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“Does it hurt?” Ryden whispered, wiping Mason’s tears away. Mason nodded with a sniffle. “It would have hurt them as well, wouldn’t it? You wanted to break her, like you broke them.” Ryden motioned to me. “And this is your punishment for looking at Yara and thinking, oh, I’d love to kill her. No one covets my woman, Mason. No one is allowed to look at her and even think about hurting her.”

Ryden plunged his knife into Mason’s arm.

My demons loved how Ryden looked right now.

“Do you want to die now?” I whispered.

His head bobbed up and down frantically, eyes filled with tears.

“Ye-yes.”

“See. That’s called consent. How easy would it have been to ask?” I glared at him. “Consent isn’t rocket science. You should have remembered the consequences before you took their choices away.”

Mason whimpered, but I was already done listening.

With one clean slice along his jugular, the fight drained out with his blood.

“Ah. Sweet justice.” I wiped the knife.

We quickly cleaned and prepped Mason. Cut. Saw. Wrap. Repeat. Until Mason was nothing but a butchered animal, packed tightly in plastic.

Soon, he’d be ash.

The car ride, despite the threat hanging around us, was peaceful.

We stopped in front of the crematorium.

“Irene…” I looked at Ryden.

“Won’t be here. Enzo is babysitting her. And also, Irene has a massive crush on Enzo,” Ryden said as he hauled the garbage bag into the crematorium.

I blinked, processing the words before trailing behind him a few seconds later, my shoes scraping against the floor in the silence.

“Are you sure about that?”

“It’s just a crush,” Ryden said, his tone confident. “She doesn’t even realize it herself.”

“And you do?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “You aren’t an expert, you know?”

Ryden paused, setting the bag down with an audible thud. He turned to look at me, his expression unreadable.

“I am.”

I raised a brow, crossing my arms. “Really? Since when?”

“It’s the only reason I’ve ever said no to you when you first tried to seduce me. Because I knew. I knew once I jumped in, there would be no out. No going back.”

Ryden switched something on without turning to look at me, and then dumped Mason’s body inside the incinerator. The fire crackled, hungry to savor the remains.

In the sound of flames nibbling at Mason’s flesh, Ryden’s voice was almost swallowed by the sound of fire. “Because I knew you wouldn’t fall just as easily as I would.”

I couldn’t say a word to that.

“You liked the thrill of chasing me, bending me, breaking me. It’s an adventure. I liked looking at you, seeing you smile, hearing you say my name. It’s my new life.”

“Fuck, Ryden.”

“I fear you’d get tired of me someday and—” The silence swallowed the rest of his words as he stared at the picture hung in the corner of the room.