The scars on Dante's chest were still glowing faintly when Selena felt something shift inside her own body. At first, she thought it was simply exhaustion—she had poured so much of her bloodfire into burning away the King's curse that she felt hollow, scraped clean like a bowl emptied of its contents. But this was different. This wasn't depletion. This was transformation.
The remnants of the heart of bone, which had been dissolving gradually since she and Dante fused their powers, suddenly accelerated their disintegration. She gasped as she felt the last fragments crumbling, turning to dust inside her chest cavity. It should have killed her—without the artifact, her damaged heart had no support, no magical reinforcement keeping it functional. She should be dying for the third or fourth time today.
But she wasn't.
