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“Celia, stop this nonsense,” Iris snapped.

“I recognize Helen as the Master of Harrow,” Desmond said. “I am the descendant of Nicholas Vaughan. I recognize her.”

“Desmond, Celia, what do you think you’re doing?” Victoria demanded, but her voice was filled more with fear than anger, and she fell back from them as the thing she was most afraid of wasthis: her children not doing what they were told.

“I am the Witch of Harrow,” Bryony said, voice fierce and steady, and she grinned. “I am Annalise Vaughan’s successor, and I recognize Helen as the Master of Harrow.”

“You aren’t family. That doesn’t count,” Iris snapped, but she looked uncertain.

“I see no reason why it shouldn’t. Nothing in the ritual that says they have to be Vaughans,” Eli said with a grin.

“You son of a bitch. You planned this,” Caleb said, turning on Eli.

“Not in the least. She planned it herself,” he said cheerfully.

“You thought that you’d set a trap for me, but you were the ones in the spiral,” I said.

“Caleb—” Iris said. Caleb was already moving. He had the knife.

I reached to stop him, but he was stronger than me. He lunged and wrapped an arm around my shoulders as he drove the knife between my ribs.

Agony coursed through me. I tried to scream and choked on frothy blood. He’d hit my lung. I could feel the dark soul trying to repair the damage, but it was far too slow. My body couldn’t sustain itself, and I’d sleep again and be lost, and it would all be for nothing.

They had killed us. Over and over and over again, they’d killed us and hurt us and made us do wicked things. Every one of those girls had been stolen and broken and cast aside. Harrow was stained with generations of blood, and we had witnessed it all, had suffered it all.

No more.

“All things end,” I whispered, as the pain flashed through nerve endings I no longer needed. My skin was turning to smoke, my body dissolving into the air. “It’s time for Harrow to fall.”

I was the darkness, and the darkness did not know pain.

But I was Helen, too, and the knife was in my chest, and I was afraid.

Caleb twisted the knife, gasping as cold sank into him liketeeth. “I am the Master of Harrow,” he said. “You are nothing. You are a lie. You’re the reason all those girls are dead.” The knife dug deeper.

Desmond held Celia back as tears coursed down her cheeks. Bryony was weeping, too, but she met my eyes, and when she whispered, it was as if she were speaking in my ear.

“You are the stars themselves, Rabbit. Be the stars.”

I shut my eyes. I took one last breath, more fluid than air, and my whole body shuddered with pain. I was the dark soul, but not fully. Not yet. Not while I was still Helen.

And so I let her go.

My body vanished into the dark, dissolving into smoke. Caleb stumbled forward, as without my skin and flesh and bones, the false division betweenmeanditandusgave way. I was everywhere and nowhere. I wasn’t in Harrow anymore—IwasHarrow. Its master, its captive, its soul.

I was power, pure and elemental. I was a century and a half of suffering and loss, and my tormentor stood before me. He had named them all, that line of greedy, violent men, and added his own name to their ranks.

I could see every corner of his soul. Caleb Vaughan was a righteous man, a kind man. He had told himself that nothing he did to me was out of vengeance. That even when he pressed a cup of poison to his daughter’s lips, it was an act of love and of duty.

Caleb Vaughan was a righteous man, and I burned him hollow. His body fell, limp and lifeless. There was no pain. He’d promised me that, and so I offered it to him as well. A hundred years and more of rage burned in me, but I had been given one short life tolove and be free, and it was enough to teach me a small measure of mercy. A small measure—and no more.

Iris was backing up from the place where I’d stood, holding up her hands as if to ward me off, but I wasn’t there anymore. I was everywhere.

I tore the withered soul from Iris Vaughan and choked on the bitter taste of her.

Victoria screamed, scrambling for Caleb’s dropped gun. I moved toward her, but suddenly, Desmond was in my way, eyes roving blindly in the darkness. He couldn’t see me, but he knew I was there.

“Helen, stop,” he said, hand outstretched.