Pistol still pressed into my back, Bourbon hands the knife over and she steps up to the drawer, right across from me. Her gaze flits up to mine. “Help me,” she says quietly, then presses the tip of the blade into the hollow of Helena’s mother’s throat.
The skin peels away with little resistance, like paper off a wrapped package. I hold the flaps in place while Felicity wedges her fingers into the sternum, a jagged crack like a lightning strike down the center from Bourbon’s blow, and gives a sharp wrench with more strength than I knew she had in her. There’s another crack as the ribs snap from the spine. Helena lets out a soft sob.
And there is the heart, raw and red, not so much beating as pulsing, like it’s a throbbing wound. As I hold the skin in place, Felicity makes quick work peeling back the withered husks of the lungs and severing the veins. Each one breaks from the heart with a sound like delicate glass, and with each, the rest of the mother’s body seems to grow less and less alive, as though her whole being is distilled and packed inside her heart.
Felicity forces her hands between the ribs and lifts the heart out, careful as if handling a newborn kitten. I can feel the heat radiating off it, and Felicity’s arms bow against its weight, like it’s a precious stone or the anchor of a ship.
Felicity holds it out to Bourbon, but he steps back, dragging me with him, like he’s white-livered at the thought of being too near it. “Give it to Condesa Robles,” he says. “She’ll carry it from here.”
Helena steps up to meet Felicity, in the empty space between Bourbon and me, and Percy. Helena takes the heart between her cupped hands, so very carefully, like it’s fragile and alive. Her fingers curl around the edges, and a transparent bead of something that is half blood, half light slides from the surface and down the back of her hand.
Helena starts to say something, but Bourbon grabs me from behind and yanks me to him as a shield again. Percy has been inching forward, reaching out like he might pull me to his side as soon as the exchange was made, but he freezes, hand still raised. Felicity darts back to his side, arms wrapped around herself. She leaves fingerprints of the strange, shimmering residue from the heart along her sleeves.
“You’ve what you want,” Percy calls. “Please, let Monty go.” Then, once more for good measure, “Please.”
“No, I’m afraid there was never a chance the three of you would leave this place alive—surely you knew that when you came.”
“This was my fault,” I say. I feel like I’m sagging into him, my strength waning and all my fight to survive eaten up. “Let them go; I stole the box.”
His arm tightens around my throat, choking out my words. “Sorry, my lord. Condesa, back out in the tunnel. Since you’re so keen to keep blood off your hands, we’ll seal them in and they can sink with the island.”
Helena hasn’t taken her eyes off the heart, still cradled between her hands. It casts a faint sheen upon her face from below.
“Condesa,” Bourbon snaps.
Helena raises her face, though it’s not the duke she looks to—it’s Percy. “Do you want this?” she asks him softly.
“Condesa,” the duke says again.
“Do you?” she asks.
“No,” Percy replies.
Bourbon seems to realize what she’s about to do the moment before she moves. As Helena holds the heart toward one of the bowls of flame, he lunges forward, ready to snatch it from her, but finds I’m rather in his way. Our legs tangle up, and he slams into me, sending us both to the ground. My shoulder strikes the stone with a thwack, the pain from impact doubled when he lands atop me.
Bourbon tries to wrestle himself free, his foot ramming me so hard in the stomach I lose my breath, and makes a scramble forward on his hands and knees. He’s clawing toward Helena, and she’s reaching for the flames, the heart between her hands. He’s going to grab her—or it—before she can destroy it, and part of me wants to as well. Reach out and catch that precious thing between my hands and claim it.
But instead, I do the only thing I can think of to stop the duke: I make a fist and wind up, then, at the last second, untuck my thumb from inside my palm and punch him straight in the nose.
And it still bloody well hurts, but it’s loads more effective this time—I feel cartilage crumple beneath my fingers. Bourbon howls with pain as blood pours down his face and splatters the stone, and Helena seizes her moment with maximum panache—she doesn’t just toss, she flings her mother’s heart into the fire.
It catches at once, like it’s been soaked in alcohol. A column of flame jets upward, so searing we all put up our hands, except the duke. He’s still got blood pouring over his lips and dribbling down his chin, but he’s clawing his way forward, like he might pull the remnant from the flames and salvage it. The heat from it blisters his forehead.
I grab him by the coat, trying to yank him backward, and he growls in frustration, taking a blind swipe in my direction with his pistol. The barrel knocks me above the ear, and then he fires, right up against my face. There’s a fantastic bang and I’m slammed into the floor, my head burning. For a moment, I can’t hear a thing but a metallic hum.
A torrent of sparks rises from the fire where Helena dropped the heart, like a weld struck when nearly molten; then another blast of hot air explodes through the room, full of ash and spark and a glittering dust that smells of bone and chemicals. The walls begin to tremble, pebbles sifting from the ceiling and showering us. The lights dance. One of the iron bowls topples, spilling lit kindling. The sound starts to return, though it’s smothered. A low rumble begins to underscore the whistling in my ear.
Felicity’s lips are moving, and I hear her cry, “The tunnel!”
I’m trying to get to my feet and finding it a great deal more difficult than it should be. Percy grabs me by the arm and hauls me up, pulling me after him, one arm wrapped around my waist and Felicity ahead. She wrenches the door open and the three of us clamber through, just as a pillar on the other side tumbles like a felled tree, bones cascading. Percy yanks me out of the way before I’m struck by them.
Helena is close behind us, but in the doorway she turns and screams, “Come on!” I don’t know who she’s talking to until I turn and there’s Bourbon, still on his knees before the fire, clawing at the flames and trying to pry free any fragment of the heart that might be left. Flames are climbing up his sleeves, leaping to his hair, and he’s screaming, but he doesn’t stop.
“Come on!” Helena shouts again. “It’s gone, come now!”
But he isn’t coming—he’s burying himself in this tomb. The doorway crumbles, and Felicity—bless, for I’ve not an ounce of Christian charity left in me for the pair of them—grabs Helena and drags her away.