Chapter 18

PART II:THE EVERNIGHT COURT

The morning sunfell on the side of my face and the smell of the ocean filled my nostrils. My eyes eventually adjusted to the sudden bright light and allowed me to see the shore.

Small rocks in all shades of grey underneath my feet.

I looked behind me at the mansion, and it was there, the white wall three stories tall, no windows or any other door in sight as far as I could see.

“Good morning, Fall Doll.”

Chills ran down my back as I turned again, to the ocean—right here, barely twenty feet away!—to Marissa and Mike and Assa standing to my right with their hands folded in front of them, watching me, smiling.

To Mama Si wearing a dark red coat with no arms, like a cape that covered her completely from the middle of her neck down to her feet, standing in front to what looked like a boat—a sailboat without a sail.

It was small, so small.

Was she hoping to get us to where we were going on that little thing?

“Good morning,” I forced myself to say, and then Mike was coming toward me, and in his hands was an actual cape. A brown cape made out of the same material as my dress—the exact same color.

Where the hell did he even get that—and where did he pull it from just now?!

Magic, a voice whispered in my ear. It was magic—and by the end of this, I might be able to do the same things, too.

I’d be a liar if I said that didn’t sound like a goddamn miracle.

“Come, doll. We leave immediately. It’s the day of the ritual and we do not want to be late,” said Mama Si.

She was right. Three days since we last spoke, and I’d hardly felt the time passing by.

Mama Si was smiling and her voice was as warm as ever, but my nerves had already gotten the best of me. I flinched when Mike put the cape around my shoulders and stepped in front of me to tie the ends. Then he produced an orange tie with a small ribbon on it out of thin air and tied that around my wrist. The way he looked down at me made me so damn uncomfortable.

“I’ll be praying for your return,” he whispered before he stepped away, so low I considered I might have imagined it.

“Good luck, Fall. Make us proud,” Marissa said, hands to her chest as she smiled ear to ear, eyes a bit glossy with unshed tears.

She most definitely knew about the Enchanted. She most probably was one herself.

I moved forward and hardly felt the rocks underneath my shoes. Marissa had given me flat ones, for which I was thankful, but my feet were still numb. And my legs. Even my hands, now that I thought about it.

Mama Si wore a broad-brimmed hat with a bit of mesh hanging on one side, the color a deep red, just like the coat that covered her completely. She looked as stunning as ever, and it was probably my nerves, but she also looked fucking terrifying dipped in sunlight with the blue background behind her.

“You are absolutely divine, my doll,” she said, reaching out a hand through a cut on her coat that I could have sworn wasn’t there a second ago to help me get on the boat.

Again, magic. This was what these people did.

“Are you sure this is safe?” The light-colored wood, the single bench in the middle, the narrow space—it seemed more like a toy rather than a real boat.

“It is. Don’t you worry your pretty head about a thing, Fall Doll. Nothing and nobody touches what’s mine—not even the ocean.”

As if on cue, a small wave foamed and came closer and closer to the shore, but it never actually touched the boat that was somehow not moving a single inch, even though it wasn’t docked.

Taking in a deep breath, I climbed onto it and moved to the middle, then turned around to look at the shore.

Fuck, the mansion looked massive from here. Large white walls, and towers and trees barely visible over the roof, so wide I couldn’t see the ends of it. It was built right there on the shore like it wasn’t afraid to stand in front of the water in the least. Like it wasn’t terrified of crashing waves when the ocean was angry.

No, I thought to myself, because it belongs to Mama Si. And apparently, the ocean didn’t touch what was hers.

When I looked at the others, my heart fell. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I think it was the expression on their faces. I wasn’t sure whether they pitied me or thought I was their salvation—or both.

Then Mama Si got on the boat, and Assa didn’t follow.

“Face the ocean, Fall Doll. And sit down,” she said.

Since my legs were so numb I eagerly obeyed, stepped over the bench and sat on the side of it, thinking she’d join me. Thinking, who is going to row this tiny boat on the ocean?

I got the answer a moment later, when Mama Si went to stand at the very front, her back turned to me, and we started moving.

I kept forgetting that one special word—magic—so I was still trying to figure out if an engine was attached to the boat, or if someone or something was maybe pulling us forward—or any explanation at all as to why we were moving without anyone doing anything.

A look back, and Assa, Mike and Marissa were gone, the rocky beach in front of the massive mansion empty.

A long breath slipped from my lips. “No cliff.” There really was no cliff that I could see here, when just a couple of hours ago I was looking down at this very ocean from my window. I was over a cliff, and now I wasn’t.

“The Paradise is an incredible structure,” Mama Si said, like she could read the thoughts in my head. Her voice was almost lost to the wind as we sailed ahead, picking up speed little by little. “It can be two things at once. It can give you the illusion that you’re at the front of it through one door and at its back through the next.”

“That’s amazing,” I said, turning to look at the mansion again and again to convince myself that it really existed. I’d really lived inside those walls for a whole month. It was a real place.

“It is, indeed.” Mama Si nodded. “You’re comfortable, I assume.”

“I am.” The bench wasn’t soft by any means, but I had plenty of space. “How are we even moving?” I got that it was magic, but how?

“Ennaris is taking us where we need to go. The water knows,” said Mama Si, like that was supposed to make perfect sense to me. “It won’t be long. We’ll get there in about an hour.”

An hour. That was much sooner than I thought.

Then she asked, “Have you rested enough?”

“I have, yes. And there’s so much I don’t know yet. I searched for you, but you were gone.” For three days I’d searched for her, but all they told me was that she was busy. “I was actually hoping to talk to you before we set sail, but…”

“We can talk here,” she said, slowly turning to face me.

“Do you want to—” I waved at the bench to my side, but she shook her head.

“I’m perfectly fine, doll. Tell me, what questions do you have?”

Oh, an hour wouldn’t cut it to ask them all, but I could start with the most important one. “I have a lot, but first I need to know, what exactly happens if I get chosen? How will I know where I’ll end up?”

“If we’re lucky and you do get chosen, you will know where your place is. It will be decided for you, and it will be easy once you belong to these lands, Fall Doll.”

Easy. “And if I don’t get chosen, when you said I’d belong to Ennaris forever, do you mean I can never leave the mansion?”

“Not never, but you will be weak out there, and you’ll only feel whole close to your roots. Whether you stay or leave will be up to you to decide,” she said, and I nodded.

A choice. I could live with that.

“And what about the curse? What about the ritual—is there something I should know? Is there something I should prepare for?”

Mama Si smiled. “Nothing whatsoever. The ritual is fairly simple. You won’t have to do anything but get in the waters of the Whispering Woods, and let Ennaris make its choice. No word is required from you.”

“How will we know if I am chosen?”

“Oh, we will, doll. We’ll know right away.”

“But—”

“The curse you asked about,” she continued, and my mouth clamped shut because other than what would happen to me, the curse was what I wanted to know about the most. “It was cast upon Ennaris close to five hundred years ago.”

Impatience got the best of me when she stopped to breathe for a second. “By whom?”

“A very powerful Enchanted. A siren,” said Mama Si, and again, that fountain statue came before my eyes as clear as the blue sky over us. “She cast a spell, a powerful spell upon the land. An unbreakable spell.”

An actual magic spell. “What does it do besides make it hard for you to reproduce often?”

Mama Si raised her brows in surprise. “Isn’t that bad enough? To be able to have our own children so rarely. To have to rely only on scraps of magic, what is left in the roots of our trees, just to survive. To be constantly deprived of power, when power is what keeps as alive.”

Well, damn.

I shook my head—yes, that did sound pretty fucked up. “But why? Why would she do something like that to her own home?” And also, sirens are real?!

“I’m sure she had her reasons, Fall Doll,” Mama Si said with a shrug of her shoulders that her coat barely showed.

“So, sirens are…bad guys?” Because according to what Amber said about the fountain statue, they were heroes. They saved the world.

Mama Si laughed a bit. “That is a very naive way of looking at life, doll. We’re all villains in someone’s book. We just have to make sure that we’re not in ours.”

Her words weighed heavy on my shoulders because I was learning more every day that that was an absolute truth.

“I’m sorry that it happened.” Nobody deserved to live in starvation mode—even if they were starving for power.

“I believe you,” Mama Si said, like she was proud of the fact.

“To be honest, I don’t even know what specific questions to ask at this point. I know so little about this whole thing, and I can’t believe I’m just going to dive in headfirst.” I couldn’t believe I was in the middle of the fucking ocean right now, sitting on a boat that moved itself but not like an actual boat. It didn’t rock to the sides at all, just moved slightly with the waves and kept on sailing even though there was no wind and no sail and no rows and no engine to take us forward. I was sitting here with one of the most fascinating people I’d ever met in my life, and I was about to try my luck at becoming like her.

“How about you relax instead of asking questions, Fall Doll?” Mama Si whispered. “How about you give that mind of yours a break and enjoy the ocean? How about you let Ennaris show you everything you need to know when we get there? You already know our story. You already know so much more than most humans in the world. The rest you have to see for yourself.”

The excitement that rushed through me at the idea of seeing more like the Paradise made butterflies erupt in my stomach. What more could I possibly see when I’d already witnessed purple water, animals with glowing fur, and a piano made out of tree roots sprouting in the middle of a forest?

How much more magic and beauty could Ennaris show me?

Turning my eyes to the horizon, I tried to calm my racing heart, tried to breathe in deeply while I smiled like an idiot, but at least Mama Si had turned her back to me again so she didn’t see me. Fuck, she looked so regal standing there, looking ahead, like a statue. Or a painting. The blue of the sky suited her.

From here, I could see the ocean so much more clearly, so I noticed something in the distance as soon as I allowed myself to focus.

Standing up, I went closer to Mama Si to see it better, and I realized it was the silhouette of an island.

“Do you see that?” I whispered, pointing my finger ahead, slightly to our left.

“Oh, yes. Do you?” Mama Si said, laughing.

“It’s an island.” I could see it, even though there wasn’t supposed to be an island so close to the Paradise. I’d seen the ocean from all sides, and there was no land anywhere near us. No land on any map, either.

But then I looked back.

I turned to where we came from, and I gasped, my heart skipping a long beat.

An island.

It was a goddamn island that we’d left behind, pretty much the same silhouette as the one ahead, only this one with a wider, shorter structure—the Paradise. It was a fucking island for real, even though I’d lived in the town attached to it for two whole years!

“That’s my Blood Burrow,” Mama Si proudly said, then pointed ahead. “And the rest of the Seven Isles are ahead of us.”

I could still only make out the one on the left, and my eyes were stuck on it, so when something flew over the large pointy shape—possibly a big mountain—I assumed it was a plane. A helicopter, like those that came and went at the Paradise on the daily.

But then there was another that joined the first.

And a third.

And then they spit fire.

“That’s…that’s…” My mouth kept opening and closing, but it was impossible to say the word out loud.

Mama Si laughed her heart out. “That is Dragons’ Den, doll. And yes—those are dragons.”

Dragons.

The boat suddenly started to move faster, but it was so steady I didn’t even fear losing my balance. I closed my eyes for a moment, took in a deep breath as that word echoed in my head.

“Open your eyes. Look—to the west,” Mama Si said, and I had no choice but to obey.

Another island.

This one looked ordinary—as in no fire-breathing dragons were flying over it—but the island seemed round and with a single structure in the middle shaped like a triangle.

“That is Witches’ Wing, and beyond is Sirens’ Lair,” Mama Si explained, as my eyes struggled to make sense of the view.

“Is that… is that like a?—”

“Very big witch hat?” Again, she laughed, and she was so perfectly amused the sound of it warmed me to my toes.

“Yes,” I choked. That’s exactly what it looked like—a piece of land with a black witch hat on top.

“That’s the witches for you,” Mama Si said, nodding her head, like that was a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Witches.” And dragons—those dragons that I could see right now with my own eyes, three of them, so big they were impossible to miss even if they hadn’t been spitting fire every now and again.

My God, those were dragons.

And then there was something else in between the dragons and the island shaped like a witch’s hat.

“What the…” My voice trailed off, words evading me once more.

It was darkness. Just a huge cloud of darkness right over the ocean, there in the middle like a black hole had exploded into existence and had sucked the light out of the world around it.

“That is the Whispering Woods, Fall Doll,” Mama Si announced, and I could have sworn she shuddered as she watched it with unblinking eyes. “Our destination.”

Suddenly, I had this insane urge to jump off the boat and swim all the way back to the Paradise.

No way could that darkness mean anything good. No way going closer to it was a smart idea.

It looked like hell. A different kind of hell with shadows instead of raw flames, except this one was scarier because this one was real. I was looking right at it.

“Mama Si,” I whispered because she couldn’t honestly believe that this was a good idea. “I can’t go in there. I…I can’t…”

“Oh, we’re not going into the Woods,” she said, and it was like she’d handed me the world on a silver platter. “Nobody that isn’t of the Evernight Court goes into the Woods today. The closest we can get is the waters surrounding it.”

I narrowed my brows, trying to see more of the Isle, whatever hid behind that raw darkness that seemed to reach all the way up to the sky—but there was nothing there.

“The Evernight Court?” I was pretty sure she hadn’t mentioned that before. I’d have remembered the name.

“Yes—the brothers that rule over the Whispering Woods. They’re very isolated. They rarely allow anyone who does’t live there on their property.” I could have been mistaken, but Mama Si sounded a bit afraid, which was absolutely ridiculous. If you’d ever met this woman, if you so much as saw her from across the street, you’d know she didn’t get scared. Not someone you could intimidate, but here we were.

“So, why are we going to their Isle again?” I asked breathlessly, definitely afraid, but also awfully impatient to get closer, to see better, to know what that darkness felt like. I don’t know what it was about it that drew me, but the closer we went, the more that excitement, that curiosity took the lead.

“Because the Evernight brothers also rule over the other Isles, and they choose the worthiest offering in the ritual.”

“Oh.” That couldn’t possibly be a good thing. I swallowed hard. “How exactly do they do that?”

“Look, Fall Doll,” Mama Si said instead, pointing her finger east, toward Dragons’ Den. Other boats I hadn’t even noticed, almost identical to the one we were in, had stopped right there, so close to the dark cloud over the ocean that was the Whispering Woods.

“They’re here.”

I focused on the boats—two of them, and each carried two people.

“The other Isles?” I whispered, as a voice in my head insisted that I was not ready for this. Not even fucking close.

“Yes. That is from Dragons’ Den, and the second is from Skinwalker Soil. Faeries’ Aerie will be here soon—and look!” She pointed to the other side, toward the Isle with the witch hat on it, and sure enough another boat was sailing right in front of us to get to the other two. “That’s from Witches’ Wing. Siren’s Lair is right beyond.”

And the Blood Burrow was behind us.

“The Seven Isles,” I whispered, my mind chaotic as my eyes roamed around the impossible view in front of me—dragons flying around a mountain, spitting fire, and islands with witch hats on them, and a place called Faeries’ Aerie?

“Ennaris,” Mama Si said, then flinched. “At least what is left of it.”

“My God, Mama Si,” I said, in awe and terrified at the same time to see more of the people on those boats. “This is…this is too much. I am not ready for this.”

“Of course, you are, Fall Doll,” Mama Si said with such ease, like she knew it for a fact. “You’re young so you don’t understand your body’s reactions properly yet, and you don’t know the first thing about managing your emotions—but you’re just overwhelmed. Excitement and fear are a dangerous combination, the reason why people avoid change and never go after what they want.” She turned to me with an easy smile on those red lips. “You take away its power when you recognize it. Then it becomes simply a feeling—and feelings always fade away if you give them time.”

I shook my head—how could she expect me to manage my feelings when she’d brought me to this place?!

“Those are dragons,” I reminded her. “And that’s…that’s…” My hand rose, finger pointed forward, at the fourth boat that we could make out clearly now that we were closer, the one she said would be from Faeries’ Aerie. It had a person on it with wings on her back. Bright pink butterfly wings, the edges of them torn apart like someone had run fucking claws all over them.

“A faerie, Fall Doll. Pay attention,” Mama Si said. “That over there is a Skinwalker, and that’s a dragon rider. That’s a witch.”

“Exactly,” I choked. This is what she was telling me—and she expected me to manage my emotions on top of that?

“You’ll get used to it. No big deal. Really, it’s like meeting someone from Europe. Relax,” Mama Si said, and nervous laughter suddenly burst out of me.

“I’ve never met anyone from Europe before.”

“Well, consider this your first time,” she said with a sneaky grin. “Because we’re already here.”

And we were.

Mama Si raised a hand, and the boat stopped moving so abruptly I almost fell headfirst into the ocean.

We’d stopped about a mile outside the darkness of the Whispering Woods, just like the other boats, with Witches’ Wing between us and Dragons’ Den and the rest.

“What about…what about sirens?” I whispered.

Mama Si arched a brow. “They don’t make offerings, and they don’t need boats, doll. This is their territory.”

Ice-cold chills rushed down my back as I looked at the water of the ocean again, and I began to make out a dark shape that must have been right under the surface and I hadn’t even noticed it.

Two big blue eyes were staring at me through it.

My legs shook.

I am so screwed.