The locket sits in my palm, my blood consumed.
Then it begins to glow.
My heart beats harder as the locket shudders … and opens.
A drop of shadow laced with thin veins of pulsing red floats inside.
A tiny black beating heart.
Ancient.
Hungry.
Waiting.
I feel its pull.
To lean closer.
To touch.
As if I were always meant to do so.
But just as my fingertip hovers over it, I stop. The final words of the revelation echo through my mind.
For no mortal may touch the divine and live.
The curse is coming to a head. It’s coming for me. I can feel it in the coldness of my bones. It’s as inevitable as me, here in Foggy Hollow.
My fate written in the stars.
So, too, is the task before me.
Rafe will open the tomb, and Seraphina will come out. But that is where it will end.
She will not rise more terrible than before. I won’t let her. With the touch of my blood, our lives will be tethered. Our fates, entwined. And the curse that is coming for me will come for her, too.
By the cruelty she wrought, her end shall be fashioned.
Her essence pulses in my palm.
I cannot touch it yet.
But I will soon enough.
Jude is looking for a solution.
And I have found it.
A supernatural weapon.
A way to stop the curse.
To rewrite the ending of this tragic tale once and for all.
51
DEAD EITHER WAY
