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“It’s just the shell of her, but that’s all a man wants from a woman anyway,” she says, and she touches the bottle around her neck, the purple smoke swirling inside of it. “I’m keeping her soul safe, right here.”

I look back to Maren in horror. Her body is being used to kill me while her soul is in Edonia’s necklace, perhaps watching the whole thing.

“No,” I tell her, pleading. “No, don’t do this. Maren, luv, princess, I know you can hear me.”

But her claws are now piercing my skin, stinging me, the blood rising up in the water and Edonia is laughing and laughing, about to watch my heart get ripped out and eaten right in front of me by the woman I love.

And then Edonia’s laughter stops.

Maren keeps digging her claws in me, not tiring in the least, but I turn my head as the sand starts to spill over my neck and look to the sea witch.

There’s another sea witch behind her, holding the book in her hands.

“What are you doing here?” Edonia cries out when she sees her.

“Righting some wrongs,” Nerissa says to her and then opens the book and begins to read in Latin.

Edonia cries out, “No!” and lunges for the book, but a pack of barracudas come out from behind Nerissa and fire into Edonia like bullets, peppering her body with sharp stabs of their mouths, keeping her at bay.

“Maren animam tuam liberabo!” Nerissa shouts hastily, snapping her fingers.

Edonia lets out a panicked scream, trying to grab her necklace but one of the barracudas snatches it in its mouth and it dangles from its jagged teeth as it brings it over to Nerissa.

With Maren still trying to kill me—I can feel her claws wrapping around my heart, ready to rip it out—Nerissa quickly takes the necklace and uncorks the tiny bottle, the purple smoke turning to liquid and leaving the vessel, heading straight for Maren.

“Hang on Bones!” Nerissa yells at me.

“Not as easy as you think,” I manage to say, gasping in agony as I feel the tips of Maren’s claws graze the wall of my heart.

I’m not prepared to meet my end.

CHAPTER40

Maren

I’m aboutto rip Ramsay’s heart out.

I had watched the scene unfurl from the captivity of Edonia’s bottle, trapped for what was supposed to be an eternity, unable to do a damn thing about it. I watched as Ramsay showed up, swimming out of the reef like a knight in shining armor, his broadsword at his side, stark determination on his handsome face, and I’d never felt more in love with him than I was in that moment. I knew the things that Edonia told me about him killing my mother could have been true. I knew that Ramsay has had a ruthless past when it comes to killing people, Syrens or otherwise. But at that moment, none of that mattered. I loved him, truly, madly, deeply.

But the body of the creature I was, the one that Edonia controlled, was fueled by my rage and for the first time in my life, I became separate from that inferno that always bubbled inside me. I was able to watch my rage as something else, something I couldn’t control, and I realized that it should never be separated. My rage is a part of who I am, not something to bury and not something to blindly let loose either. It’s something to make peace with, a part of being human.

And yet in those moments, all I wanted to was to rein it in. It looked like the mindless killer that Edonia created, the product of my own rage unfettered, was about to pull Ramsay’s heart out of his chest and eat it.

Then Nerissa appeared, taking the book from Edonia when she wasn’t looking, when she was too focused on Ramsay’s demise, and she recited the words that set my soul free.

But now, back in my Syren body, I’m horrified that it might be too late. Ramsay is beneath me, staring up at my face in agony, blood rising up from the wounds I’ve created, my claws sunken in all the way through his chest, ready to pull out his heart and…

In an instant I soften. Love softens me. My claws dissolve back into nails, my teeth dull, and the rage that was driving me thaws to where I’m able to wrestle it aside.

“Ramsay!” I cry out, removing my fingers from the gaping wounds I created in his chest. I stare down at my fingers, my breath catching, as I make sure his heart is still where it belongs. There’s only his blood on my hands, nothing else.

He lets go of my arms and then grabs my face, pulling me down toward him. He kisses me with desperation, holding me against him so tight that I can’t move.

“I’m sorry I tried to kill you,” I manage to say, pulling away, my lips moving against his.

He grins, that beautiful, utterly handsome grin, letting out a burst of laughter that escapes into bubbles. “If I have to go, I’d rather it be by your hands, my luv.”

I kiss him again, then I hear a growl that echoes through the water and snaps us out of our reunion. I straighten up, then pull Ramsay out of the sand.