Chapter 13

Thirteen

Any second now…

Death had never seemed sweeter.

I couldn't breathe—impossible to draw in air through this magic that had wrapped around me like a second skin and was squeezing me like it wanted to burst me open—and it would.

My heart couldn't beat. All my thoughts had come to a halt and my magic was suspended on air, trying but failing to fight this foreign power that was killing me slowly…

Too slowly.

My eyes opened again, despite knowing that it was a much better idea to focus on Grey. Easier. Quicker.

But it wasn' t. It wasn't quicker at all because the seconds ticked by and I was still conscious. Still not bleeding.

The seconds ticked by, and when they had for Sedelis, she'd turned into ashes, but not me. Still very much whole.

Syra was no longer smiling. Fire no longer came at her side, and Storm no longer roared.

The siren was looking at me like she'd seen all the horror in the world in the color of my eyes, her lips moving slowly though no sound left them at all.

But the magic was letting me go.

There was no way this could ever make sense in my mind right now, so I didn't try to think. I just focused on Syra, on the way her hand shook. On the way her hand lowered.

Then she fell to her knees.

Syra was on her knees in the middle of that plaque, and something else was moving to my left—Grey with his wings spread, bloody, his chest torn in too many places, jumping at her with both his hands raised.

His magic hit her in the face, pushed her head to the side, but it wasn't enough. And he shouted as he came down on her, but I knew that wasn't going to be enough, either.

Syra waved a hand only barely, halfheartedly, and the air picked up Grey before he had the chance to touch her or sink his fangs in her neck. It picked him up and threw him back right at the trees, and if Storm planned to spit his fire at her again, he didn't need to bother. It wasn't going to work.

Nothing was going to work against her, and somehow that still didn't matter.

Somehow, I was still alive.

Warmth slipped from my nostrils and into my parted lips—blood. My nose was bleeding, my ribs were bruised, and it was a damn miracle my legs were still holding me when all my limbs were numb.

"No," Syra whispered, and I realized that I had been deaf to the outside world until this very second.

I realized that I hadn't heard Storm's roar or Grey falling against the trees the second time. I'd only heard the white noise inside my head, and now my ears were working again.

Now, I heard it when Grey tried to get up and fell down, his grunts of pain, Storm's growls as he paced in front of him, watching Syra.

But Syra was looking at me and her eyes were glossy, full of tears. Her hands at her sides were still shaking, though she fisted them tightly. She was still on her knees, saying, " No, no, it cannot be… "

Magic rushed inside me— my magic, as if to nudge me, to tell me to pick myself up, to move, to do something other than just stand there like an idiot, watching her, waiting for her to finish killing me.

And my legs finally worked.

I turned around and I ran for Grey, who could barely hold himself up on all fours. My God, his chest was torn open, sliced like with an invisible knife—and he wasn't even bleeding anymore.

I lowered on my knees and pulled him by the neck with all my strength until I could see his face. He was as pale as he had been that day I found him on the Eighth Isle after his banishment. He was on the brink of dying from all that blood loss, but his eyes were still open a slit. His fangs were extended, his wings gone.

I wrapped my arms around him the same way I did that day, brought his head down on my neck, and held it there.

Bite me, bite me, take my blood, I begged, and this time it happened faster. This time he didn't scare the shit out of me first but bit me right away, sinking his fangs in my skin, drawing out my blood like he was starving—and he was.

Almost starving.

Then, he let go.

Drawing in air wasn't something vampires needed to do, but Grey must have been in shock. He pushed himself back, his hands on my shoulders as he looked down at me, mouth bloody, eyes wide and alive. Like he was surprised to find me there, and…

Holy shit, I'm not dead.

Syra had attacked me, and I was still alive. That's how I knew that something wasn't right.

Our eyes locked. We understood each other without words, Grey and I, and though I felt a little lightheaded from the blood he drank from me, I was fine. I could stand. I could run.

Then Storm roared, and we both turned to the center of that stone plaque. To Syra, on her knees still, tears streaming from her eyes, her whole body shaking.

Once again, I felt her pain all the way to my bones as if I had walked into another Storyteller. My God, she was breaking apart right there, and it made no sense that she would. Even Grey was frozen in place, and even Storm didn't know whether to attack her now, to spit fire her way, or to just stand back, stop moving.

Something is wrong…

Wasn't it funny that something was always wrong when it came to me?

Wasn't it funny that nothing ever went right for longer than three fucking days in my life?

"She didn't kill you," Grey whispered, and I shook my head, unable to look away from Syra. Those blue eyes so full of tears that didn't stop spilling down her cheeks, dripping from her chin. The heartbreak in them. The way she shook…

What is it? I wanted to ask—was dying to ask despite everything. Despite the fact that she was just about to kill me. Right now, minutes ago, she'd squeezed me with her magic, had been about to pop me open, had made my nose bleed—but she hadn't killed me.

Why? Why was she crying? Why are you shaking, Syra?!

Her body let go of her and she sat on the ground, head lowered, her hair falling in front of her like a curtain as she cried. She sobbed. She barely held herself up by the hands.

Something is very, very wrong.

"Fall, we need to run," Grey said, standing up and pulling me with him, and my body moved on autopilot, but I wasn't aware of anything that wasn't Syra.

Why-why-WHY?!

"She's crying." It made no sense.

Storm was roaring at the skies, and that made no sense, either.

Grey's wings spread around me, all around my shoulders as if to shield me, but from what? Syra was on the ground, sobbing. Shaking. She wasn't trying to kill me.

"It doesn't matter," Grey said. "Look at me, baby. We have to go—now."

And maybe I would have.

Maybe I would have turned around and jumped in his arms and we'd have taken this absurd, impossible opportunity given to us right now, but then Syra spoke, and I heard her as if her voice had popped right inside my head.

"Don't worry, younglings. I can't kill neither one of you," she said, and slowly raised her head, bloodshot eyes on me. "But I promise you that I won't even try."

She pushed herself to stand, then touched her cheeks as if she just realized that she'd been crying.

"Oh, what a mess!" she said, wiping her tears and shaking her fingers like they were dirty .

I looked at Grey again, and he was just as confused as I was. What the hell is happening?

"You may cheer up now. I told you—I can't kill you if I try." Syra pushed her long hair back and looked down at her dress to make sure it wasn't dirty.

Just like that.

She did a one-eighty just like that—a completely different person. Someone who couldn't have possibly been on the ground, crying her heart out just two minutes ago. No fucking way was that the same person.

"Why not?" I said despite my better judgment, but I knew that it wasn't over. I knew that, if we tried to make a run for it right now, she'd stop us.

"The question is, why would I, when you've given me everything I've ever wanted?" said Syra, finally happy with her dress and her face, and once again, she was glowing. Her eyes were no longer bloodshot, and she wasn't shaking, but when she smiled like that, I realized her canines were pointier.

Sirens didn't have fangs as long as vampires, but they developed very sharp canines when they were feeding—they needed them to tear into flesh. Right now, Syra looked about ready to eat us whole no matter what she said.

"You have given me everything that was taken from me, lovely. I won't harm a hair on your head… yet. " That smile on her face. Even Mama Si couldn't compare. "See, I took an oath once, when I was young and naive and in love. I promised Hansil that I would never kill him, never end the life of anyone who carried his blood in their veins, and I laid down my magic with that oath. It holds true, apparently, to this day."

That bad feeling in my gut intensified with every word she spoke.

"I still couldn't save him, though. Not when my own sisters betrayed me," she continued, pacing slowly in a circle in front of us, staring at the ground as her dress and her hair flowed in an unearthly way, following her movements.

I squeezed Grey's hand and his wing around my shoulder tightened.

"But it's okay, I guess," she said, raising her head to look at me again. " You, I think, are Ennaris's way of apologizing to me for my bad fortune, lovely. The universe itself has responded to the unfairness that was done to me—my Hansil taken from my arms…" And she shook her head, like the thought made her both happy and sad.

"Hansil couldn't stand to even look at you," I spit because what the hell else could I do? Minutes ago, when she'd grabbed me with her magic and had squeezed me like that, I'd surrendered. I'd let go and I'd accepted my death because that had made sense. It had made perfect sense, but now? The way she was acting, the things she was saying turned my mind chaotic. I didn't know what the hell to think yet.

"Oh, yes—I know my sisters told you that," Syra said.

"They didn't—I saw it myself in the Storyteller." Not that it made any difference.

But she waved me off. "Storytellers are merely devices to tell someone else's story. They tell you what a book contains, and whatever book you read about me, Fall, is a lie. My sisters have lied to the entire world. They never told anyone the real story."

The real story.

Those three words that had been in the back of my mind since she first woke up and spoke to Sedelis.

"What's the real story?" I asked—and I'd asked the sisters this, too, but they'd refused to tell me. In Romin's office, I'd asked them, but they'd insisted there was no such thing.

There was. I'd known it since the first time I heard those words, and I knew it now.

Syra smiled. "The real story is that Hansil was in love with me just as much as I was in love with him," she told us. "The real story is that my sisters were jealous of how much he adored me."

I shook my head— no, I'd seen Hansil myself. I'd seen the way he'd screamed at her, called her a monster, told her he could never love her. I'd seen .

"Liar," I said, even though Grey squeezed my hand to warn me—we did not want to piss her off right now, far from it. But I needed to understand what was happening. I needed to know why I was alive, why she'd cried like that—why she was so damn happy now. I had to know.

With her brows raised, Syra said, "Oh, am I now?" She shook her head and turned to me with her whole body. "How about this, then, lovely? How about you come to my Storyteller this time?"

She brought her hand to her lips, kissed the tips of her fingers, and blew it toward me.

Never in a million years could I have guessed what came next.

Magic everywhere all at once, the same intensity as before, except this kind was different. This kind was…colder. Grey called my name, and his arms were around me, I thought, because my legs had let go. He was shaking me, but I couldn't close my eyes. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe—I could do nothing at all but lie there, paralyzed, staring at the sky, until the sky changed. Until the magic, that cold magic that was now inside me, began to paint it with different colors.

Just like that, I was thrown back into the past again.

But this time the view of that beach was very different…

There was no voice in my head narrating the story. All I had was what my eyes were telling me. I was in the air somewhere, no body and no voice and no nothing, just my consciousness floating over the ocean, my focus on the beach.

It could have been the same or maybe just similar to the one I'd seen in the Storyteller at Emerald's. Large trees at the back, small rocks lining the shore—except where there had been but a small cabin in the Storyteller, now was a house half hidden away in the tree line. A one-story house made of wood, with a white fence, and chairs and a table in the front, and planters and colorful flowers on the windows—a beachside house, small and simple and clean.

As I watched now, the door opened and out came Hansil Knight, carrying Syra on his back.

They were laughing—that's the first thing I noticed. They were laughing and Hansil was jogging, holding onto her hands that were wrapped around his neck tightly, and he jumped over the fence that surrounded the house with ease. He wore nothing but white briefs, and Syra was completely naked. Her hair was loose, the same length and color as it was now, and it moved to the sides like a piece of satin.

Hansil ran and ran toward the water. The same Hansil—dark hair and pale skin, dark eyes and a thick beard covering his cheeks, a smile on his face so big he looked completely transformed. His eyes glistened. His step didn't falter, and he was laughing with all his heart as Syra screamed at him to not get in the water, but he ignored her and didn't let her get off his back.

She, meanwhile, pretended she couldn't get her hands free while she laughed, too, and screamed, and said something to him, but I was too far away to hear the words, only the sound of her voice.

The exact same voice that she had now.

Hansil jumped in the water and took her under the surface while she thrashed and pretended to want to get out, but he dragged her in again. They were playing, wrestling each other, diving underwater and pulling each other under.

They were playing and they were laughing, smiling, glowing together, like they'd done this a thousand times. Like they knew each other's bodies better than their own. Like they were best friends and lovers and the only people in the universe—completely alone in the world. On their beach. In their ocean.

But they weren't.

I watched them for a little while, how they played and kissed gently—then fiercely all at once. I watched how they fucked right there in the ocean, how they both held each other as they moved, the water hiding where they connected, but their faces, their half-closed eyes and parted lips, showed me exactly how much they enjoyed each other's bodies. Such an intimate moment to behold, but I couldn't look away. They were mesmerizing. So beautiful.

After, they lay right there on the beach, naked, without bothering to dry with a towel.

Hansil stayed but a moment next to Syra as they faced the sun, then moved and grabbed her, put her on his shoulder before he was able to make himself comfortable. Like that, they whispered to each other and shared kisses, touched each other and held each other like nothing else in the world mattered.

All the while, Syra smiled.

All the while, Syra was perfectly peaceful, and so was he.

On the beach, under the setting sun, they slept.

And when they came, before the sun had set completely, Syra and Hansil still had their eyes closed.

I saw her first—Raxae with the dark hair—as she slowly, silently broke the surface of the water with her hands raised toward the beach. Toward Hansil and Syra. I didn't see the magic, but I knew it was spreading from her open palms, and the other sisters were already popping their heads above water, too.

All their hands were raised, and they kept them like that as they went closer and closer to where Syra and Hansil lay, eyes closed still.

A bad feeling in my gut—such an awful feeling.

Wake up! I wanted to shout, but I realized I had no mouth to speak with. All I could do was watch as the sisters slowly came out the water, all of them wearing legs instead of fishtails. They kept their hands raised and they were whispering, chanting magic, and I could tell when one of them—whom I could have sworn was Sedelis—turned her head slightly to the side.

Her lips were moving so fast. Just like they had that day in the tomb mountain.

Then, it began.

I'd have screamed if I could. I'd have thrashed and ran and done anything at all but hover there in the air and watch the horror when the sisters, half hidden away by the darkness of the coming night, began to move fast, furiously, all of them together.

Five grabbed Hansil and began to bite into him as he screamed, eyes now wide open, and the other four grabbed Syra, all their hands on her body.

All their hands on her stomach.

Her eyes were open, too, though she could barely move as the blue light that came from her sister's hands slipped inside her stomach and held her prisoner. She could barely move, yet she managed to turn her head to the side, to see how her sisters were eating Hansil, who was still alive as they bit his flesh and tore him apart. Still alive and still trying to reach out to Syra.

It was impossible.

Then Syra screamed, too.

She screamed but it made no difference. She screamed, but her sisters were already done, and they let go of her. The rest let go of Hansil's half-eaten body, too.

Hansil was already dead.

The sisters said something to Syra, but I couldn't hear it, wouldn't have heard anything even if I'd had ears or if I was on that beach with them.

I was just as paralyzed as Syra had been to see the blood coming out of her, from between her legs. I was just as paralyzed as she had been when the sisters got back in the water, leaving her alone with Hansil's remains, bleeding all over the rocks.

She sat up, Syra, both hands over her stomach, looking at the blood staining her thighs, then at Hansil, then her stomach once more.

That's when she screamed again, and this time I heard it all as if I was standing right next to her. I heard it all and I felt her pain and I blacked out wherever I was, in whichever state she'd put me in, because the next thing I saw was her kneeling near Hansil's body.

Reaching for that piece of his heart trapped in his ribcage.

Touching his face.

Then swallowing.

The next image in front of my eyes was of how her rage boiled the ocean, and her fists slammed onto the rocks.

Ennaris will fall.

The words were in my ears, even though I couldn't hear her voice nor see her face. But those words were stuck in my head anyway, and only days later, Ennaris was no more.