen for an immortal anyway. And if it wasn’t for you bringing Aragon into our lives, I wouldn’t have the chance to be with my love forever.”

She turns her gaze to Ramsay and gives him the most adoring look.

He returns it back, ten-fold.

And then Abe slices open her neck.

She cries out, her hands automatically going to her neck to stop the bleeding.

I rush forward on pure instinct, trying to save her, but Thane has his arms around me, holding me back. “Let your lover do his work,” he says in my ear. “Let him save her.”

And so, I watch.

I watch as the blood flows from Maren’s neck and she grows paler, Ramsay holding onto her hand and coaxing her, as if in a reverse birth.

Then, Abe nods at Priest to step forward, just as the light in my sister’s eyes begins to dim, and a dark, shadowy fear enters my heart.

Priest takes the knife from Abe and slices open his wrist.

More blood pours.

He holds his wrist up to Maren’s mouth while Ramsay pries her lips open.

“Drink,” her husband whispers in her ear. “Drink, luv, please.”

And Maren has just enough life in her to swallow.

Thane lets go of me, but I’m holding onto him now for comfort, and we both stand there, watching and waiting and…

Maren’s eyes close.

She stops swallowing.

Crimson trickles from the corner of her mouth.

And then…

She gasps, a god awful, death rattle of a gasp.