Chapter 16

Sixteen

A knock on the door.

My eyes opened to blinding sunlight falling on my face.

Pulling up my hands in front of it, I looked around, disoriented still, and the moment I saw those beige-colored lamps on the nightstand, my stomach fell.

I sat up with a jolt, heart in my throat, to find myself in that room, on that bed with the silk sheets, the glassless windows opposite me—and the doors to the right, one a bathroom, the other connected to the hallway outside.

Then… "Breakfast is served."

The voice was robotic at best, and it had an accent, too, but not one I could name. It was so strange to be hearing it, to understand those words, and somehow I knew exactly what had said them—a golem. One of the golems that Syra had apparently made out of earth and magic.

Was I supposed to go eat now, was that it?

And—"What the fuck ?!"

I looked down at my body—my naked body. I had nothing on me. No clothes and no underwear— nothing at all!

Panic raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I jumped off the bed, not seeing anything for a moment until I forced myself to breathe and to focus. To look around, find my clothes, sure that there was an explanation for this. Sure that I'd taken them off the night before and I just didn't remember it.

But I hadn't. After Grey and Syra, I'd lay down on the bed exactly as I had been, fully dressed. Now my clothes were gone, and…

"Holy shit," I whispered when I realized the doors of the big wardrobe against the wall were open, and it was full of clothes.

I went closer to it slowly, afraid something might jump out and eat me any second. My hand shook as I reached for the white and pale pink and yellow fabrics on the hangers, and they were real. Dresses, some short and some long, and in the first drawer below were panties and bras and undergarments. In the second were shoes, flat shoes, three pairs of them, white and with ribbons in the front, exactly my size.

No, I hadn't taken my clothes off last night at all—it had been Syra. She'd stripped me naked and had left me with nothing but these ridiculous dresses to wear, knowing I'd have no choice but to put them on.

My instinct was to cry. Fuck, I wanted to sit there naked and cry my eyes out, out of anger, then burn all these dresses out of spite—but the reasonable part of me knew that I wouldn't be gaining anything by it. If anything, I'd just be angering her further. If she was angry, she'd hurt me, and I had no problem with that, but I wasn't alone in my body now, was I?

Baby.

Bile rose up my throat, and I closed my hands around my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut.

No, I couldn't let Syra hurt me. I couldn't let her hurt Grey, either. And I wanted to see him. I wanted to see if there were ways to leave this castle while it was still daylight, so in the end, I caved.

In the end, I surrendered and put a goddamn dress on.

It was white and it flared from the waist down and it fit me perfectly. The straps tied over my shoulders in pretty ribbons and the shoes melted onto my feet like a second skin, too. All my energy went into not letting those tears get the best of me because I would not cry. At least not yet. No idea what time it was, but judging by the sun in the sky, it was still early in the morning, and I would not be defeated before the day had properly even begun. I still had work to do.

And then I opened the door to walk out.

Lamps on the walls near large paintings. Small tables at the corners with silver candle holders and vases with fresh, colorful flowers. Mirrors behind them. A thick brown carpet on the floor, and the stone walls looked warm somehow. Different.

Everything looked so fucking different that I was already doubting my sanity.

Hadn't this hallway been completely empty just last night? What the hell was all of this?!

My legs carried me forward, and at least I wasn't thinking about crying anymore. I was too curious to see what more had changed in this place, and the answer was everything.

I turned corner after corner to find the hallways fully set with decorations and lamps and chandeliers, carpets—and even a few windows with glass in them. A few doors as well, thick and wooden, just like the one to the room I'd slept in.

Then I felt the magic.

It was easy to identify it as Syra's. I'd never before felt any other magic like it, so strong and buzzing with energy, so raw. Following it was easy even though my legs were slightly shaking because I knew Grey would be with her.

He was—and so was Valentine.

"Come in, come in, lovely. Good morning!" Syra sang while I was still processing the view.

Two doors were to the sides, doors that hadn't been there the day before when I'd woken up in that room, sitting on a chair at a fully set table. The dining room was now completely furnished, and it looked so bright with all that sunlight streaming through the brand-new glass of the windows.

All of them sat around the table—Syra at the head—and they were eating. They had food on their plates and coffee in their cups, and they were watching me as I stepped in, too shocked still to say a single thing.

Grey was there. He sat a seat down from Syra to her left, while Valentine sat on her right, looking flawless with his hair combed back, his cheeks shaved and his skin clean, the black shirt on him pressed to perfection.

Meanwhile Grey, though clean and dressed as well, looked awful. His eyes were two black orbs and they told me exactly how he felt to be forced to sit there, to not be able to grab me and take me away from this hell right now.

It's okay, I tried to tell him with my eyes. It was fine, we'd figure it out. So long as I got to see him, I had no trouble being here a little longer. So long as I got to see with my own eyes that he was okay, that he wasn't being hurt, I could behave while Syra was around.

"Good morning," I choked out as I went closer.

"Don't be rude, boys. Say good morning to the lovely Fall," Syra said, and both Valentine and Grey said the words at the same time.

Valentine chewed his food, completely at ease as he watched me, looking down at my dress, then up at my face again before he grabbed his cup and took a sip of his coffee.

He made me fucking sick.

"Come, Fall. Sit. Right here, close to me." And she patted the free chair to her side, with Grey sitting on the other.

I had no problem sitting next to him, so I went eagerly. Despite the absurdity of the situation—the way this place was now looking, her and the brothers sitting at the table, eating—I sat down, and then Grey was right there. I could touch him if I reached out my hand a little bit. I could breathe in his scent. I could feel his energy.

It calmed me down like a charm.

"White looks good on you. So pretty. Did you like the dresses I made you?" Syra said as she cut into the pancakes on her plate. "Go ahead, serve yourself. Look at all these delicious things, right? Back in the day we didn't have this many recipes. People have gotten so much more creative in the kitchen."

I looked at Grey and he looked at me, and even though we couldn't speak, we understood each other just fine. Eat, he was saying. Just eat. If we could play by her rules for a bit and put her at ease, maybe running away from here was really possible.

So, I reached for some bread, but when I tried to grab the milk, Syra said, "Be a gentleman, V."

Valentine grinned. "Of course, Your Highness," and he took the milk and poured me a glass.

Grey's anger was so raw I felt it, just like the heat of the sun's rays falling on my back through the windows. The windows that now had glass in them indeed, so the sound of the outside didn't reach me the way it had yesterday.

"V has been of utmost help to me since yesterday. Such wonder the world has seen since I've been"—she paused for a second, her fork halfway to her mouth —"away ."

I focused on the food, on not letting my hands shake, on chewing and swallowing until I was full, on showing her exactly what she wanted to see—me, submitting.

"I mean—the Internet!" She laughed. "Such a wonderful thing. I can see everything through a screen. How fascinating is that? I can see it and then I can replicate it with my magic." She waved her hand forward, and suddenly a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower came into existence over our plates, and the more she moved her fingers, the faster it changed—to the Big Ben and a pyramid and a large skyscraper I had never seen before—until I was dizzy and had to close my eyes for a second.

"All these years and I could never see these things, never with my eyes. Tied to the ocean—always tied to the ocean. My Hansil told me stories, but I never quite saw them for what they were, and now I do," Syra said, smiling like she really was happy. "I plan to go see them in person, too."

"You're a siren," I said, despite my better judgment. "You belong in the sea."

Another pause, and I thought she'd get angry, but…

"I did, yes. But the sea is no longer my home."

She was not happy in the least when she said it.

"What are you planning to do to me, Syra?" I asked because, no matter what she looked like right now, she was still a monster, and I needed to know.

Before, when I'd seen her in the Storyteller and I'd felt her pain, I was sure that it had driven her insane, that she'd genuinely lost her mind before she ruined Ennaris five hundred years ago. Except now I saw that that wasn't it. She'd been fully aware of what she was doing then, just like she was now. And despite what her sisters had done to her and what she'd lost, she wasn't going to get any sympathy from me.

"I'm planning to take care of you, lovely. Keep eating," she said, waving her fork at my plate. "And drink your milk. You need all the vitamins."

"I'm full," I said and pushed the plate away, but the look on her face…

"You're full when I say so," she said under her breath, and I felt the energy of her magic intensifying with every new breath.

"I don't?—"

She raised her hand toward me, and Grey moved so fast it was a miracle I wasn't on the floor yet. His wings were wrapped around me all the way, and his fangs were extended, and he was hissing at Syra.

"Oh, for fins' sake, Hansil!" she said, and she wasn't afraid, not in the least. She just sounded irritated. I barely saw her face through Grey's wings, but she still had the fork in her hand, and with it she stabbed the wing with all her strength.

A scream slipped from my lips even though Grey didn't make a single sound. The tongs of the fork were barely an inch away from my eyes, and then Syra pulled it down, tearing the leather of the wings as she went.

Blood dripped out of the tears, but Grey didn't even flinch.

"That's not painful? Not even a little bit?" she mocked.

"Do with me with you will, but you won't touch her," Grey said, his voice strained. It was painful—of course it was. His wings were a part of him just like his limbs.

"Stop," I breathed, and I had no idea whom I was asking to stop, but this was my fault. I shouldn't have opened my mouth at all, damn it.

Then Syra laughed.

"Sit down, Hansil. She needs to eat. I mean it."

I reached out my shaking hand to touch Grey's. "I'm fine," I whispered. "Sit down, please."

Grey didn't want to, but he also knew that Syra could easily just throw him in the ocean right now and do with me whatever she wanted. I knew it since the moment I stepped into the room—that was not the way to go about it with her. If we had any hopes of escaping this place, it would be by not aggravating her. By submitting to her—or pretending to.

And Grey knew it just as well.

He finally moved his wings away, and the fork that had been in the left one fell to the floor with a loud noise. By the time they disappeared into his back again, his shirt now torn, Syra had produced another fork and was eating peacefully like nothing at all had happened.

Grey looked like he might lose his mind for real like that, hair all over the place and fangs extended, eyes bloodshot as he looked at Syra first, then at me.

And when our eyes locked, he leaned back in his chair. We can't win this, I told him in my mind, and I actually believed that he could hear me—or that he knew me well enough to figure out what I was thinking through the look in my eyes alone.

"You know what I've been wondering?"

We all turned to Valentine, who had leaned back in his chair and was playing with his cup, eyes on his empty plate but he wasn't really seeing anything, lost in thought.

"What if we create a network between the Isles, too—a brand new network that would connect us at an incredible speed. Something faster than even magic."

I blinked and blinked and expected him to burst out laughing, to say that it was a joke, but then he turned to Syra.

"Oh—like the Internet?" she asked.

" Better than the Internet because we have magic as well. Imagine if we found a way to merge it with technology," said Valentine and he was already so invested.

Like he hadn't even seen what had happened a minute ago right across the table from him.

Like he couldn't care less that we were there at all.

My God, he really was heartless. The way he was smiling made my stupid— stupid heart break into a thousand more pieces.

"I like it," Syra said. "Talk to me—what are you thinking?" And she, too, leaned back in her chair, sipped her coffee and listened to Valentine.

Within the minute, neither could care less that we existed, and I was thankful for it, though it didn't last. And when we were done eating, Syra announced that I needed to be in this very room for lunch and dinner as well. Otherwise, she was going to be forced to either transport me here against my will or have one of her golems carry me over their shoulder.

She even promised to make sure Grey couldn't be there to save me, too, and that's how she won. I'd be there for lunch and dinner on the clock as long as she kept those fucking hands off Grey.

So, then I was free to go—back to the room, she said, to rest.

That's where I went.

In my white dress, feeling like I carried a world on my shoulders, I lay down on the bed. I pretended Grey was with me and we were actually in a cave, forgotten by the world, and I slept again just to escape reality.

I was alone for lunch and dinner. No sign of Grey or Valentine or Syra anywhere, but I didn't really search. I couldn't for the life of me convince myself to go do what I'd been so motivated to do just that morning—find a way out of this castle, out of the entire Isle. So, all I did was sleep. Lie down and stare at the ceiling and daydream about Grey, then sleep some more.

My life had become so damn exhausting, and sometimes it felt like this was all happening to someone else, not me.

To this day I'm convinced that that's what got me through the worst of it. That's how I survived that very first day.

Then came the second.

I was alone for breakfast, too, and by then I was craving to see Grey again, so going back to the room after I'd eaten wasn't going to happen. I'd taken the day before to escape my reality, to not allow myself to think about the fact that I was pregnant or trapped on yet another magical isle, only this time by an even more powerful predator. A worse predator, one who would hurt the man I loved because at that point I couldn't care less about myself anymore. But she would hurt Grey, and this baby that I now apparently had inside me.

And I had to accept all of that and continue to submit.

Syra had furnished the entire castle, it seemed. I found the room where she usually hung out, where those throne-like chairs were and that table with the red light she and Valentine had been looking at two nights ago.

They weren't there now, but the room was full of things—carpets and glass in the windows, two large TV screens and a speaker as tall as me at the corner. Lamps were on all around the room and the liquors on the stand at the side of those throne chairs glowed in different colors, but the oversized blue fireflies were still floating around close to the ceiling even in the daylight.

She'd filled the hallways and corridors with doors and flowers, and the stairs now had railings, too, made of black glass, engraved so beautifully they were a piece of art on their own. But even though now the place looked like someone actually lived here, it was completely empty. Not even golems walked the hallway or the stairs, and I descended another flight before I came to this round room with tree balconies at the edges, all with beautifully engraved glass doors that were half open, luring me to them as if by magic.

On the first balcony, I saw the trees, dense and large and green, the bright blue sky without a single cloud in sight, and the ocean stretching toward the horizon. They looked infinite together like that, and the sight calmed me down somewhat. The scent of flowers—and the sound of birds out here was the best thing I'd heard in days.

And then I went to the second balcony, which showed a slightly different part of the castle, closer to the corner of it, and I could actually see the talons of the Great White planted firmly on the ground near the walls, a single claw as big as my entire body.

Near it were Grey and Storm.

My heart skipped a long beat, and I grabbed the railing just in case my legs decided to give up on me.

It was some sort of yard, with trees around the square space and stone benches every few feet. Near the walls of the building was a round fountain spraying water, with flowers growing around the white stone.

Gray was standing between it and those benches, his back turned to me. He was talking to Storm, who was sitting on his hind legs with his wings folded on his back, listening intently, his eye only on Grey as he waved his hands around.

A loud breath left me, and he couldn't have possibly heard because I was three stories up, but Grey turned to me anyway.

He turned his head and his eyes locked on mine instantly, like he knew he'd find me right there. I squeezed the metal of the railing tighter and attempted to smile at him, but I didn't think I managed.

Even from this distance, I saw his face with clarity because I knew every detail of it. Even from this distance I saw it when his lips parted and his pupils dilated and every muscle on his body locked tightly.

The urge to call out to him, to tell him to come to me, take me in his arms and to the rooftop somewhere, where we could be alone, was so strong. I just needed a moment, the two of us all alone so he could make me feel like I was on top of the world one more time.

But then Grey turned his head away, to the other side of the castle, somewhere behind that fountain where I couldn't really see without leaning outside the railing, and I didn't want to. I didn't need to—he looked at me again, then shook his head once. That was enough to let me know that we were being watched, possibly by Syra herself.

No, he couldn't fly to me, and he couldn't take me in his arms. He could do nothing but turn back to Storm.

A couple of tears slipped down my cheeks silently as I watched them training together. By the looks of it, Grey was trying to figure out how fast Storm's reactions were from his left side because he didn't have his left eye. Shadow had eaten it—tiny Shadow who had followed me around everywhere and had saved my life at least a couple times.

Shadow had eaten his eye in the duel, and now Grey was training Storm how to see his side without it.

I couldn't really hear them, but I watched them moving and jumping around each other, Grey waving his arms around as he explained something to Storm, and Storm blowing out smoke from his nostrils each time he nodded.

I watched them for what could have been hours, and then Grey turned to look at me one last time before he tapped Storm on the side of this neck, and Storm took off flying in the sky.

Then Grey went back inside the castle, and I was all alone on the balcony again.

By day three, I was about ready to lose my fucking mind.

There was no way out of this castle without Syra knowing about it. I could feel her eyes on me everywhere I went, even though I never saw a single soul since Grey and Storm the morning before. I never saw Valentine or Shadow, or even those freaky golems. It was just me and the walls, and no door was ever closed, and the outside was just as heavenly as it looked from the windows. The birds never stopped singing day and night. The trees looked so beautiful and healthy, and the animals hiding behind them were always so curious to see me whenever I went out. They followed me but never came close, only watched me from behind leaves and hid in the tall grass. I wondered if they were the same animals who'd gone rabid when Syra was dormant here and the Eighth Isle was under the spell of the curse. I wondered if they'd healed, too, same as the land that was thriving.

I wondered, and on day four, I made it all the way to the beach without anybody stopping me.

I dipped my legs in the water and looked out at the blue—of both the sky and the water that was so close, yet an entire world away. Even if someone had given me a boat right now, or a damn plane, and told me I could go anywhere I wanted, I wouldn't take it. Grey was still here, and where he was, that's where I'd be. Death was certain, anyway.

How much longer did any of us really have?

Then there was the other thought that overwhelmed me so much I ran from it mentally—a baby was growing inside of me.

Nothing about me had changed physically. My stomach was just the same as always, and so were my breasts. And when Grey had been there, it had been easy to accept that I was indeed pregnant. It hadn't felt so damn disastrous, considering the circumstances. But alone it was different. Alone, it was impossible to even imagine it without wanting to throw up, so I kept on running. Maybe that made me a coward but thinking about a baby while I wondered about the world's end and Grey being hurt by a psycho siren proved to be far too much for my mind to handle.

When I returned to that castle that day, I saw Storm flying in circles around the towers, over the lowered head of the Great White that hadn't moved a single inch since I'd come here. He looked so alive, yet like a colorful statue at the same time. Part of the castle, yet I could have sworn I sometimes heard him breathing, too.

Storm didn't even acknowledge me, or maybe he was too far away to even see me, but for a moment I imagined Grey was there, too, and he'd find me. For a moment, I stayed there in front of the main doors to the castle, and I waited for him to come or to give me a sign—or just to feel the energy of his magic close by.

I felt nothing.

With a heavy heart, I walked up the stairs and to that bedroom, and I lay on the bed just as the sun began to set over the horizon.

That night, Grey came to me.