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Evelyn. Layne’s voice broke through, insistent and urging. It’s time…you must end this—now!

He was right. I couldn’t listen to another second of Preston Willows begging for his pathetic life. Not another goddamn moment of looking at his face.

I turned back to Ethan, my gaze meeting his. I needed him to understand, but I knew he wouldn't. “I’m sorry you have to see this,” I whispered, turning back to Preston, my voice cold and final. “But he deserves every ounce of pain.”

My gaze narrowed as I raised my clawed hand, pulling it toward me. The tendrils of water responded, flinging him forward, his body slamming to a stop in front of me.

Preston’s eyes went wide with animalistic terror. “No! Please! I’ll give you anything you want! Money, whatever the fuck you want, Evie.”

My face was inches from his, bloodshot eyes staring back at me as he pleaded for me to spare him. I glared back, my voice as sharp as my claws. “Anything?” I asked.

He frantically shook his head. “Anything! Anything! Whatever you want, it’s yours,” he wept, smiling through the tears and seawater that streamed down his face.

Layne’s voice radiated through my mind, Yes. That’s it. Take it, Evelyn. Now! Do it now!

Shadows radiated off my hand as I reared my arm back. “There is only one thing I want from you, Preston…” I growled. “Your fucking heart.”

My hand plunged into his chest, the magic ripping through him. Shadows and golden light erupted from the magical wound as my hand wrapped around his heart, tearing it from his body.

Preston screamed, ripping through the quiet of the night.

“Evie!” Ethan cried out, stumbling and falling backward as he choked out a gasp.

Preston’s heart pounded in my grasp as the swirling tendrils of inky darkness poured from the rip in his chest. The heart pulsed with a darkness so black I could barely even see it in the night. It was heavier than any other heart I’d fed on before.

This was what I’d been hunting for this entire time. What Layne’s bargain, my curse, had been driving me toward from the beginning.

The quiet death I’d refused in exchange for this moment of revenge—Preston Willow’s heart, nestled tight in my hand.

That’s it, Evelyn—a heart of true darkness. Layne’s voice boomed in my mind, clearer now than ever. Devour. Every. Fucking. Drop.

The black heart erupted as darkness exploded from it, funneling itself into me, unlike any other I’d consumed before.

The rejuvenating feeling of power came at first, but began to slowly wane, and my face contorted. I waited for the rush of energy, the feeling of my well of power filling, but it didn’t come.

Something was different.

Wrong.

The darkness slammed into me like a crashing wave, sweeping me into its undertow. The inky shadows rushed up my arm in a violent torrent, surging through me like ice and fire. Darkness spread through my veins like a creeping poison, black and thick as it burned itself into every inch of my body.

Memories sewn into Preston’s rot crashed over me in waves. His entire corrupted life flooded through my mind. I didn’t just see my own life taken by his hands, I saw many.

Preston’s rotten truth lay bare before me as the visions of all the women he’d hurt, destroyed, and killed flashed through my mind.

Their pain washed over me, their fear and anxiety becoming my own. Within that, Preston’s entitlement and rage wove themselves into me. All the women who’d refused him, their no’s taken as suggestions to a man like him, and the sick pleasure he took as the life faded from their eyes. All of it burned through me like acid.

Darkness continued pouring in, filling every space inside me, until I thought I might burst.

Preston’s body fell to the floor with a heavy thud, lifeless and empty.

As the last of his heart’s darkness funneled into me, it slowly dissolved to black ash, scattering away in the wind in my grasp.

I stumbled back as Preston’s body glowed with shadows and golden light.

Layne, what’s happening? I asked frantically in my mind, but he didn’t respond.

Preston’s body slowly disintegrated, the outer edges flaking away until his body was gone. Within seconds, there was nothing left but the lingering wisps of shadows and ash—the only remnants of Preston Willows—taken away on the ocean’s breeze.