Chapter 2

Two

Water in my mouth and nose and ears. Water everywhere around me. I was moving my limbs on instinct, but the weight of it still tried to pull me down.

Something was moving to my side, too. Somebody was screaming just like Sedelis had done.

I turned, heart in my throat, hoping to find Grey even though deep in my bones I knew that I wouldn't. Even though I knew that everything had gone to hell already.

I was right.

Valentine was barely holding his head above the water to my right, and beyond him in the distance was Genevieve, pushing herself up as she screamed and howled at the sky—but that's it.

No Grey anywhere around me.

The sky was a rich blue, no cloud in sight, the sun shining golden almost right over our heads. And the darkness ahead of us, not even fifty feet away over the surface of the ocean, made what had happened perfectly clear.

"No." I shook my head as I tried to keep afloat, not even suspecting that this could be the Whispering Woods, even though this darkness was the same—because the Woods was huge, and this place was tiny in comparison.

This was the Eighth Isle, and Syra had thrown us out of it. She'd picked us up with her magic and somehow thrown us out of the darkness and into the ocean—but Grey was not here with me.

A scream built up inside me, ready to tear the whole fucking world apart. She threw us out, but she kept Grey in there.

She kept Grey in that fucking darkness…

The darkness that was fading away.

Water in my mouth because my jaw fell open. The thick cloud of darkness that concealed the Eighth Isle was fading right in front of my eyes, and I didn't know what the hell to make of it. It disappeared little by little, showing me more of the dead trees and the ruins and the tomb mountain made out of rocks—but that wasn't all.

Even Genevieve stopped screaming when we saw Syra standing at the very top of the mountain—the same place I'd seen Grey in the eighth mirror back at the castle. She was standing at the top, all alone, her arms spread wide and her eyes turned to the sky, and when the darkness faded away completely, the trees began to change, too.

The black barks turned brown, and the broken branches grew thick, and the dead leaves became big and shiny and green. I couldn't see animals anywhere, but the surrounding woods of the tomb mountain grew so fast and so big and so green I thought the trees might reach the sky before my next breath.

But Syra wasn't done.

The whole world shook when she raised her arms even higher. The water vibrated, and before I knew it, the Isle moved.

The fucking Isle moved, and it was rising as if something was pulling it toward the sky.

It grew bigger and greener by the second, and it didn't stop until it was maybe half the size of the Whispering Woods.

I couldn't think well enough about anything other than the fact that that siren had pulled the entire Isle out of the ocean by simply raising her arms.

Syra had healed the entire piece of land as if it had never been sick to begin with. She had Grey, my Grey, somewhere in that mountain, and the water that was spilling, giving way for the Isle climbing on the surface, was pushing me farther and farther away.

I couldn't get to him. Once more, we were apart, and I couldn't fucking get to Grey.

My magic burned under my skin, rivaling that bad feeling that had settled around my flesh. It raged because it knew it couldn't do anything now.

Syra was awake. Grey was with her. I was alone again.

My eyes closed and I let go—so what if I drowned? I wished I would.

I wished I never woke up again.

But as I slipped under the surface, still holding my breath on instinct, a hand closed around my arm, pulling me back up.

My eyes closed and unconsciousness took me.