Page 17

Staggering away, I rushed toward the edge of the pier as Eddie’s voice trailed behind me, frightened and confused. “Wait–Miss–”

My gaze remained locked forward, staring down into the black water below as I stood at the edge of the pier. Without thinking, I threw myself over it, plunging into the cold, dark waters of the Sound. It swallowed me whole, the slick of the glamour’s magic that had coated my skin now gone as I entered the water. My legs fused, black scales erupting across my skin. Gills tore open along my neck, the brackish water filtering through them.

I sank into the darkness.

Down.

Down.

Deeper.

Until the city above me was nothing but a smear of light rippling under the waves.

And then I screamed, guttural and aching.

The sound ripped from my throat, raw, magical, and terrible—the grief-filled wail echoing through the empty waters like a banshee’s cry.

A siren’s call.

I screamed for myself and the life I’d lost. The life that Preston Willows had stolen from me.

I screamed for Eddie, a man I’d known my entire life, someone who had always shown me kindness. A man whose free will I’d ripped away, just as I had wanted to do to his heart.

I screamed for my Dad. My best friend.

Dead. Gone.

I’m alone.

I have nobody.

I am nobody.

The sting of Preston’s last words—damning and painfully true.

Just another dead girl, I repeated in my mind. That was exactly what I was now.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat in the darkness at the bottom of the seafloor. The only thing that pulled me out was the painful stabbing of hunger, a reminder that I hadn’t fed before running off.

I looked up toward the surface, my eyes like stars in the night sky.

The grief hardened and sharpened me. I felt the pain inside my heart aching, coiling around me like barbed wire and cutting into my flesh.

But beneath all of that pain was something far worse: a rage—a fury—a fire burning so hot that I could have burned the entire world down with it. Which is exactly what I was going to do now.

Preston Willows had done this to me. He’d killed me, and for that, I was determined to get my revenge.

But what he’d done to my Dad?

For that, revenge would simply not be enough.

I’ll make him beg me to kill him by the time I’m through with him.

I winced as pain shot through my stomach.

But first, I needed to feed.

And this time—I’d find someone who truly deserved it.