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Fuck. My throat bobbed.

“I can't bear to see what it’s doing to you. Every deepening feeling you have for him is just another nail in his coffin.” His hands gripped my waist, firm and sure. “You’re on the path of losing someone else you don’t deserve to lose.”

He leaned in until his lips grazed mine. “Mortals are bound to the rules of the curse…I am not.”

His words were a wave crashing over me, dragging me down into its undertow. Layne had been a thorn in my side from the very start, but there was no denying he understood what it meant to be a monster.

Alone.

Silenced.

Trapped in your own darkness.

Something that Ethan simply would never understand.

“That life is gone, Evelyn,” he murmured. Layne tilted my face towards him, his breath warm against my lips. “The human you once were is dead. You have to stop chasing after something you’re never going to get back.”

My stomach knotted. He was right. I knew he was right, but I hated it. I couldn’t help how strongly I felt for Ethan. But continuing down that path would only damn him—and he didn't deserve that.

The life I wanted to have with Ethan wasn't possible. It never had been, and I’d been allowing him to chase a ghost this entire time like a goddamn fool.

That version of myself had drowned in the Sound and was never coming back.

My hands trailed across his back, the scarred muscles rough against my fingertips. Layne Murrows was the man who saved me. This was a man who wanted me. A man who was so close to me right now that I could practically taste his words on my tongue.

Yes, he could be obnoxious and at times, even downright cruel, but there was something more below all of that darkness.

But the worst thing about Layne Murrows—the thing I hated to admit most of all—was that despite everything, I fucking wanted him.

Ever since the night at the Drowned Tree, after almost kissing him, I’d known. It had haunted me every day since, and all I’d done was run from it.

So yes, I admitted it. I wanted him.

All of him.

Layne’s hands gripped tighter around my waist, as if he could sense the admission from my body’s response. “You are powerful, Evelyn Graymore,” he growled into my ear. “A fucking queen.”

“Then stop calling me princess,” I said, the words came out breathy, but stern.

Layne’s face pulled back, something shifting in his eyes—surprise? Maybe. Respect, most likely.

“As you wish…” His voice dropped lower as he gazed into my eyes. “My queen.”

I should have hated how it sounded, but I didn’t. Too long had I dealt with the fuckery of men. They owed me the respect I deserved, and if they refused to give it?

Then I’ll fucking take it.

I grabbed his face, pulling him towards me. “And you don’t own me,” I said, my voice a command.

“No,” he said, his lips ghosting across mine. “You are your own…but I’d kneel for you anyway.”

Fire flooded through my veins as I fell into his gaze. This man of shadows had dragged me from the darkest depths of death, watched me fight, struggle, and fall for another man I could never have. Only to be in front of me now, lips inches from my own, proclaiming me to be his queen.

At that moment, it was all so clear.

The truth was that Layne and I were just two monsters, colliding together in the deep. A set of broken people, reaching out for each other in this eternal abyss, and I was tired of fighting it.

So this time—I didn’t.