Chapter 37

My feet touched solid ground.I didn’t dare exhale, and even my heart stood perfectly still until I opened my eyes and saw the room.

The mirror room in the Evernight castle.

Valentine.

It was like the whole world was mine to take when I saw his pale face, his dark eyes, the utter shock in them at seeing me.

He’d been sitting at the edge of the round couch with a pad in his hand, writing something down, and when I came through the Faeries’ Aerie mirror, he didn’t move a single inch for a good moment.

I’d made it back. I’d escaped Emerald and those men, and I’d made it back through the mirror, and Valentine was still here. Still not banished. Still alive.

“Fall?”

He called me by my own name so rarely. His whisper was weak, like he didn’t dare make more sound for fear he’d change something, and he slowly put his pad on the couch and stood up, unblinking eyes on me.

As I looked up at him now, breathing heavily still from all that running, I realized I’d made the right call. There was no way I could live with myself knowing the price for my freedom was his death. Anybody’s death.

“What are you doing here, Sunshine?” Valentine said, and it was all I could do not to burst out in tears. Instead I jumped him and wrapped my arms around his waist tightly, needing to feel grounded for a moment.

It was over. Nobody was chasing me anymore. I was perfectly safe here.

Strong arms wrapped around me. “What happened?” he whispered, lips pressed to the top of my head. “Are you okay, Sunshine? What happened?”

I leaned back to look at him. “I went to Faeries’ Aerie, and then I met this woman. Her name is Emerald even though she’s a red faerie, and—and—and she has a library and her Storyteller and I helped her clean it, s-s-so she took me inside it with a book and—and?—”

“Stop.”

The words died on my tongue and I realized what I sounded like. The words leaving my mouth were slurred together and I was stuttering and I was a mess.

Fuck, I needed to stop and breathe for a moment.

Closing my eyes, I lowered my head and did just that.

“Why are you back, Sunshine? Why didn’t you leave?” Valentine said. “You still have the ring, don’t you?” And he raised my hand where the amethyst hid under my finger. Yes, it was still there, and he saw it. “Why didn’t you go back home?!”

Just like I suspected, he knew. Valentine knew exactly what the ring was, and he was indeed the one to tell Genevieve to give it to me. He’d really let me leave the Whispering Woods knowing what it would cost him.

“Silly vampire,” I muttered, touching his cheek gently. Was he out of his damned mind?!

“What did you do, Sunshine? What happened?” he whispered, still as confused as I had been when I first found out.

“I was going to leave, and then the faerie I met told me that you’d be banished from the Whispering Woods and die if I did. So, I wanted to return here to make sure you knew. To make sure you had a plan,” I admitted. “But when I returned to her library…” Squeezing my eyes shut for a second, I shook my head. “Valentine, they’re planning something. I don’t know who that faerie was, but two men were with her, one a Skinwalker, I think, and they knew about me. They wanted me gone. They said that it had finally begun, and that…” My voice trailed off and I saw the whole scene in my head exactly as I had what could have been just a couple hours ago.

“They said what?” Valentine said, eyes wide and dark, hanging onto the next words coming out of my lips.

“They said that the Evernight brothers would never see it coming.” Those had been Emerald’s words. “You have to tell Romin, Valentine. You have to tell the others. They?—”

“Sunshine,” he cut me off. His hands were on my face. “Someone’s coming. I need you to stop talking about this. I need you to keep this to yourself until we know more.”

“What?” Was he serious? “I’m telling you what I heard, Valentine—they’re planning something. The others have to know, they have—” But he wouldn’t let me speak.

“Trust me, Sunshine, you don’t want to tell my brothers something like that without being certain of it first. Keep it to yourself. Let me handle it, okay? I’ll find out if it’s true.” With each word, his voice became lower and lower, and even Shadow came and sat on his shoulder with that squeaking sound—like a warning.

“But it is,” I told him, holding onto his arms. “It’s true—I heard them. I saw them!” Why would he assume I was lying?

“I know that,” Valentine whispered. “But people plan rebellions all the time, and before I let my brothers know about this, I have to make sure they’re a real threat, okay?” He held my face so tightly it hurt. “I’ll handle this. Just don’t talk about it to anyone, do you understand me?” Fuck, he sounded desperate. “Keep it to yourself.”

“But—”

“If they find out you left the castle, Sunshine, they’ll be merciless.”

My mouth clamped shut instantly and my heart fell all the way to my heels. “Shit.”

Valentine let me go and I instantly breathed easier. “No word about it to anyone. Nobody can find out you were gone, okay? Nobody.”

Of course not. If they did, I was as good as dead already, and if I went and told Romin about what I heard and saw, he’d know.

“I won’t say a word,” I said reluctantly, and Valentine nodded.

“You’ll be just fine,” he mouthed, and I barely read the words on his lips, but before I could ask him again who was coming, the heavy door to the mirror room opened.

My hands were dirty from the fall, and I was a sweaty mess from all that running, but I smoothed my hair behind my ears quickly and covered my hands with the sleeves of my shirt as best as I could, hoping it would be a bride coming to the mirror room to see the other Isles. I even turned to Witches’ Wing to pretend I’d been looking at it all along, and I casually turned my head back when I heard the footsteps approaching.

My breath caught in my throat and my heart skipped one too many beats. It was Grey.

Suddenly, I was grabbed and thrown back into the Storyteller, and I was looking at Hansil Knight on his ship, a smile on his face and a gleaming in his eyes, his handkerchief floating in the air as it slowly landed on Syra’s open hands.

My God, he looked so much like him, my eyes didn’t want to blink. Grey’s eyes were more…well, grey, and the shape of his brows was a bit different, and his hair was lighter in color than Hansil’s, but Hansil could have been his father. They were so similar I couldn’t look away from his face as he approached, and those strange, beautiful eyes of his were locked on mine, too.

“Fancy seeing you in the mirror room, Grey,” Valentine said, his voice perfectly composed, not a sign of his earlier shock and confusion anywhere on him, though he was afraid. Everyone was afraid of Grey. Only I was fucked up in the head and was curious and intrigued by him, too.

“He wants to see you,” Grey said, never even glancing Valentine’s way.

“Right now?” Valentine said, but Grey didn’t answer him at all. He just moved around the couch and came closer to me from the other side, while I was stuck in place, mesmerized by the sight of him, thrown off by the resemblance to Hansil. Wow. All Evernight brothers were beautiful, but there was something about Grey, about the calm madness hiding in his eyes.

“Of course—words are beneath you,” Valentine muttered, and he sounded so at ease, I envied his control. “Very well. Fall, it was good to see you. Have a good night.”

I gave Valentine a quick look. “You, too,” I barely said, and he turned around to leave me alone with Grey.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, I said to myself in my head, Grey’s eyes on the side of my face while I tried my damn best to control my heartbeat. He didn’t need to know how terrified I was of him finding out what I’d done. Where I’d been.

Funny how it didn’t even occur to me to leave already, too.

“Good evening, Fall,” Grey said, his voice different just now, and he came even closer as Valentine’s footsteps grew more and more distant.

I looked up at him for a second—I couldn’t help it. He looked so calm, so…unlike himself all of a sudden, just like he had earlier when he caught me in the hallway.

“Good evening, Grey,” I said, and again, it slipped my mind that they wanted to be called Master before their name.

But again, Grey didn’t seem to mind.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked instead.

I turned to the mirror of the Witches’ Wing, watching the flames burning on the torches. Most of the witches were already gone, I assumed in their homes, getting ready for bed. It must have been close to midnight already.

“I am, thank you,” I said, holding onto the sleeves of my shirt over my hands so he didn’t see how dirty they were.

“I’m glad,” said Grey, his eyes analyzing the side of my face for a moment longer, and he turned to the mirror, too.

For a little while, we stood there and watched in silence while the last of the witches moved around the large structure shaped like a hat in the middle of their Isle. I was calm, my heartbeat steady, my breathing even. Somehow, I was comfortable standing there with Grey, which almost shocked me as much as spying on Emerald and those men.

Before I knew it, I was looking at him again, at the way the little light from the mirrors fell on his profile. His skin looked smooth. His hair looked so soft under those dim lights. And his eyes, they didn’t look mad now that I was thinking about it.

No—they just looked…full.

“They actually built the hat as a sort of a telescope. Witches are terribly superstitious, and they claim they can read bad fortune in the stars. When it didn’t work quite like they’d hoped, it became a monument to them,” Grey suddenly said, taking me off guard.

“Really?” I’d never heard that before.

“Yes. They used to be very good at star-reading, according to the books. Not so much anymore.”

Well, fuck. “Wow. I really want to see the inside of that hat.” To find out how they’d planned to actually read bad fortune. “How does one readstars?!” I wondered. I’d really like to understand that, too.

But then Grey said, his voice hushed, “I know what they tell you about me.”

The blood in my veins was suddenly ice-cold. His eyes were stuck on the mirror, but his attention was on me.

I said nothing—didn’t know what to say if I tried.

He closed his eyes for a moment. “And they’re right.”

My heart squeezed and my stomach twisted a million times.

Fuck, that was painful.

He didn’t sound desperate. He didn’t sound sad. It was something in between—and it was a statement, a truth he’d never even try to deny to himself or me, and maybe that’s why it fucking hurt me.

Grey turned to the side to face me, and before I knew it, I was facing him, too. How strange—right now I wasn’t afraid of him like usual, not in the least. All I was left with was this burning curiosity about him.

God, he looked so much like Hansil Knight, but so much like Grey, too. My fingers were itching to touch his cheek. I wanted to see all of that raw emotion reflecting in his eyes that I suddenly forgot about everything else. Everyone else—the whole Seven Isles.

“You killed your father,” I found myself saying, and I had no idea why it mattered. His father had challenged him, Genevieve had told me that. But the brides said that when the Evernights dueled, their dragons fought, not them. I guessed I was curious to know why he and his father had fought one-on-one anyway, how the whole thing had happened.

Grey didn’t hesitate. “I did.”

There was no remorse in his voice, but no pride or sense of triumph, either. It was just another statement.

“Why?” I asked before I could help myself, my eyes hungry to analyze every inch of his face still. It was like I was seeing him for the first time tonight, and I couldn’t get enough of the lines of his face, the color of his eyes, the shape of his lips.

“Because he was a monster,” Grey whispered, with more emotion than I’d ever heard him speak.

And I wondered, what would someone like Grey, a monster himself, consider monstrous?

Again, no pride in his eyes. He didn’t consider killing his father a victory. Rather, it was a necessity.

I didn’t even feel myself moving, only saw it when my hand rose to his face and the tips of my fingers touched his cheek.

Grey’s eyes closed instantly, and he didn’t move a single inch, becoming still as a statue. I wished I could walk into Emerald’s Storyteller and see everything that went on inside his head. Or that I had magic, to touch those lips as I was doing now, tracing the shape of them with my fingertips, and order them to reveal exactly what he was thinking when he looked at me like he did.

His hand came up and closed lightly around my knuckles, and he held mine there and slowly kissed my fingertips.

Heat rushed throughout me to feel his lips, so soft, kissing my skin. His eyes opened and I could have sworn we were on a different planet suddenly, one where the castle, the curse, Ennaris, and people didn’t exist.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long,” Grey said, tightening the knot in my stomach. The sound of him, so low and so intense, made my knees shake slightly.

We were closer now. I think he moved and I didn’t even realize it, but we were closer. I saw him with such clarity, and I wanted to keep touching his face until I collapsed.

Such a strong urge that it scared me.

“Tell me what to do,” Grey then said. His lips moved against my fingertips, then he kissed them again.

“What?” I breathed, unsure I even understood English anymore.

“Tell me what to do to make you less afraid of me,” he said. “I can hear your heart beating.”

Well, fuck.

My heart was beating like mad, except this time, as mortified as it made me, it wasn’t with fear.

It was with excitement. It was with arousal.

Grey turned me on like a fucking Christmas tree, and I wanted to replace my fingertips with my lips more than I wanted to breathe right now.

Thatwas more dangerous than the curse of Syra itself. Whatever spell he’d put on me, I needed to break it. I needed to get the hell out of here now before I did something stupid.

“Fall,” Grey said, and I stepped back, pulling my hand away from his.

This was insane. How had I forgotten whom I was talking to?! It was Grey! There was a reason why everyone was afraid of him—it was Grey.

“I’m tired. I want to go to bed.” Or at least I should have. I should have wanted to get as far away from him as possible until I got my shit together again.

Grey smiled. I’d never seen him smile, not all the way, but it was a bitter one this time—like he knew. Like he was sure that I wanted to run from him. Like he was sure I thought him vile.

“Of course,” Grey said and stepped back, hands behind him, and I don’t know why I was a hundred percent sure that he’d never even try to talk to me again.

He thought he scared me. He thought I didn’t want him near me—and I shouldn’t havebecause he’d killed his own father and he’d just admitted it to my face!

So, what in the world was I thinking when I said, “Walk with me?”

I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know myself, but he was as surprised at my words as I was—so surprised he didn’t even reply.

Without giving myself a chance to think through what I’d done, I turned and walked around him and between the mirrors with my head up, pretending I hadn’t completely lost my mind. Pretending I was perfectly calm.

Grey followed me.

He walked by my side in perfect silence, but I felt his attention on me. He analyzed my every move, and I was willing to bet anything that he knew I was dirty.

Could he tell I had fallen against rocks? No idea, but he said nothing as we moved in the deserted hallways, as dark as always in the castle. For a moment, it was like I’d never left. For a moment, I even forgot I’d been out there, that I’d felt the sun on my face, and I’d seen people other than the staff and the guards and the brides and the Evernights.

The silence was comfortable, as much as that surprised me. His presence wasn’t suffocating me like I always expected it to—on the contrary.

And when we reached the stairs to the fifth tower, Grey stopped.

“If you have the time tomorrow, I want to show you something,” he said. “I don’t have to be there at all—you can look at it yourself.”

Yes—something. Something he made for me, he said earlier.

Suddenly, I was dying to know what it was. “Okay,” I whispered with a small smile.

Grey gave me a deep nod and met my eyes again. He looked perfectly calm still, a version of him I’d only caught glimpses of when he was alone with me.

“Goodnight, Fall.” He started walking backward, never breaking eye contact, and it felt like he was pulling at me with his gaze.

I turned around to climb the stairs, so torn you’d think the fate of the world hung on my shoulders. But I kept going, putting one foot in front of the other, climbing up and up and up, and…

Then I stopped.

Don’t do it, Fall, I said to myself because I already knew that today was not the day of smart decisions. Today was most definitely not my best day because my sanity seemed to have slipped out of me secretly, and maybe it had even remained somewhere in Faeries’ Aerie.

Yes, most probably, because I was turning around again, looking down at the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, at Grey who had stopped near the corner to wait for me to leave, get up there to my room as I should have.

Instead, I said, “I have time now.”

My God, I was so screwed.

“If you’re not too busy, of course.”

He moved so fast he turned to a blur, and suddenly Grey was climbing the stairs, looking up at me like I hung the damn moon in the sky, even if he couldn’t see it from here.

“Never,” he said, offering me his hand to take.

And I took it.

I took Grey Evernight’s hand willingly, and it was warm and soft, and it made all the butterflies in the world come to throw a damn party in my stomach. If I wasn’t so excited, I’d have felt pathetic forbeingso excited to hold hands with someone, even if that someone was Grey.

As it was, I let him lead me down the stairs again, and through a series of hallways and corridors I hadn’t been to before. My step didn’t falter, and I didn’t understand why I was suddenly so…open.

Almost like being away from here for a little while, seeing the Aerie, and most importantly, seeing that story in Emerald’s Storyteller, had opened my eyes to more possibilities. Like I’d seen in black and white until today, but now, I was also seeing…grey. I was seeing more colors than I thought there were in this castle.

He held my hand tightly in his every step of the way. Even though he didn’t look at me as we walked, I still knew he was perfectly aware of my every movement.

When we reached a set of big black doors I’d never seen before, he pulled one open and said, “Welcome to the third tower. Consider it yours.”

He pulled me inside gently. My heart slammed against my ribcage and I tried to control it through my breathing, through clearing my throat, but it didn’t work because I was used to suppressing fear, and I wasn’t afraid right now. I was in Grey’s part of the castle, his tower, and I wasn’t afraid in the least.

Maybe I had a bigger death wish than I’d realized, but I couldn’t wait to see what he’d made for me.

“I have a confession to make, Fall,” Grey said as we walked deeper down the hallway. The walls were bare here, no paintings on them. No flowers. No nothing—just small lamps here and there to illuminate the way somewhat.

“You do?” I looked down at where our hands connected, how tightly he held me, and gently at the same time. It blew my mind how comfortable I was—how? I didn’t even like Valentine touching me, and I considered him a friend. A very close friend if my reaction to the thought of him dying today was any indication.

It was different with Grey, though. Everything was different with Grey.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, as we turned right and continued toward a black wooden stairway.

“Oh.” Not exactly something new. He was always watching me.

“I’ve been listening to your stories,” he continued, and I almost missed a step up those stairs.

“My stories?”

“The ones you tell the brides sometime during tea or meals.” Goose bumps rose on my forearms. I hadn’t really told the other brides much—except what I liked to do, and silly stories from school while growing up, the times I’d gotten drunk with my high school friends, and the books I’d read.

But instead of being afraid or freaked out by the confession, I was suddenly curious to know… “And?”

We reached the second floor of his tower and the hallway didn’t look any different. Just as dark and as empty, and he took us to the only set of doors to the far right.

“And I wanted to give you a piece of what you had. What you miss,” he said. “I understand it’s not the same thing.” That thought seemed unfinished, so I waited for him to continue, looking at his face as he focused on the doors ahead, but he said nothing else.

His jaws clenched a bit. His hold on my hand tightened before he let go to reach for the handles.

That when I realized, Grey was nervous.

He was actually nervous right now, and I could have laughed—but then he pushed both doors open, and I forgot what I was thinking completely.

“It’s just some things I was able to gather from here and there. Please, come in.” And he stepped through the doors.

So, I did.

The room I was looking at was maybe twice the size of the bedroom I slept in, except this one was different. This one was bright.

Three crystal chandeliers on the high ceiling were on, spilling warm white light, illuminating every corner of the rectangular room, divided into four sections. To the right, near the corner, there were canvases, some empty and some with colors on them, and a small table full of tubes and brushes and various glasses. Two wooden isles painted black were near the wall, empty, just like the black and silver frames leaning on their sides.

Then across from them, in the other corner, there were instruments, old instruments. A flute, a violin, a guitar and a tambourine, a cello and even a beautiful clarinet. They were all placed on the floor near a low armchair and a table, atop which was a record player, the paint of it purple and chipped everywhere, the transparent lid open, a vinyl already inside.

The window that took over the walls across from the entrance was the biggest I’d seen in the castle, and the highest panels were made out of mirrors so that the light from the chandeliers reflected on them and came back to the room twice as bright.

On the left was a library, a small library with a black wooden shelf against the wall, and possibly not even a hundred books on it. Two chairs and a long lounging couch were in front of it, and in the middle of the room, just a few feet from the window, was a cage.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in this castle. The way the iron twisted and intertwined together was a work of art, and it was huge. Easily a few heads taller than me, and the wooden base on which it stood reached up to my knees. Inside it were more birds than I could count, chirping at the same time, their feathers as colorful as faerie hair and wings as they flew around one another in the spacious cage.

“That corner is empty right now because I’m still waiting for the sewing machine you always wanted. I’ve bargained with the witches—it’s only a matter of time before it arrives,” Grey said, as if he couldn’t see that every drop of blood inside my veins had turned to stone. As if he couldn’t see that I wasn’t even breathing.

When I get really big, I’m going to find my way home, I used to promise myself before sleep when I was little, when I wanted to be everything I could be, everything I’d ever dreamed of being. I wanted to have what I called my kingdom, and in it, I wanted to make myself every day, little by little. With music and colors and words and threads.

“Birds don’t like it in the Whispering Woods all that much, but I’ve been training them. I sometimes let them out of the cage and they always return. I think they like this room,” Grey continued, stepping deeper into the room, closer to the cage—even more nervous than before. My eyes found him, and I was tempted to call them liars. There was no way that a man like him, one everyone considered mad and dangerous and a murderer to have made all of this for me. There was no way that a man like him was feeding birds in a cage as I watched from the doorway still, too shocked to move.

And still my eyes insisted that he was.

Right there, by the cage, with a plastic container full of bird food in his hand, feeding them while they flew around and chirped like crazy.

And when he was done, he put the container down near the cage’s foundation, and he turned to me, looking so out of place, so uncomfortable in his own skin that I was smiling. I was fucking smiling at the miserable look on his face, and my poor heart all but burst right out of me.

Grey kept on talking.

“I couldn’t find too many books in English so far, only ninety-one,” he said, waving his hand back at the left corner, the shelf by the wall near the lounger and armchairs.

Only ninety-one, he said. Books in English.

This vampire had seriously gotten me books in English.

Wait a minute…

“Books,” I whispered, the smile wiped from my face, and I finally moved forward. “The…the books.”

“All fiction. Most romance. It’s not much,” he said in a rush, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at the shelf—not me.

He was embarrassed. He was shy.

“Grey, are those the books you went so close to the borders for?” They’d all laughed at him for it, that he’d put himself at risk for some stupid books.

“Yes.”

I shook my head, unable to find words. Nothing was making sense, and at the same time, everything was. The books, the birds, the way he was always watching me, always listening…

“You shouldn’t have,” I ended up saying. He shouldn’t have risked himself like that to get me books.

“I wanted to. Our collection in other languages is so limited—and not just here, unfortunately. It’s the same on most Isles,” he said. “It wasn’t a bother.”

“You almost died.” I remembered the blood and the cuts on his arm just fine.

“But I didn’t.” And still he avoided my eyes.

“Grey, look at me.”

He stopped moving instantly as he did, and only then did I realize how much he’d been fidgeting where he stood.

“This is too much,” I whispered, waving my hands at the absolutely perfect use of this beautiful room that was making me want to cry or laugh or even throw up.

“It’s what you wanted,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “I heard you. The instruments in your school when you snuck in at night. And the paintings your grandmother sometimes worked on—you always wanted to try, right?”

I could have been looking at a different person. “Yes,” I finally said. “I always wanted to try.” Missy never let me touch her brushes when she was awake, but I still painted a few times when she passed out from drinking too much. I’d always wanted to have my own brushes, though. My own canvases.

Grey nodded, a touch of a smile curling up one corner of his lips. “It’s all yours. Do with it what you will.”

Birds and books and colors and instruments. Everything I’d ever wanted inside one room.

“I…I should go.” Because once more, I should have wanted to go. Because he was a stranger. Despite everything, I didn’t know him, and I should have wanted to get the hell out of there fast.

Except…

“Please stay.”

Grey closed his eyes for a second, as if the words had slipped out of him involuntarily.

And I was definitely out of my fucking mind because… “Okay.”

That’s all I said, just like that.

Grey gave me another of those almost-smiles. “Come closer.” He waved toward the cage, to the other side where there were three recliners right in front of it. “You can sit and watch them if you want.”

Oh, I definitely want…

Slowly, I walked closer and closer, keeping my eyes on the birds, and it was easy. So easy to take in their colorful feathers, to let the sound of them fill my head.

“They are beautiful,” I breathed when I was close enough to touch the iron of the cage, to feel the air when their small wings beat furiously, some flying away from me, some curious enough to come closer.

Before I knew it, I was smiling again.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in one of the recliners, and Grey was sitting with me, and we were watching the birds in the cage in silence.

Then he said, “Do you want me to let them out?”

Fuck yes! “Is that a good idea?” I asked instead.

“It is. I’ll catch them and put them back in later,” he said with such ease, it was hard to imagine he was who my eyes insisted that he was.

“Okay then.”

Grey didn’t hesitate. Before the minute was over, I was in shockfirst and then laughing my heart out at the birds flying out of the cage, taking over the room, testing their wings, chirping twice as loudly. They looked like ordinary birds with a million colors on them, and the sound of them was even better than I’d remembered.

Holy shit, it was amazing! I stayed seated because I didn’t want to spook them more than Grey was already doing, and he came to join me on the recliners again, too.

So many birds. There must have been at least fifty of them, and they seemed so happy as they flew around the room. They made me feel like I was out there, like the sky was blue over my head and the sun was shining down on me.

“I can see the appeal,” Grey said after a while. “I can see why you’d like them.”

I laughed again. “I can’t believe you spied on my conversations.” And he’d even admitted it to my face.

The question was, why wasn’t I mad about it?

“It was the only way I could find out what you liked,” Grey said, eyes on the birds around us, but his attention was always on me.

“It’s still wrong to spy on people,” I said because common sense said I should have been at least a little pissed off.

“It is. However,” he said, turning to look at me. “I still know nothing about you. You revealed only the most basic things to the brides.”

I shook my head. “There really isn’t much else to say about me.” Unfortunately.

But the birds, though. Whatever song they were singing so beautifully together was everything.

“Tell me anyway,” Grey said, and it surprised me.

I leaned back on the recliner. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“Where you were born. How you grew up. I want to know everything,” he simply said, his voice hushed, almost lost to the song of the birds.

And maybe that was it.

Maybe it was that sound that calmed me down like a magic spell, or maybe it was Grey’s eyes, so wide and curious and passionate, or maybe it was the fact that he’d taken the time to spy on my conversations so that he could build me this room…

Whatever it was, I was speaking before the minute was over.

“I was born in Detroit to a crackhead mom who never really knew who my father was—prematurely so I spent about two months incubated, if you know what that means. She was twenty-two when she had me, and she was living with her mom in a trailer—my grandmother Missy,” I said, calmly, slowly, like I had all the time in the world. “Missy also had my mother at twenty-two to a man she didn’t know, but my mother was supposed to know better. My mother was supposed to be her salvation, her rise to a better life, one she couldn’t make herself, but counted on her daughter to make for her. My mom, you see, sang like an angel. That’s what Missy used to say, and that’s how she knew that my mom was going to make it big. Become a superstar.” I shook my head at myself. “But then I came along, and my mother basically became her mother, and so Missy hated my guts because she said I was her downfall.” It’s why she’d started to call me Fall when I was still a toddler.

“Anyway, my mom died of an overdose at a house party when I was four, so Missy raised me. She never wanted me to call her grandma, just Missy. She rarely did drugs, though. Alcohol was more her thing. She left me alone most of the time.” And I soon learned to count that as a blessing.

“Then there was Brandon.”

It was like a knife right through my heart—not because of my mother or my grandmother or Brandon—just because of me. Just because of how clearly I saw myself from where I sat now, how obvious it was to me how much better my life could have been if I’d just had one person who cared. Just one person who told me to be brave and search for my own path, at least. If I’d just known how to stop Missy’s words of ending up alone forever from making me so vulnerable. So desperate.

Everything would have been different if I’d just had more courage.

“His house was very close to the trailer park where I lived so we played a lot together as kids. He was a bit older than me, but we started dating when I was sixteen. He was my first boyfriend—and friend, really—all I knew. I stuck to him because he was safe, because he was there, and when he came to Roven and asked me to join him, I said yes. Screw having a life of my own or trying to figure my own things out—no, that was too scary. I would rather just run.” And wasn’t that just sad? “So, I ran with him, and we lived together in Roven for two years.”

Two whole years and I’d still been paralyzed by inaction somehow. I still hadn’t stepped far enough back to see the full picture.

“And?” said Grey when I was lost in my own head for a moment and forgot to continue.

I smiled. At least he was still curious. He didn’t look bored in the least—on the contrary. He was completely consumed by me.

No idea why I liked that, but I did. I liked his attention very much right now.

“And then I forgot my wallet one morning and went back to get it and caught him in bed with a woman he works with. She didn’t want me there anymore, so he gave me train money to go back home and kicked me out.”

Brandon’s face was still right there in front of me, and it fascinated me all over again that I didn’t hate him. I wasn’t resentful. I wasn’t even all that mad—maybe because I understood that it hadn’t been fair to put the burden of saving me on his shoulders the way I had. It had never been his job to fix me.

Maybe.

“So, then I found myself drinking my savings away at the only bar in town that didn’t care about my ID, and I heard about a position being open at Mama Si’s Paradise. I thought I’d give it a try since nobody else was hiring, and I refused to go back home. I applied for housekeeping, but then Mama Si saw me accidentally just as I was starting the interview, offered me a job as one of her dolls, and…” And I was foolish enough not to see right through her. “Well, I said yes. The rest is history.”

For a long time, Grey sat there with me in silence, watching the birds, focused on their song.

And slowly I came to my senses, and I realized I’d just told him all of that. I’d just told Grey Evernight my life story the way I’d never told anyone, and…it wasn’t so bad, was it?

I mean, the birds were still there. And the instruments. And the books, the canvases, the colors. I didn’t feel bad for sharing—on the contrary. My shoulders were a bit lighter.

I risked a glance at him, at his profile, and my stomach did a flip.

Fuck, he was so beautiful I could have been making him up. There was a roughness to him, to that stubble that covered his cheeks, to his eyes, to the way he held his shoulders.

Was that why I was so drawn to him?

Or was it simply this room?

“There’s no piano,” I said in wonder—not that it mattered. But he’d gotten everything right, except that.

“You play the one in the theatre. I figured you’d want other options here,” Grey said as if he, too, was coming out of a trance.

There went my stomach again, twisting and turning. “You heard me.” He’d heard me play.

Grey only nodded, and I didn’t need to ask to know that he’d been there every single time. I thought Valentine was my only audience when I played, but Grey had been hiding nearby, too.

“How did she do it? How did Mamayka manage to trick you? There must have been something she did right,” he said after a minute.

“She did everything right, actually,” I said. “But the one thing that broke me was that—a piano.” Incredible how silly I’d been. How easily fooled. “A magical piano that she made me believe the Burrow gave to me itself, made out of tree roots. The most beautiful piano you’ll ever see.” One that was alive—or so it had felt to me.

“You didn’t deserve that, Fall,” Grey said after a moment, and it was so much better than I’m sorry. It was so much better than but you couldn’t have known or she’s the original seductress, so of course she knew how to make a fool out of you.

It was exactly what I’d needed to hear and didn’t even know it.

I almost asked him why he said it, why he bothered. Why go through all this trouble? Why listen to me play in secret and spy on my conversations and prepare all of this for me? Why risk his life to bring me books I liked to read—why?!

Unfortunately, I already knew that answer.

Because of my blood. Because of my body.

These men wanted me to bear their children, and each would do anything to win me over.

“Is there something wrong?” Grey said, and he’d leaned closer to me from his recliner. He looked at me like he was trying to read my fucking mind—and suddenly it pissed me off. And it fascinated me. It made me feel so much I might explode into fireworks any second.

I stood up, and he did, too. The birds kept flying and chirping as I rose on my tiptoes and did possibly the silliest thing I’d done tonight, which was to kiss him on the cheek.

When I moved back, my lips fucking burned, and my hand flew up to touch them, to make sure they weren’t on fire. “Thank you for this. I appreciate it, but I can’t accept it,” I finally said.

Grey froze that same way the moment my lips touched his smooth cheek. He froze and his eyes closed and he smelled spicy. Very much like Grey.

“Why not?” he said, his eyes slightly bloodshot as he looked at my still burning lips. I moved away again, not entirely conscious about what I’d just done.

I shook my head. “Because it’s too much.” It was everything I’d ever wanted.

The piano was different; it was part of my dream. This was the whole thing, and it was way, way too much.

I’d already learned that nothing really came for free.

“Fall,” he said, coming closer again, bringing his hand to my cheek. It was so warm and soft that it took all I had not to lean into him.

But I wanted to. My God, I really wanted to.

I didn’t fucking understand what was happening.

“Now I’m really ready for bed.” And I wanted to sleep until the world was ready to make sense to me. Until I understood why I had this sudden urge to wrap my arms around his neck and lay my head on his chest.

It was Grey. I should have known so much better than this.

He smiled at me, and though it was bitter, it could have been the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. His fingertip slid down my cheeks slowly.

“Where were you tonight?” he suddenly asked, and my heart skipped a beat instantly, so he added, “I know you were outside, and it’s perfectly fine. I don’t need to know. But this Isle is dangerous. This castle hides so much in plain sight.”

If he only knew… “I was safe enough.”

Grey looked at me like he knew I was full of shit. “Just make sure you always are, especially when you’re alone. And especially when you’re alone with Valentine.”

With that, he turned for the doors, leaving me with another one of those strange twists in my gut.

“What about them?” I said when I walked out the room, and Grey closed the doors behind us fast as to not let the birds fly out.

“I’ll be back to put them in the cage in a bit,” he said.

I nodded. “I can find my way back to the fifth tower.”

But he narrowed his brows. “I would rather walk with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” I said because I didn’t have it in me to argue or to even try to make a run for it.

I didn’t have the energy to pretend I didn’t want to be near him for just a little while longer.

It was the way he spoke to me, I was sure of it. All this time I thought I knew exactly who he was because everyone said the same things about him, so I had no reason to suspect. But Grey had shown me a side of him when we were alone together that I hadn’t even imagined could exist—and that had gotten to my head. It was just the mystery, the excitement, the reveal. I’d get over it by morning, especially after a good, long sleep.

“Goodnight,” I said when we reached the stairs of the fifth tower. Now it was Valentine’s territory, and Grey couldn’t come up with me.

“Goodnight, Fall,” he said waiting by the stairs with his head down and his hands behind his back.

I had no clue how to handle the strange instinct to kiss his cheek again, but thankfully I was able to ignore it and continued to walk upstairs, relieved that he hadn’t asked me more questions about where I was. Relieved that he’d just assumed I was outside the castle.

“I won’t feed them anymore, you know.”

I stopped just as I reached the first landing, Grey still by the stairs. “What?”

“The birds,” he said, looking up at me from under his lashes. And he was grinning. “I won’t feed them again. I won’t let them out of the cage.”

I narrowed my brows. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. So, unless you want to go feed them yourself, I’m afraid they won’t survive for long.”

My jaw touched the floor. “You wouldn’t,” I whispered, and I don’t know why a part of me was giddy about this whole thing.

How dare he put that on me?!

“Oh, I will,” he said, raising his head to give me the full intensity of his mischievous smile. Fuck me, my panties were dropping.

Who even looked like that?!

“I brought them here for you. If you don’t want them to live, then they won’t,” Grey continued.

I climbed back down a couple steps, saying, “I do want them to live!” more frustrated at myself, at the thoughts in my head and that heat between my legs, than I was at him.

Grey said, “Very well, then. I’ll see you there tomorrow.”

He turned around and walked away, leaving me staring behind him, half-incredulous, half-pissed, but with a big, goofy, idiot smile on my face.

Damn him.

I hadno chance of even trying to think through the events of the night, what happened in Faerie’s Aerie, what Valentine said. All of it would have to wait for tomorrow.

That night was the first night I hid under the covers and risked touching myself. The tension was too much, and I couldn’t fucking sleep otherwise.

I came embarrassingly fast with Grey’s face in my mind, fully aware that I was absolutely screwed.