Chapter 17

Glowinganimals and tree roots chased me all night in my dreams, but these weren’t friendly and nice. They didn’t want me to pet them, and they didn’t give me pianos in the middle of the forest.

No, these wanted to eat me. These wanted to catch me and cage me and skin me alive.

By the time I woke up before six a.m., I was covered in sweat, my hair sticking to my face, the slightly wet sheets uncomfortable against my back. That’s why the first thing I did was fill up a bath just to get my muscles to relax. They were so stiff, like I’d been bracing myself in the real world the same way I’d done in my dreams.

“Enchanted,” I whispered to the bathroom, raising my hand, and I pretended that the foam on my palm was a pink rose, like the one Mama Si had made the night before. It was magic, my magic that I did myself.

And as exciting as that was, it was scary as all hell, too.

I pulled my hand down under the water again, my heart skipping a long beat. So much to think about. So much to decide. My whole life, basically. And here I was soaking in a bath, smiling and anxious at the same time, thinking about magic. Thinking about it being real.

Considering if maybe I had lost my damned mind since Brandon kicked me out, but then deciding that Mama Si had been there and had seen everything, too. She was part of this magic. She ruled this place—the Blood Burrow.

And the Whispering Woods—such strange names. So… “Magical,” I whispered to myself, giggling like a little girl.

What were the names of the other five Isles? I couldn’t wait to find out.

But when Marissa came to wake me up at seven thirty, my mind was still not made up—on the contrary. It seemed the more I thought about it, the more my decision escaped me.

I thought Mama Si was going to come talk to me that very night to tell me hers, but she didn’t.

She didn’t come the next day, either, or the one after that…

For the nextfive days I was a nervous mess, writing down reasons, trying to think up new ones, trying to decide what to tell her whenever she decided to come talk to me. And when that didn’t work, I tried to distract myself with the girls, go to the pool and to the dining room and to the movie theatre and to the parties. It was easy—the girls were so much fun, I loved them to death. I dared to say they all liked me, too—except one.

I was returning from a party on the fifth night when she grabbed me by the arm, pulled me and spun me around so masterfully you’d think she did this for a living. Before I knew it, my back was against the wall and she had her other hand around my neck.

The fear and the panic turned the blood in my veins ice-cold instantly, and I was too shocked to make a single sound, until I saw those wide blue eyes in front of mine and I realized who it was.

Then, the anger made me see red.

“Let go of me,” I said through gritted teeth—and I would only warn her once. If she didn’t back the fuck away from me, I was going to slam my forehead to her nose so hard it would break.

But then Hannah smiled, and that smile made me think of snakes and sneaky things and deep, dark secrets, especially when she whispered, “Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Move back,” I hissed, trying to push her off, but she wouldn’t even budge.

Fuck, I’d forgotten how strong she was. So much stronger than should have been possible with her small frame. I grabbed her forearm to get her hand away from my neck, but it only made her squeeze harder.

“I told you to run, little rabbit, but you didn’t listen. Now the monsters will devour you,” she whispered, and slowly leaned closer and closer until I couldn’t fucking breathe anymore. Not because she was choking me, no. But because those words of hers rang true, and every instinct in my body believed her.

“Let go of me, Hannah,” I said with a weak whisper because I knew that she knew. Somehow, in some way, she fucking knew about the Burrow and about Mama Si being an Enchanted. She knew about everything.

“You’re a pathetic excuse for a doll, you know that?” she told me instead. “You think everything’s easy. You think things come without payment. You think you’re entitled.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and dug my fingernails into her skin, but if she felt the pain, she didn’t even flinch. Instead, she came closer to me and that fucking bite mark I always noticed on her was right there in front of my face. Still as fresh. Still as raw.

“Who bit you?” I said before I could even stop myself, and I didn’t really want to.

Hannah’s head moved back as she laughed.

“Oh, your ignorance is delicious. But remember that everything has a price,” she whispered, just as we heard footsteps coming our way from around the corner.

I didn’t even get the chance to feel relieved because Hannah looked at me, and in her eyes I could swear I saw colors. I could swear I saw all the colors hidden in blue, just like in Mama Si’s eyes.

Everything came to a halt.

“You’re…you’re…” one of them, I wanted to say. She was an Enchanted.

My God, the eyes gave her away. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed until now!

But before I could utter the words, Hannah grabbed a fistful of my hair, pulling my head back. “I’ll warn you one last time. This isn’t a place for the likes of you, foolish girl. Get out while you still can.”

The footsteps were so close, and I wished whoever was coming would get there already, just as much as I wished they’d disappear so I could ask her more questions.

“What the hell are you—” I started, but Hannah suddenly let go of me and stepped back, fixing her sequin top.

Then she whispered, “Run.”

Marissa turned the corner the next moment.

Hannah was already running down the other side without another look back.

Mama Si joinedus for breakfast the next day, and it was such a shock I lost my appetite at the sight of her. Only five of the other girls were around the table with us. The rest were still sleeping, some having been with their clients the night before, other partying until late.

Mama Si sat at the head of the table with her broad-brimmed hat and her pink gloves and her pink dress hugging her figure like a second skin. The girls were so happy to talk to her, to share with her what they’d done or what they’d learned.

Meanwhile, I was pretending to eat just so I didn’t look suspicious while the wheels in my head turned.

I knew that the Paradise was just a steppingstone. It wasn’t my destination, not even for the next week. I was either walking out of those gates and going back to the real world the same way I’d come—empty-handed—or I was going to be Mama Si’s offering to Ennaris and become an Enchanted.

How fucking ridiculous. The stuff of fantasies, and I’d have been the first to laugh in my own face at the absurdity of those thoughts if I hadn’t seen the magic of the Burrow firsthand.

And I wanted it. My God, I wanted to be part of it so badly that it hurt me physically just to imagine what my life would look like if I could spend all my days in the woods with glowing animals playing the piano.

“Fall Doll, walk with me.”

I blinked the blur away and found I’d been staring at my half-filled plate without eating. Mama Si had already finished her food, and she’d stood up, her eyes on me.

Shivers ran down my back as I followed her outside into the yard. The sun shone brightly, the days getting hotter—so hot, in fact, you’d think it was summer already. Or maybe it was just me.

“Tell me—how are you, doll? You hardly touched your breakfast,” Mama Si said when we were far enough away from the mansion and Assa was the only person close enough to hear us. Ahead, there were gardens of roses on either side, a pool on the left and a gorgeous orchard on the right. Mama Si was taking us there.

“I’ve been good,” I whispered, looking down at the ground as I walked. “Confused for the most part, but okay.”

“It’s only natural,” she said with a nod. “And? Have you thought about that night?”

I gave her a quick glance—if she thought there had been anything else in my mind except that night, she was absolutely delusional.

“I have.” Every waking second.

She looked at me, too, that perfect brow raised. “And?”

And I just want to be in that forest playing the piano, I wanted to say. Whatever got me there, that’s what I wanted.

But I already knew that that wasn’t what she was asking.

“Last night, Hannah found me in the hallway,” I said reluctantly. “She warned me. Told me to run. Told me that I had no idea what price I’d have to pay. I think she knew.”

I waited a heartbeat, thinking she would be enraged.

Instead, Mama Si burst out laughing.

Turning toward her, I wasn’t sure whether I should be relieved or even more worried. A quick glance at Assa, and I found her with her head down, shaking it as she smiled. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?

“Oh, doll,” Mama Si said, bringing her gloved hand to her chest. “I wouldn’t take Hannah’s words seriously. Believe me, she didn’t warn you out of the goodness of her heart.”

Not that it was a surprise, but… “She didn’t?”

“Absolutely not. She’s jealous, Fall Doll. I wouldn’t think too much of it if I were you.” Her shoulders still shook a bit as we continued to walk close to the trees, their shade heavenly against the sunlight.

“Why is she jealous of me, though?” It made no sense that someone like Hannah would be jealous of anyone at all.

She gave me a quick look. “Can’t you guess?”

Could I?

“She…” My eyes closed for a moment and hers came before me, clear as the blue sky over us, hiding a million colors. “She’s like you.”

“No, doll, she was like you.” Mama Si stopped walking and turned to face me at the edge of the shade. “She wanted to become an Enchanted, too. I offered her to Ennaris just a year ago.”

It’s like I swallowed a sack of rocks and it fell right in the pit of my stomach. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Mama Si said, pursing her lips for a moment. “Unfortunately, Ennaris didn’t accept her.”

For the first time since that night we spoke, I actually considered the possibility that I might agree to this and then fail, have this very land reject me—it had apparently done it before.

I was twice as anxious within three seconds.

“Why not?”

Mama Si shrugged. “Because she wasn’t worthy,” she simply said.

My poor heart.

If someone like Hannah wasn’t worthy of being magical, what the hell could I expect to happen?

“Ennaris knows. It always knows, and it has its reasons why it didn’t accept Hannah.”

I fisted my hands tightly. “She must be devastated.” That’s why she’d come after me the way she had—it made perfect sense.

“She’s had time to come to terms with it. After all, even though Ennaris refused her, the ritual alone gave her so much more than she had as a human. She’s not exactly Enchanted, but she’s somewhere between your kind and mine, and there’s power in that. She’s learned to harness it better than anyone else I’ve come across.” Mama Si actually sounded impressed and a bit proud, too.

“That’s…that’s…” I couldn’t come up with the proper word, so I just shook my head.

“Smart,” she finished for me. “Hannah is a very smart woman. She’s a woman with a plan that lets nobody stand in her way.”

I narrowed my brows. “How could I be standing in her way—that’s ridiculous.” It really was. Anybody with a pair of eyes could see it.

“If you decide to stay and try to become Enchanted—and whether you are accepted by Ennaris or not doesn’t matter—you’ll have the same power as she does. You’ll steal her spotlight. She doesn’t want competition. After all, she can have anyone she wants and makes the rules all by herself whichever way she pleases.” She leaned a bit closer and whispered, “Power.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t want power.”

That surprised her more than finding me in that forest playing the piano in the middle of the night. “Everybody wants power, Fall Doll. You most of all.”

“No, I?—”

“You want to be free to do what you want with your life, don’t you?” she cut me off.

“Yes, exactly, but?—”

“How do you think that becomes possible if you do not have the power to make your own choices?” Her words hung in the air for a moment. “Freedom is power, Fall Doll. Because if you’re weak, you don’t get to choose. If you’re weak, those with power choose for you.” She laughed a bit. “Why do you think money rules the world you lived in? Why do you think those who have a lot of it get so much more freedom to live whatever lives they want to live?”

I swallowed hard. “Power.”

“Yes—power. And it’s okay to want it, doll. I’d be concerned if you didn’t.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath. “What about you?” I asked. “Have you thought about it?”

At that, she turned around and started walking close to the trees again, to the other side of the orchard. “I have,” Mama Si said with a deep nod. “And I’ve decided that you deserve a chance—only because the Burrow already let you in. That means something to me. My land, my people—they are everything to me.” She met my eyes, the colors in them so damn vibrant it felt like I was looking at a whole galaxy. “And I will do everything for them, doll. Anything at all.”

Goose bumps broke on every inch of my skin. My heart tripped all over itself, recognizing how true her words rang. “Thank you,” I forced myself to say, and Mama Si stopped in front of me again.

“Thank the Burrow,” she whispered. “After all, I will forever be at its service.”

I understood that. She was loyal to her land and I admired her for it, but… “I can’t…I just can’t make up my mind about it.” The unknown was too much. Too scary. Too confusing.

“This isn’t about the mind, Fall Doll,” Mama Si said, and she reached for my hand, then pulled me a little to the side, to one of the trees, their trunks so much smaller than the ones in the forest. She pressed my palm against the rich brown bark and kept her hand right over mine—her glove gone. “This is about here.” She brought the other one to her chest. “This is about the heart. This is about the soul, about what you feel, not what you think. So, close your eyes and feel it.”

I didn’t hesitate.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I focused all my being on that tree. My palm was comfortable against it. Almost smooth on my skin—and I did feel it. I felt the magic almost pulsating against my hand, like the tree had a heart of its own and it vibrated inside me.

“I feel it.” It was as clear as my own heart beating in my chest.

“And, Fall Doll? What does it feel like?” Mama Si whispered.

My eyes opened, stuck on her hand over mine, on the tree trunk, on the leaves over my head, the ocean and the sky. In those seconds, it was perfectly clear to me what I wanted, despite everything I knew and everything I thought I was supposed to want.

I wanted to start over. I wanted to be different than the rest of the world, no matter how that sounded.

But I didn’t want to cut ties with the Fall I used to be, the Fall that had brought me here, the Fall that shrunk herself to make everyone in her life feel big, who put her needs and wants on the back burner because everyone else came first. No—I wanted to keep those memories forever so that I never went back to that again when I got smarter. When I got wiser. When I became better.

That’s what I wanted—to be better, and I couldn’t be anything if I didn’t have freedom. I couldn’t be anything if I didn’t have power.

“It feels like…awakening,” I said.

Mama Si took her hand back and smiled like she’d seen all that she needed to see. “Then you are ready.”

I believed her with all my heart. “I’ll do it,” I said, and it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t confusing. It wasn’t scary at all—it was right. My body was calm, my heartbeat steady. Even my thoughts had finally—finally come to order after what felt like months of chaos to me.

“I’m glad,” Mama Si said with a deep nod.

“But I need to know how I can pay you first,” I said, so fucking relieved to have made the decision I could hardly believe how heavy my shoulders had been until now. “I can’t just accept this—I need to know what the payment is and this time be sure that I can actually afford it.”

“You will be paying me, Fall Doll. Of course, you will,” Mama Si said.

“How?” Because I had no money, and I was most definitely not going to work for her as a doll, so…

“With power,” she whispered. “You’ll pay me with power. If you get chosen, you will be giving the Burrow a lot of power. You will be giving me a lot of power, too.”

Her wide eyes glistened, and I was almost scared of her sudden smile. I don’t know why that set off all the alarms in my head so suddenly. “And if I don’t?”

The smile vanished from her face and she leaned back. “If you don’t, doll, you’ll still belong to me forever. You’ll do as I say. You’ll work to earn your place here.”

I fisted my hands so tightly my nails sank into my palms, breaking my skin. “You? I’ll still belong to you?”

Mama Si blinked, and her face transformed yet again, into her usual self. “The Burrow, I mean. The Burrow and I are one and the same because I am its ruler.”

Yes, she’d mentioned that before.

“I see.” If I wasn’t chosen, I’d be back here. I’d live in the Paradise, and I’d work for Mama Si. I’d be like Hannah.

That meant I’d have to do exactly what Hannah did.

The image of her being fucked on the dining table by two of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen took over my mind. The way they’d looked at her like she was a damn miracle. The way they’d worshipped her…

“You will be chosen this time, though. I know it,” Mama Si whispered, inviting my eyes to hers again. “I can feel it. Remember what I told you, Fall Doll. Even if you don’t, you’ll have so much more power than you ever will as a human. You can use that. You can make yourself into something anyway. You can be your own woman.”

“My own woman. I like that.” In fact, it just might be the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.

Mama Si smiled. “As well you should.”

I nodded. This was a good thing. This felt like a good thing—and she said it herself, it wasn’t about thoughts. This was about how I’d feel for the rest of my life.

“When?” I asked halfheartedly.

“This Sunday. The ritual will take place this Sunday.”

My heart skipped a beat. “That’s three days away.”

She raised her brows. “And I wish we’d had more time to prepare, but the truth is, Fall Doll, I’m glad we don’t. We have a way of robbing ourselves of our own opportunities when we’re left to ponder for long.”

“But…but it’s just three days. It’s way too soon. I have to?—”

“What?” she cut me off. “Do you want to talk to someone? Do you need to make a call? Or maybe go see someone in person? Hug them? I can fly you to wherever you need today.”

My heart broke and broke and broke, the echo of the shattering pieces filling my head.

“No.” I had nobody to call. Nobody to go see. Nobody to hug.

“I understand if you want to wait until next year, though,” she said.

A year.

A year was too long! But three days was too soon.

There went my thoughts, spiraling downward again. “Is there a way to postpone the ritual?”

Throwing her head back, Mama Si laughed. “Oh, doll, of course not. I don’t think you understand the magnitude of the event. All the Isles will be there. They’ve been waiting for this day all year.”

I narrowed my brows. “Really? They’re that invested in turning humans into Enchanted?” Because…why would they be?

“There’s so much you don’t know about Ennaris, Fall Doll. And I’ll tell you when the time is right, but what I will tell you right now is that a curse has been cast upon our lands, and because of it we reproduce so, so rarely. It’s very important to us to welcome humans into our world regularly.”

“What kind of a curse?” I wondered, my mind going back to that night, to the fountain of the sirens with the purple water that Amber had showed me.

Now I knew for a fact that it wasn’t a chemical concoction, just magic. Real magic.

“An old one,” Mama Si said with a sigh. “So, what will it be, Fall Doll? Give me your word now—will you sail with me to the Whispering Woods on Sunday and become my offering for this year?”

Sail, she said. We’d be sailing onSunday.

God, there were still so many things to think about—but wouldn’t there always be more things to think about? What had I done for the whole week while she’d stayed away?

I’d thought and thought and thought—and nearly drove myself insane with indecision.

So, I straightened my shoulders and I looked Mama Si in the eye, and I said with all my heart: “I will. You have my word.”

She smiled like the whole world suddenly became hers.