The silence after Selena's heart stopped was absolute and terrible. No breath. No pulse. No circulation through veins that suddenly carried stillness instead of flow. The bone-crown that wrapped her heart had finally constricted completely, had squeezed the organ until it could no longer beat, until the muscle gave up its struggle against bone and simply ceased.
Dante felt it through their binding—felt the moment her heart stopped as if his own heart had stopped, felt the cessation of her circulation as if his blood had frozen, felt her ending as if it were his ending because they'd bound themselves so thoroughly that separation had become impossible, that her death was supposed to trigger his death, that the binding she'd forced should have killed them both simultaneously.
But he didn't die.
