Chapter 28

I survived.

The darkness outside the windows of the room they put me in seemed to be whispering to me. I survived the meeting with the Evernight brothers, and the reality of the situation was dawning on me slowly but surely—there was nowhere to go. There was no place to hide.

I was stuck here for real.

Last night, when Valentine walked me back to this room after Romin went on and on about the glory of Ennaris before the fall of it, all he said was rest. I didn’t sleep, though. There was a new clock on my nightstand near the lamp, black with white numbers and a silver pointer, as beautiful as most things around here, and I kept my eyes on it the whole time. I guess I just wanted to know what time it was in the real world.

Right now, it was four in the morning, and I hadn’t slept for a single second all night, the energy coming off all those vampires in Romin’s office still too much for my body to handle. The energy—and the attention of Grey—like a physical weight on my shoulders.

I’d waited to hear another word from him all night long. The brothers had all talked, including Valentine, but Grey hadn’t said a single thing the whole night. He just listened and drank his wine, small sips every now and then. And he watched me.

Fuck, he made me just as curious as he scared me. Such a damn mystery, but I knew enough. He’d killed his own father. His own brothers were scared of him, so I was going to make it my damn mission to stay as far away from him as possible.

Was he watching me right now from the back of his dragon outside my window, or was it just my fear talking?

Did it matter if he was?

“I am stuck here.”

I said the words out loud as if to taste them on my tongue. I felt nothing different—they weighed the exact same inside my head, too. I was stuck on this Isle forever, covered by a dark cloud and a curse, and soon enough, I was going to be the bride of Romin or Emil or Grey or Tristian. I was going to feed them with my blood, and I was going to sleep in their bed and let them try to put a baby in me. A vampire baby.

A baby without a heartbeat.

A cry escaped my lips, which had never really happened before. Even when I’d cried, I’d done so in silence, but now I was sobbing. I don’t know how I got all the way to the door, but my legs gave and I sat on the floor right next to it, and I just cried. I mourned—not only the person I’d been and the life I’d lived, but the person I could never be anymore and the life I could never live again.

It was as heartbreaking as it was relieving, and eventually, I stopped shaking.

Then… “Please don’t cry.”

Valentine’s voice came from the other side of the door, making my heart stop for a good second.

“I’m in mourning,” I said, my voice thick and hoarse and muffled, but he was a vampire. He’d hear me just fine.

“Don’t mourn, Sunshine. I promise you better days are coming,” he said, and he sounded so honest. So completely different from the Valentine he had been in front of his brothers.

I laughed like a lunatic, slamming the back of my head to the wall. “How? I’m stuck in this place, Valentine. I’m stuck here and there’s no way out and now the Blood Call is coming and which one of them is going to claim me? Which one is going to make me his bride?”

Bile up my throat. Every cell in my body revolted against the idea.

“None of them,” Valentine said from the other side, and by the sound of it, he was sitting on the floor in the hallway, too. I don’t know why that calmed me down a bit.

“None of them will make you their bride,” he insisted, and I laughed again.

“Let me guess—because I’m yours?” He said nothing. “Nobody gets brides in the first few years—everyone knows this,” I reminded him. “Besides, even if somehow you’re right, how’s that any better for me? You’re like them. They are your family.”

“Only by blood,” Valentine said.

“Does that mean you’d let me stay in this room forever and never come close to me if I somehow became your bride for real?”

“Yes, if that is what you want.” Fuck, he was good at this. He didn’t even hesitate.

I sighed, shaking my head at myself. “I would have believed you.” Just a month ago, before Mama Si, I absolutely would have, and that just showed how very naive I’d been without even realizing it.

Made me wonder, how naive was I still and perfectly clueless to it?

“Then do,” he simply said.

“I don’t understand you. You expect me to believe that you really have some kind of feelings for me—really, do I look stupid to you, or are you just not used to taking no for an answer?”

Silence for a long moment.

“No. You look broken.”

“Let me guess again—you want to fix me.”

But then, Valentine said, “I was hoping to help you fix yourself.”

My eyes closed and I stayed with those words for a little while.

“I was also hoping to be your audience.”

“Audience?”

“Yes. Downstairs, in the theatre,” he said, and my heart skipped a beat. “What do you say, Sunshine? Will you play a song for me tonight?”

He already knew the answer to that, the asshole. I couldn’t say no if I tried.

From that night on,Valentine came to my door every single night and asked me to play the piano for him while he sat in a red chair in the very middle and watched me, listened intently with Shadow on his shoulder, and he never once looked bored.

Two weeks wentby so fast it felt like I never had time to sit down and just be for a second, even though I was sleeping every night. But the days were full, and I only went back to my room after dinner now because I had duties, it seemed. Duties that Vera and the other brides had assigned for themselves to make life more interesting, and so now I was to be their latest project, and each was going to teach me a little bit of what they knew best.

Archery, knitting, singing, baking, drawing, chess—each had something they were so incredibly passionate about, and they all wanted to be the first ones to teach me.

Lucinda was going to teach me how to ride horses, one day soon when the Masters don’t actually drink any living animal around us dry, ha-ha-ha—though I was pretty sure she wasn’t kidding, simply because she would never laugh. The most she ever did was grin.

And when I wasn’t trying to learn how to do a million things at once, I was having meals with the brides or I was invited for teatime in one of their lounging areas full of windows that only they seemed to use because the Evernights didn’t like windows. It was enough that the sound of the outside world distracted them constantly; they didn’t want to also see everything surrounding the castle as well.

But the truth was that there wasn’t much to see outside. Only dark clouds, trees and that stone wall.

We visited the mirror room a couple of times to see the other Isles, though. And the brides told me all about when they first came here, what it was like for them after the Blood Call, the parties that were thrown for each of them, and the gifts they received from the other Isles.

They told me about the towns in the Woods as well, especially the closest one outside the castle. It was a big town, with thousands of people living in it, all kinds of Enchanted who’d left their homes for one reason or the other and had chosen to start their lives and families away from their Isles. The Evernights welcomed most, so long as they agreed not to hunt the animals and not to hurt others. The punishment for any kind of crime, it seemed, was death here.

“That’s why bad things don’t happen in the Whispering Woods,” Vera so proudly announced.

Yes, no bad things—except me.

I contemplated running away every single night, but even if snakes that could swallow me whole wouldn’t have stopped me, the brothers would.

I was obligated to spend time with them once every three days. I had to sit there with the other brides, usually in Romin’s lounge room—an even bigger area than his office with even more of those stuffed animal heads on the walls, like he was proud to have hunted these poor creatures when they had no chance whatsoever against him. But I sat there and I pretended to drink wine. I smiled when I was spoken to, and I nodded my head at the right times, but it wasn’t as scary when the other brides were there. Not even when I sometimes sat closer to Grey, and I felt the energy of him radiating against my skin.

He never spoke to me, said so little only when his brothers asked him something, and that’s why he made me even more curious. If I wasn’t so scared of him, I’d have found him myself and I’d have questioned him a hundred times by now.

The brides and their Masters were nothing like I imagined them to be, though. I thought they’d be like partners, holding hands and kissing and stuff like that, which was why I’d been so baffled as to how the whole thing would work when Romin alone had four brides. But they never touched each other. The couches were big and wide, all black and lush and fancy, so there was plenty of space for all of us to sit comfortably and with enough distance on either side. They never touched and they never kissed and they acted like friends, telling jokes and having conversations with everyone equally.

That first night I’d been so scared, but now I wasn’t. The brothers laughed and talked and drank so normally—except Grey—and sometimes I even forgot what they were for minutes at a time. Most of the brides were over the moon each time we hung out like that, and the next day was always about who said what and who got more attention from her Master the most.

Cynthia and Amita were visibly uncomfortable during those conversations, though, because Grey really had a hard time talking to people. He could have been a piece of fucking rock sitting on a couch there, and his poor brides were always trying not to complain about how he never seemed to even look at them.

Be glad, I wanted to tell them. He’s a monster, I wanted to shout. They all are!

Thankfully, I’d learned to bite my tongue and put a filter to what I said very quickly since I arrived.

Meanwhile Valentine kept his eyes on me most of the time. His brothers teased him about having to see me become one of their brides, and it fucking suffocated me every time they did, but he was always perfectly composed, smiling and nodding along. Each time I’d look at him, he’d wink at me as if to tell me not to worry.

I did, though. I really did.

And I told him that sometimes, when he sat in the theatre to listen to me playing. I’d stop in the middle of a song and I’d tell him—I’m worried. What if it’s Tristian? What if it’s Romin? I can’t accept that, Valentine—I have to get out of here!

He always replied with the same words: “Don’t worry, Sunshine. None of them is going to have you.”

I admired his confidence, I really did. And I wished I could believe him with all my heart, but the truth was all my night terrors starred his brothers, blood dripping down their fangs as they came to drink me dry.

Never with Valentine, though. I would go so far as to say I considered him a friend. Not a close friend, just a friend. At first, I was even a little attracted to him, but if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I was attracted to all of them, no matter what that made me.

How could I not be when they were so damn gorgeous—even Grey. Especially Grey with those light eyes and that hair that stood in all directions like he couldn’t be bothered to even look in the mirror when he rolled out of bed, and those wide shoulders and big hands and pale lips…

Even knowing what they were on the inside, they were beautiful, and I was only a woman.

But Valentine, at least, was also a friend.

It wasn’tuntil the thirteenth day that I began to feel different.

The change happened in the subtlest ways, though. I could see a bit better in the dark. I could hear Shadow’s wings much more clearly. I could hear whispers behind doors and on the other side of the room. I could smell Valentine approaching even when he was around the corner, if I focused hard enough.

And as much as it excited me, it terrified me, too.

I was changing. I was becoming an Enchanted indeed, just like Mama Si promised.

“You’re getting stronger,” Valentine said, his voice echoing in the theatre on the fourteenth night.

“No, I’m not,” I said automatically because I was still living in denial, but I was already analyzing my hands, searching for a sign. They didn’t look any different than usual, though.

“Yes, you are. Your fingers are faster. It’s a tiny difference when you play this piece, but three nights ago it was a bit slower.” Before I knew it Valentine was climbing on stage, coming closer. “You’re also playing a lot better. You heart beats so beautifully with this melody.”

I sighed, closing the board and pressing my forehead to it. “Do you ever get tired of talking to me like that?” It wasn’t so often anymore—he could tell it made me uncomfortable—but he still said random stuff like this, and it always made me blush.

“Never,” he said without missing a beat. “May I?”

I nodded, thinking he wanted to sit on the bench with me.

Instead, his hands closed on my shoulders and he began to massage me.

“What are you…”

Oh, fuck, that feels good. A moan—an actual moan escaped me as he continued to work the muscles on the sides of my neck.

“How’s that?” Valentine asked, and my response was to raise my head and lean back until I rested against his stomach. His rock hard stomach because he probably had abs. Of course, he has abs.

“You’re still afraid, Sunshine. I don’t know how to take that away from you,” he then whispered, and I opened my eyes just a slit to see his face upside down.

“I’m not afraid,” I said, and it was half the truth. I wasn’t just afraid—I was terrified.

Valentine smiled. “Won’t you let me carry it for you just for a couple days? Your shoulders are really tense.” And the way he was massaging them, digging his fingers into me, was a fucking sin.

“Sure,” I muttered. “Sure, have at it. Take all of it for as long as you like.”

He grinned. “There’s a good girl.”

“And you’re a very bad boy,” I said without really meaning anything by it. My eyes drifted shut and I surrendered to his masterful hands while Valentine chuckled.

“You haven’t seen bad yet,” he whispered, and when he did, I realized he was close to me. Very close to my face.

My eyes opened again to find he’d leaned down and our lips were barely an inch apart. My heart skipped a beat. Damn. Heat spilled all over me—it had been too long, and I really needed the release, but how could I touch myself in this place when I was surrounded by creatures who could hear through walls?

Maybe in the tub.

Maybe if I was really, really quiet…

Definitely not with Valentine there, though. As much as I liked spending time with him, and as perfect he was to look at, I couldn’t. I wasn’t attracted to him in that way, not at all anymore.

“Stop thinking, Sunshine,” Valentine said, and suddenly his tongue came out and ran over my bottom lip gently. My breath caught in my throat again, and I stopped myself before I pushed him off.

A kiss. It was just a kiss. A fucking connection that I craved so badly.

And Valentine was coming closer and closer…

Fuck it, I thought. Just a kiss. Something to feel. Something else to cling to, not just fear.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I reminded him. It didn’t mean that I trusted him or that I wanted to be his bride.

Valentine stopped moving.

The asshole sighed, then kissed my nose and moved away.

I was shocked, to say the least. “Are you serious?” Because he was the one who came closer and licked my lip—him, not me.

“Yes, I am,” Valentine said, moving back, pulling me up to my feet and spinning me around to face him. “Because when I kiss you, I want it to mean everything.”

His eyes gleamed and he was grinning like that again, like he was the devil. Maybe it was that, or maybe my trauma, or maybe my instincts—no idea, but he was teasing me, I was sure of it. He was testing me.

“It never will, Valentine,” I said with a sad smile. It was only fair that he didn’t get his hopes up, just in case.

He wasn’t fazed in the least. Instead, he said, “I love the way you say my name,” then gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and turned for the door. “Come on, Sunshine. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

I sighed, shaking my head, watching him walk away from the stage and into the narrow corridor that wasn’t so dark to my eyes anymore. Then Shadow landed right there by the door, watching me curiously, that pointy head of his turning from one side to the other like a damn puppy.

“Don’t look at me—he’s the one with issues,” I muttered, and together we followed Valentine back to the castle.