Chapter 10

Ten

A thousand knots were twisted in my stomach. I stood alone at the beach, the sun still rising over the horizon on the other side of the Isle. I waited with my heart in my throat, looking out at the water, at the ocean that was grey, just like the sky over it. The sky that still hadn't absorbed all the sunlight it needed to brighten up all the way yet.

I waited for what felt like a long time for a sign, a word, a whisper, a small breeze— anything to let me know that it had worked, that Syra had believed Mama Si and Reeva. That she'd been curious enough to go see the stars through Nella Lexis herself.

Nothing.

The sun crawled higher up in the sky and the ocean became bluer with each new blink. Ahead of me was nothing but water, the Eighth Isle too far away to make out with the naked eye. I could see the shapes of the other Isles from the Woods and the Woods from all the other Isles, but not the Eighth. Too far.

Grey was too far away.

"Just what are you hoping to accomplish with this, Sunshine?"

His voice vibrated throughout me, but I was already too numb from standing still in one place for so long that I hardly moved. I hadn't heard a thing, not only because I was distracted, but because Valentine had stuck to the branches, had climbed the trees of the forest behind me instead of walking to me like a normal person. He spoke to me from higher up, too, just like he had the first time we met.

"Go away," I whispered, but I knew he'd hear it.

He could hear the erratic beating of my heart, too, and I didn't have enough fucks to give to try to slow it down or pretend I wasn't bothered right now.

"I won't," Valentine simply said, and I heard it when he landed on the ground.

That first time I saw him jumping off a tree, I thought he was perfectly soundless—he wasn't. My ears had just been too human then.

"Why are you out here still? What is the point of this?" he said as he came closer, and I refused to even turn to look his way. "What is it that you're planning?"

I laughed a bit. "Sucks, doesn't it. When you know someone is up to something, but you don't know what."

"It sucks when that someone is you , yes," he said, but at this point I wasn't going to even let myself be surprised anymore. Valentine could do everything he did, even try to kill me, bring about the end of the fucking world—the world which I lived in—and still have the audacity to come tell me that he cared about me afterward. It was just him, and I would learn to ignore it without letting it get to me.

"Just go away, for fuck's sake. Why hasn't Romin killed you yet?" It would be ideal—and very much deserved, anyway.

"Because Romin is not a murderer—only a coward. He'll banish anyone, but when it comes to killing his brother with his own hands, he chickens out." He said all this with a straight face.

"Not you, though, right? You'll do it. You'll kill the whole world with your own hands, even the people you claim to care about."

He stopped right by my side, our shoulders an inch apart, and he looked out at the ocean with me. Through the corner of my eye, I could see him—the stubble that covered his cheeks was the first thing I noticed. Before the Eighth Isle, he was always shaved clean. Maybe he'd liked how the beard had grown on him. It made him looked older, more mature. More tortured, even though his shoulders were back and he gave you the impression that he was perfectly relaxed and in control of himself.

"Go on, have your fun," the asshole said, and it was all I could do not to unleash all that magic built up inside me at once.

But I wasn't going to fall prey to his provocation today.

"Oh, yes. Thank you so much for this amazing fun, " I mocked.

Valentine flinched. "You know what I mean."

"I really don't. Please, just leave me alone."

"I can't."

"Sure, you can. You just don't want to."

"I don't want to because I know you're getting yourself in trouble," he said.

"No, Valentine— you got me in trouble. You got all of us in fucking trouble, and now it's already as good as over. So, why don't you just go somewhere where I'm not, and let me be?" I turned to look at his face. "I don't want to see you."

I said the words slowly just so he didn't miss anything, and I held his eyes, never blinking mine, so he could also see that I meant it with all my heart.

And he did.

His dark eyes were so fucking dull. "I know that, Sunshine. But I can't let you go do something stupid. I know you want to go to the Eighth Isle, and?—"

"It's none of your business," I cut him off. "Whether I die today or not, it's none of your damn business!"

"It is. I've made it my business," he said without batting a lash.

So goddamn frustrating. "And what do you think you can do to stop me? Are you going to attack me, Valentine?" He opened his mouth to answer, but I didn't let him. "Because I will. I won't hesitate. You remember what I did to you in the tomb mountain, don't you? I will do the same thing now and make it hurt even more."

The words got stuck in his throat. "You wouldn't," he ended up whispering, and it really was funny this time.

"Then you'll be proven wrong soon." And I turned to the ocean again.

"What you said to Romin and Emil this morning," he said a moment later. "It's true, isn't it?"

"Oh, you mean that you brought on the end of the world—literally?" He said nothing. "Yes, it is."

"We're all going to die."

"I'm sure you'll find a way to survive. You and Genevieve together, right?"

"I don't really blame her, to be honest," he said, taking me a bit off guard. "She was to me what I think Mama Si was to you."

I shook my head. "Mama Si was different."

"Not really. She represented what you never thought you could have. She promised you a life that was a million times better than the one you knew."

My lips opened and closed a couple of times. "Mama Si didn't doom the whole world by tricking me." Even if they were similar, it wasn't the same. I could hardly believe I was thinking it myself, but Genevieve was nothing like Mama Si.

"That is correct," Valentine admitted. "I asked you once why you believed her, what it was that made you buy into her lies. Remember that?"

Oh, I did remember. I'd been sitting on the floor by the door in my bedroom in his tower, and he'd been sitting right outside.

I said nothing.

"I think I knew since then that I was being played. I was trying to find out how to… find out . I guess I didn't really want to, but I believed her for the same reasons," he continued. My heart kept on breaking—not for him , per se, just for…everything. The way we'd ended up. The distance that had come between us.

"You don't know my reasons. I never answered that question," I reluctantly said.

"But I knew the answer anyway," he said, and again—it hurt. It hurt because I really did understand it. I understood him, even though I didn't want to. Even though I hated myself for it, I still understood him. "It's because you get tired of hearing that voice whispering in your ear every single day that you're wrong. That you're a mistake. That you should have never been born."

I bit my tongue so hard there were tears in my eyes.

Fuck, that killed me a little bit. Just to imagine Genevieve talking in his ear when he was just six years old, telling him that he was a mistake…

Don't you dare, I told myself in my head when I thought about saying sorry or hugging him or touching his hand.

No. "This all would have mattered before you grew up and became responsible for yourself, Valentine. This all would have mattered before you were old enough and capable to make up your own mind about yourself and the people you live with." It simply didn't anymore. Just like my falling for Mama Si's lies was nobody else's responsibility but my own.

I could go around blaming my mother, grandmother, Brandon. I could blame my naivety or just young age, and definitely Mama Si—but it wasn't them, at least not since I was old enough to make my own decisions.

It was all me, and…

"That day in the tomb mountain, that was all you. You made the call to chant that spell, gave your magic and your blood." He'd done that willingly before Genevieve even arrived.

And the way Valentine looked at me now, you'd think this was all news to him. You'd think he wasn't there himself. You'd think I was telling him about something about which he had no idea.

"I'm sorry, Sunshine," he finally said, and it was like a million spiders crawling all over my skin.

"Save your sorry. I have no use for it. Nobody does." And as soon as I found Grey, I'd cry or scream or kick and thrash, or maybe do nothing at all but close my eyes and breathe—but I'd make my peace with it.

"It can't be it," Valentine said. " This can't be it."

Panic laced his words, and I wanted to tell him to keep it to himself again, but then I thought I saw something, merely a shape in the water as the sun continued to climb in the sky. A shape, but it was enough to make my heart just about explode.

I held my breath and waited, unblinking eyes on the colors that became more and more vibrant, and I thought I recognized her face. I thought I recognized the broad-brimmed hat she had on with the dry red flowers decorating the side. I thought I recognized the black dress and the gloves attached to it—and that smile.

Yes, that smile.

Mama Si was standing alone in a boat with her hands folded in front of her, and she was smiling at me.

Done.

I could have sworn I heard her voice pop in my head, though it could have been my imagination. And a breeze carrying the distinctive scent of roses that followed her every step came toward me, blowing lightly against my face, filling my nostrils.

Valentine and Shadow and the entire Whispering Woods disappeared when she became clear enough to make out perfectly, though her boat stopped about thirty feet out in the water.

Mama Si said nothing. All she did was give me a nod.

Then, her boat turned east, and she sailed away from me, merging into the blue of the ocean once more.

"Talk to me," Valentine was saying, but my eyes were already on the three boats painted black, half in the water, just to my right. Ready for me.

Done. It was done.

"Whatever it is you're trying to do, talk to me. Tell me about it," Valentine insisted, while I raised my hand and focused my attention on the first boat, pushing it off the rocks and into the water.

Mama Si had been smiling.

Mama Si had nodded—which meant her plan had actually worked. And since Reeva wasn't with her, that could mean that she was with Syra in Witches' Wing to read the stars.

Syra was gone, off the Eighth Isle.

And Grey would be there waiting for me.

No time to waste.

"Look at me!" Valentine was in front of me before I could climb in the boat. "Where are you going, Sunshine?!"

Such a simple answer. "I'm going to Grey."

I walked around him and stepped onto the boat, not really feeling any of my limbs. I was completely numb, but I didn't mind. The clock was ticking, and I needed to be on my way. I needed to get to the Eighth Isle.

Reeva told me to sail west from this very beach yesterday and follow my sense of my magic. She was sure it would lead me right to it, and that's exactly what I planned to do—if only Valentine would leave me alone.

"Stop!" he called, and when my magic pushed the boat forward on the water, he pulled it back with his, stopping me in place. "I can't let you go, Sunshine. It's too dangerous. She'll kill you."

"You have two seconds," I said, and I meant it. My magic was already slipping out of my skin, aiming at him, and I didn't even need to think about what to do to him—it knew. It knew how to infiltrate his body and twist him into unusual angles until he was folded in two right there on the rocks.

Shadow was flying in circles over our heads, roaring that screeching sound that frustrated me even more than Valentine's face, his wide eyes as he came closer.

"She'll kill you. She won't let you speak. She won't let you?—"

"She's not there, Valentine. Let me go, or I will hurt you," I warned him for one last time.

Finally, his magic let go of my boat, and he stepped back.

"Where is she?"

"Away." I turned around and pushed the boat forward.

"Then I'm coming with you!" he called, and Shadow was already leading the way, flying ahead, barely a dot against the blue of the sky.

I didn't turn to acknowledge Valentine. I didn't try to stop him or waste energy by attacking him, energy I could use when I got to the Eighth Isle. I just kept my eyes on the horizon and my hands in tight fists, and the image of Grey's face in the center of my mind.

The Eighth Isle had become even bigger than the last time I saw it before I passed out in the water. Syra had pulled all of it out from underwater, and it was massive—a jungle with a large structure rising over the tips of the dense trees, so thick you could see nothing but them, and the four towers of the building they surrounded.

I slowed the boat as I got closer, afraid someone would come out of those trees to try to stop me, afraid they'd catch me by surprise, or that magic—a shield like the one that used to be around the Whispering Woods—would shred me to pieces before I managed to even call for Grey.

Neither happened.

The tip of my boat stopped against the dirt upon which were the trees, their roots slipping out of the soil and some of them extending all the way toward the water, like they hadn't made their place quite yet. Like there were too many of them, and the ones at the edge were going to tip over and fall in the sea soon, but for now, they were solid. The roots helped me climb on the muddy ground within seconds, and then I was officially on the Eighth Isle.

I stopped and held my breath for a moment, my focus on my ears.

No sign of a big source of magic anywhere near me that I could feel. No sound of footsteps or anything else other than birds—and Shadow's wings as he flew around the trees, searching.

Then Valentine jumped and landed behind me without effort. "She's not here," he said, and I finally tipped my head toward him.

He looked surprised—shocked at his own statement, his eyes on Shadow as he flew higher and higher up amongst the thick branches and large leaves.

Shadow, I could trust. Shadow, I could count on.

"Don't try to stop me, Valentine."

I ran.