Chapter 11

Eleven

My eyes refused to blink as I took in the structure in front of me, and my head kept shaking, and my mouth kept opening, but I still had no words to say. No thoughts to think. All I could do was just…take it in.

There was an arched bridge made of stone in front of me, with gorgeous carved railings on either side and pillars every several feet shaped into faceless sirens.

Below the bridge was a small river, maybe not even twenty feet wide, the water in it not blue but turquoise—just like that pool had been inside the tomb mountain.

But none of it came even close to the building on the other side.

It was a castle, so much different from the one in the Woods. This one was gothic , made of dark stone with a million different creatures engraved on every wall and every corner, with doorways without doors at least fifty feet tall, and four towers in the middle that made it looked like a large crown atop the green land.

At the back of it, standing almost as tall as the towers, was the Great White, his scales white, turquoise ink all over him, and his eyes closed.

He was as still as the rocks, head bowed, those large talons wrapped around the rooftops of the outer towers—and the wings. Huge white wings spread to the sides as if they wanted to hug the building but couldn't quite wrap around all of it.

My brain malfunctioned when I began to notice the people standing on the other side of the bridge, near the many doorways behind which was nothing but darkness.

Except…they weren't people at all. They looked like it from afar—all male, all with two legs and two arms and a head over their shoulders, but the skin on them was…different. Like plastic. And the hair on them was like thick strings of wire, and their eyes seemed to not be blinking at all, and?—

"Golems."

I brought my hands to my chest before my heart flew right out of my ribcage.

Valentine was standing behind me, watching the castle and the dragon and the strange men in silence all this time, and I had completely forgotten.

"What?" I whispered, so afraid to make a sound, even though Syra was not here.

If she were, I'd have already been dead.

"They're golems. She made golems," said Valentine, and he was just as in awe and terrified as I was.

"What the fuck is a golem ? And why do they look like…like…" Plastic, was the word that came to mind, but it was too absurd to say it out loud.

"Because they're not real people," Valentine whispered, moving closer to the siren pillar on the left of the bridge. "They're made of earth and magic, and they're supposed to be servants of witches, but they're considered a myth. No witch has been able to make one since anybody remembers."

His eyes were focused on those creatures, and he looked so different in the bright daylight. Not just because of the stubble, but his skin had more color to it and his eyes were so much lighter.

"Let me guess—you need a lot of magic to make them."

"Correct," he said, as I knew he would.

"Are they dangerous? What can they do? Can they use magic, too?" I asked because I needed to cross that bridge and get into that castle asap.

Grey was there. I knew in my heart that he was in there. That day he'd been inside the tomb mountain, and even though this place no longer resembled that mountain at all, it was it. Syra had transformed it into this .

"The stories claim they can't use magic, no. I'm not sure what they've been programmed to do, if they'll try to stop us or not," he said, then looked at me. "But there's a way to find out."

Every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps.

I'd loved this man once. Fuck, I really, truly had, but I would never make the mistake of trusting him again. He'd followed me, and I hadn't wanted to waste the energy to stop him, but I wasn't going to let him come with me into that castle. I wasn't going to let him ruin this for me or even threaten it in any way.

"Sunshine?" he said when I remained perfectly quiet and just looked at him for a good minute.

"I'm not sorry at all," I whispered, to defy the thoughts in my head, those that insisted that I was.

I was sorry to do this, but I shouldn't have been.

His eyes opened wide, and he had no chance to even move away before my magic charged at him, hit him in the chest and sent him back a couple of feet.

Shadow roared over our heads.

At the same time, another roar I'd become very familiar with sounded somewhere on the other side of that castle, behind the Great White that stood guard over it.

I'm sorry, I thought again, involuntarily, as Valentine fell to his knees with his lower jaw already twisted to the side, and his arms elongated, and his neck no longer holding up his head as it should.

I knew Valentine wouldn't have stopped me even if he could. I knew Shadow wouldn't attack me even though he continued to roar like that, and I knew Storm was somewhere close, too.

I knew Storm had felt me, knew I was here.

So, I swallowed the words before I said them to Valentine, who was now on the ground, half-hidden by the overgrown grass, body twisted in awful angles—and I ran over that bridge.

Don't look back, don't look back, don't look back, I chanted to myself, and this guilt that was eating me from the inside was going to fade away eventually. I ignored it as best I could, and I ran like my fucking life depended on it. Tears slipped down my cheeks, but I kept my attention on those men by the doorways—the golems . Magic raged inside me, so powerful, so intense that it burned my skin. I had plenty of it to use on them if they so much as raised their hands toward me. If they so much as stepped in front of me or looked at me wrong.

Except they didn't.

Could they even hear me? Because they didn't turn their heads or their dead-looking eyes toward me at all when I jumped on the other side of the bridge, breathing heavily, arms raised and magic buzzing on my palms, ready to unleash at them.

I never had to. There were six of them right there, but not a single one moved.

Storm roared once more, and he was closer now, just over the Great White. I held my breath and kept my eyes on the sky, and a heartbeat later…

"There you are," I whispered when his grey underbelly came into view, and his massive black wings stretched all the way as he hovered in the air, his eye on me, even though he was too far up for me to make out his face with clarity.

I ran forward again, and straight into the first and largest doorway of the castle with Shadow flying right behind me.

Darkness.

The hallways were narrow and dark, the floors and walls made out of stone, and torches were mounted everywhere but none of them burned. I must have gotten more used to darkness than I'd realized while I'd lived in the Whispering Woods because I saw everything I needed to see—which was the stairs at the end of a narrow corridor that would lead me up.

On the second floor, there were windows without glass everywhere, and sunlight brightened up every little corner, but there really was nothing to see. Stone floors and torches and carvings of strange symbols here and there, but that's it. I have no idea for how long I ran, but everything looked the same. The walls and the arches and the windows, every line and every crack—even the intensity of the light seeping through was exactly the same and I feared I was running in circles.

"Grey!" I called at the top my voice, terrified but also desperate, because I was here . I'd made it—I'd come to the Eighth Isle, and I couldn't fucking find him.

A roar somewhere over me—Shadow, frustrated, as pissed off as I was, even if for other reasons. He was mad at me for what I did to Valentine, but it was okay. He'd get over it because Valentine would recover, just like he had last time.

But then another roar filled my head—this one from Storm.

Storm, who was outside. Storm who'd been here all along and who knew beyond a doubt where Grey was.

I don't know how I managed to climb a flight of stairs, moving in the direction of his roars. I hit a dead end, then had to turn around and run for another couple of minutes before I found a large window shaped like a tear.

Through it, I saw Storm flying in circles, roaring for me.

"I'm here!" I called, not nearly as loudly as I'd intended—I was breathing so heavily still—but he heard.

Storm saw me, and the next moment, he began to climb higher into the sky, moving east.

I don't need to be told twice.

"Find stairs, go east, find stairs, go east, find stairs, go—" I chanted to myself, until I found a large staircase just around a sharp corner, with two of those creatures on either side of it.

I stopped in my tracks even though neither of them moved. They looked the same as the ones outside—plastic skin and wire-like hair and plain black clothing that covered them from their necks down to their booted feet. Their eyes were black and lifeless, an object rather than real—and again, if they heard me approaching, they couldn't have cared less. Storm's roar took me out of my trance, and Shadow flew ahead of me, to the wide flight of stairs and a floor up.

I finally followed. The golems remained as still as the walls behind them, staring ahead at nothing.

Move, move, move! my mind shouted at me, and I did. I climbed another two stories before I saw Storm through a rectangular window at the end of the hallway where the staircase led.

He was flying in a circle right outside that window, waiting for me so I could approach. Waiting for me so he could give me guidance.

I ran so fast my feet barely touched the floor, and I slammed against the stone ledge of the glassless window, looking out at the sky, at the dense jungle surrounding the castle, and Storm.

He roared but he didn't take off flying anywhere. He didn't move east or west, just stayed in place, beating his wings steadily, looking at me through his one eye.

"Where is he?" I called, looking around me. "Where?—"

My voice cut off when I turned to my right and saw there was a doorway barely three feet into the corridor around the corner.

My legs took me toward it all on their own. The doorway led to an open room, round and wide and with chairs and a table and chandeliers inside it—an actual room instead of empty space surrounded by stone blocks.

Two big chairs were at the head of it, very close to the doorway, and I saw their sides. I saw the first one, empty, and the second one where someone sat. Someone lay.

I kept walking, tears sliding down my cheeks because I knew who it was before I even saw his face.

Grey—dirty and bloody, half lying on that chair with his eyes closed, not moving at all.

The room spun and tilted out of focus, and it felt like I was picked up and thrown back a million times a minute, yet I was still standing somehow. I was still breathing, still blinking—and the view in front of me didn't change. Shadow shot forward, through the doorway and into that room, and Storm kept on roaring outside as if to tell me, go! Get in there! Go to him!

So, I did.

The stone floor underneath my feet, the sunlight coming in through the many windows, the air going down my throat—none of it even registered as I ran to Grey, feeling like I was moving both in slow motion and fast forward at the same time. Even so, it took my whole life flashing right before my eyes until I finally got to him, until I kneeled in front of that large chair that could be considered a throne, with gold-colored cushions and sharp edges around the armrests, and with Grey sprawled all over it, still as a statue.

Eyes closed, hair all over the place, his clothes torn and his skin bloody like he'd been in a fight. No bruises or wounds on him that I could see, but the dried blood was a clear map of everywhere he'd been hurt.

Were these from the fight in the tomb mountain or after? Grey had fought Genevieve for a long time, and then Sedelis had attacked him, too.

"Grey," I whispered, hands shaking so badly as I reached out to touch his face, not sure what the hell to do at this point. "Grey, wake up!" I urged him because his skin was so cold.

My God, I had actually found him, and he looked so dead my mind refused to accept the image in front of me.

"Come on, wake up!" I called, pressing my hands harder to his cheeks, then slapping him, lightly at first. "We have to go, right now. We have to get out of here, Grey. Wake up, please!"

I slapped him so hard the sound of it echoed in the tall ceiling. Shadow was flying in circles over our heads, snickering as he went, and I kept screaming at Grey to just open his eyes, look at me, get up and follow me out of here before it was too late.

He didn't.

Somehow, I was standing again and I was pulling him to sit up straighter, even though every inch of my body was shaking. He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't. No pulse on him, no heartbeat, and vampires didn't fucking breathe—so he wasn't dead, he was just sleeping. Just resting because the fight had tired him.

" Wake up, Grey, wake up!" I shouted at the top of my voice, slapping his face and chest and arms, shaking him as well as I could, yet he didn't react.

He didn't react at all.

My legs gave up on me again and I tried to calm down, I really did. But my heart was racing and these thoughts in my head were awful, insisting that he was never going to wake up again, and I couldn't accept it. I just couldn't accept it.

"He looks alive," I told myself because this thought couldn't win in the chaos inside my mind, so I had to say it out loud to give it strength. "He is, he is, he just needs blood," I whispered, driving my nails into my palms, and my skin broke, but not enough. " Blood, blood, he just needs blood… "

The sharp edge of the armrest of Grey's chair was in my wrist before I even realized what the hell I was doing. It was sharp enough to cut a clean line on my skin vertically, from my wrist and down to the middle of my palm.

Blood, red and warm and thick, came out of me, and I didn't even feel it. If it stung or burned or hurt in any way, I didn't feel it. I just sat on Grey's lap and I pressed my wrist to his lips.

"Drink," I urged him. "Come on, take my blood. Take it." With my other hand, I pulled his lips open until my blood stained the inside of them, stained his teeth and enough of it slipped inside his mouth, too.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up… I couldn't stop saying it, couldn't stop pressing my wrist to his mouth as my blood slipped down to his chin.

"Come back," I whispered as my eyes closed, the exhaustion, the fear getting too heavy to bear. But I was on Grey's lap and I was leaning against his shoulder and my wrist was between his lips, so I could pretend that he was awake easily.

"Don't leave me, Grey. Please, come back…"

I must have said it a hundred times before I was so exhausted that I couldn't speak anymore. And it was okay, I decided. I'd seen Grey, hadn't I? I'd seen his face. This was all I'd wanted, and I was glad I'd had this chance.

But then…

"Fall."

Every thought in my head that had been bouncing from one side to the other relentlessly came to a halt. Every muscle in my body locked down, too.

Was that my imagination, or did Grey say my name?

"Fall, look at me."

I was crying before my eyes opened all the way, and I saw his—dark grey, bloodshot, fangs extended and hair all over the place, mad and pale and half his face bloody—but alive. Speaking. Looking at me.

If I'd had any voice left, I'd have screamed.

"What are you doing here, baby? How did you get here? What?—"

I was already on his lap, and to hear him talking and see him blinking sent a jolt of energy throughout me, so I wrapped my arms around his neck lightning fast and squeezed him with all my strength.

I wasn't too late.

Grey was indeed alive, and I'd found him.