Chapter 3

As a spirit, I hovered in the corner of the room, invisible. I felt no pain. I felt nothing but a vast, cold emptiness.

I watched the surgeon cut deeper. I watched my own body lie still.

Then the doors burst open.

"Mom!"

Leo. He ran into the room, his face streaked with tears. He stopped short, seeing me on the table, the blood, the surgeon.

"My real mom!" he screamed, a raw, desperate cry. "Where is my real mom?"

Ethan rushed in behind him, grabbing Leo's shoulders. "Leo, what are you doing here? Get out!"

But Leo was sobbing, pointing a trembling finger at a stunned Chloe. "You lied! You said if I was nice to the evil witch, you'd let my real mom come home! You promised!"

Ethan's head snapped toward the operating table. He saw the unanesthetized surgery. He saw the deep, open wound over my heart. He saw my lifeless eyes.

His face crumbled. The mask of control, of power, of cruelty, it all shattered into a million pieces.

This was not his plan.

He shoved the surgeon away from the table. "What did you do?" he roared, his voice breaking. "What did you do to her?"

He looked at Chloe, and the dawning horror in his eyes was absolute. He finally understood. Her "heart condition" was a lie. Her only goal was to see me dead, and to make it hurt. His own twisted game had been hijacked by a malice far purer and more absolute than his own.

He stumbled back, his gaze fixed on my dead body. "Sarah," he whispered. "No. No, no, no..."

He was broken. Utterly shattered.

And I watched, a silent ghost, as his world unraveled.

Then, the world dissolved again.

I woke up with a gasp, coughing, on the worn-out floral sofa in my old apartment. The one from before Nashville. Before Ethan.

I was frail, weak, my body aching with a phantom memory of pain.

My younger sister, Lily, ran into the room. "Sarah! You're awake! You fainted again."

Her face was pale, her lips tinged with blue. Her congenital heart defect. The reason I'd made the Pact in the first place, dreaming of a life where I could afford to save her.

The whisper returned to my mind. The Pact. It wasn't finished with me.

He is broken, it communicated, not in words, but in pure understanding. His grief will become rage. He will destroy Chloe. He will destroy everyone in his path. He will become a monster. Go back. Stop him. The merit you gain will save your sister's life.

A new bargain. A terrible choice.

Go back to that hell? To him?

I looked at Lily, breathing shallowly, her time running out on a transplant list that was too long.

There was no choice at all.

"I accept," I whispered to the empty room.