Chapter 22

Twenty-Two

The smell in the air reminded me of a dream. Roses—dark red, velvety roses underneath me, all around me, and I was bathing in their water, too. That's what it reminded me of—roses and baths and the illusion of safety.

Always such a beautiful illusion.

My ears rang when I realized that it had never been a dream, the Paradise. It had been very, very real—and I was somewhere in it again.

I sat up with a jolt, eyes wide open, enough light coming from my right that I could see every detail of the room I was in perfectly. The walls covered in floral wallpaper. The carpet. The vanity table. The white doors. The ocean and the blue sky outside the windows…

I was back in my room in Mama Si's Paradise, and I was still alive.

The door suddenly opened, and the scream caught in my throat, my body paralyzed with all those memories, all those images of sirens and bright magic and Syra bleeding all over her face—and Grey.

Grey, who was coming through the door with a tray in his hands right now.

Grey, whose skin was clean, his hair combed back, and his beard shaved to his usual stubble. He was wearing clothes, colorful clothes: a steel blue shirt and light denim jeans.

I did a double take because no way was this reality.

Were we on the Eighth Isle? Or maybe Storm was still carrying me across the ocean?

Because Grey did not wear colors other than…well, grey.

"Good morning, my queen."

He spoke.

I squinted my eyes at him when he put the tray full of food on the bedside table, then came to sit on the bed's edge near me, smiling.

Looking…okay. Perfectly fine.

"Grey?" I whispered because there was a chance that Syra had gotten into my head and was making me see things.

"Yes, baby?" he said, dragging himself closer, taking my hands in his. "How are you feeling?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." How the hell was I feeling?!

His smile dropped. "Why? Does it hurt somewhere?" And he brought his hand to my forehead as if to see if I was feverish.

I did feel a bit feverish, actually.

"You're wearing blue." And if that wasn't an indicator that something was wrong here, I didn't know what was.

Grey paused. "You don't know how you're feeling because I'm wearing blue?"

"Yes," I said. "Is something wrong?" I touched his hands—he seemed fine. Same as always. No wounds on him that I noticed.

Then he smiled. "She told me she has nothing else my size in this place, so I had to wear these," he said, then chuckled. "I think you're perfectly fine." And he grabbed my face in his hands and kissed me.

I had no complaints whatsoever. Being kissed by Grey was one of my favorite things in the world to do, but too many thoughts were on my mind and I couldn't even bring myself to enjoy it as much as I wanted.

"What's going on, Grey? Are we really in the Paradise? Did Mama Si give you these clothes?" I touched his face, ran my fingers through the ends of his hair, then touched his neck and chest, too. Intact. He was perfectly intact.

"We are in the Paradise, yes," Grey said, his eyes moving downward for a moment. "I brought us here because Mamayka might not sell us to the sirens right away like the other Isles would. She offered to help you before. I took a chance."

"Fuck," I whispered, shaking my head because what he just said confirmed that everything I remembered from last night was actually true.

It was all true.

"Calm down, Fall," he told me, and when I pushed the covers off me to see I was wearing one of my old nightgowns in a pale yellow, he grabbed me in his arms and sat me on his lap. "Calm down, we're okay. They don't know we're here—calm down, baby."

I held onto his neck, hiding my face under his chin, and I forced myself to breathe. We were okay for now—I felt great and Grey was here, too. That was all that mattered, wasn't it? That we were alive. That we had a chance.

"What happened? What…what the hell happened, Grey?"

"The siren sisters tried to attack you. We stopped them and managed to run away from the Eighth Isle. Then we came here, and Mama Si took us in. She's put up shields to keep us hidden for now. We've been waiting for you to wake up," Grey said slowly.

I moved back a bit. "Syra died." I'd seen it with my own eyes. She'd died right in front of me, her hand around my neck, her eyes and mouth and nose bleeding.

Don't be good.

"She did," Grey whispered.

"She…she did something to me." And I'd felt it. I thought it was just a layer of ice, some kind of a shield magic she'd put on me, but…

I looked down at my stomach when Grey closed his hand over it. "According to the sirens, she put her magic, her energy into you," he reluctantly said.

Bile rose up my throat.

I must have blacked out for a second there because the next time I was aware, Grey's wings were around me, supporting me while his hands were on my cheeks, and he was kissing my face and whispering to me that we were okay, that we would figure it all out.

But what was left to figure out?

Really, it didn't take a genius to understand what happened next. This world was doomed, anyway—all of us were doomed with it. "They're coming for me." The sirens were coming for me, and neither I nor Grey and Valentine—even Mama Si—could stop them.

"Breathe, baby," Grey told me, holding me in front of his face, his eyes closed, squeezed tightly. "Breathe for me, will you? I will not let them come near you—do you understand? Whatever I have to do, I won't let them near you."

And I believed him with all my heart, but I had a problem with that. I had a very big problem with him doing anything he needed to do , jump in front of their magic for me the way he'd done on the Eighth Isle.

Because, again—if Grey died, what the hell was the point of any of this?

"How?" I breathed. "How could she have put her magic in me?!" It made no sense. Magic wasn't supposed to work like that, was it? "I didn't feel it, Grey. I felt her magic, but I thought she was attacking me. I didn't…" My eyes closed and Grey squeezed me to his chest harder. "Just how ?"

"There's a lot of this that doesn't make sense to me still, but she did it through the hatchling." My muscles locked again, and I wasn't even breathing.

"Shadow?" My memories came back to me slowly, and I began to remember details, more details about last night than just Syra's face and magic.

"Yes," Grey said, caressing my hair. "He is what's called a Ruit , a very rare dragon species. There's very little about them in the books because they're very unlike traditional dragons. Their power isn't measured by how big and strong they are, or how much fire they can spit. They serve another purpose—they connect."

"Connect, how?" I asked, and even though I wanted to lean back and see his face, I was too comfortable resting my head on his shoulder. I needed the comfort against the absurdity of the situation we were in right now.

"Like a vessel, if you will. We don't know a lot right now, and I don't have my books with me to find out more. Valentine isn't very sure, either—he knows only what Syra told him," Grey explained.

My heart jumped. "Where is Valentine?"

And Grey said, "He's here."

"In the Paradise?" He nodded. "And he's okay?"

"He is." Grey kissed the top of my head. "If you want to see him?—"

"I do." I needed to see him. I had to talk to him right now.

Grey sighed as if that's exactly what he was afraid I'd say. "Then you will."

"What happens now, Grey? Where are the sirens?"

"They're still on the Eighth Isle as far as we know," he said. "Now we lay low and make a plan. I don't want you to worry about it, baby."

"Of course I'm worried." This was a fucking nightmare— my life was a nightmare that didn't seem to want to end anytime soon. "If Syra's magic is really inside me…" I shook my head. "What the hell does that mean for me?"

Grey was silent for the longest time before he said, "I don't know."

He made me eat the food he'd brought me, and I recognized the tastes right away. Claus—Mama Si's chef—had made me this breakfast, and it was still the best food I'd ever had, even better than what they served me in the Evernight castle. I started eating because I was so weak, my limbs too heavy for my liking, and I continued because of the taste until I'd cleaned the whole plate and drank the milk. I hadn't felt that full in a long time, and I could instantly think more clearly.

I could remember more clearly, too—the time when I'd actually lived here. For a month, I'd been treated like a princess and I'd had no idea what really went on in the Blood Burrow—or even that I was on one of the Isles.

"This used to be my room," I told Grey when he took that tray from my lap and I stood up to test my legs.

"She said so," Grey said, watching me as I went to the closet door and opened it, expecting to find it empty.

It wasn't.

I gasped when I realized that it was exactly as I'd left it. All those clothes I'd bought at the mall that night with Adam and the girls were still there, exactly like I'd left them. All my colors. All my things—things that had never truly been mine.

Tears in my eyes, and I only noticed when they blurred my vision as I ran my hands over the fabrics. It hadn't been that long ago since I'd been here, had it? The scent— my perfume. The feel of the clothes. The sound of my footsteps on the hardwood floor—it felt like I'd spent years in this place, not weeks. It felt like this was really, truly mine still.

"You wore this?"

I turned to find Grey still at the beginning of the closet, holding a dress in his hand, a thin piece of satin that would barely cover anything, its color a gorgeous flame red.

I stifled a smile. "Yes, actually. I wore that all the time. It was my favorite."

Grey raised his brows, and I thought for sure he was going to be jealous or something—it was a really short dress, backless, with barely-there spaghetti straps.

But then he said, "Then you wouldn't mind wearing it today, too?"

His voice was dry and thick, and the way he looked at me, from my feet up to my face, I was willing to bet he was hard even if I couldn't see it.

"This is the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life," he muttered, almost like he was talking to himself.

I giggled. "I don't mind at all. I've never actually worn it before, but if you want to see it on me, I'll wear it."

"I want to tear it off you, actually."

Oh, damn.

Heat between my legs as if by a push of a button. "Not now, Grey." Even though I wanted it to be now, right now, we had things to do first. Things to figure out.

"Later, then?"

I nodded, drowning that voice in my head that insisted that right now is perfectly fine . It really wasn't.

"Later."

"Deal."

"Now get out so I can put something else on." So many things to choose from and I was actually surprised to find that I was excited to be here again.

It was no wonder, though—this was the place where I'd learned to look at myself for the first time. Where I'd allowed myself to want better things.

"I've seen you naked, my queen," said Grey, and he wouldn't put the red dress away. He was still holding on to it.

"Well aware. And what happens when you see me naked again?"

His lips parted and that grin took over his face. "I will lose all reason."

"Exactly." He would be slamming me against walls, and it was safe to say I would be too weak to resist, just like always. "So, get out."

He finally did—and he took the red dress with him.

I was smiling and shaking my head as I put on another dress, this one a rich green with pieces of velvet here and there, and I wore some flats, even though the heeled sandals were so pretty. All the lingerie and the shimmery lotions and everything I'd gotten at the mall that night— so many things! I'd missed all of them, more than I'd realized.

But eventually, I had to get back to reality and leave the closet—the feeling behind. Eventually, I had no choice but to leave the room with Grey because I wanted to see Valentine. Not just to make sure that he was okay, but to ask him exactly what Syra had done to me.

Grey led me to him. He said he heard Valentine and Shadow upstairs somewhere, and he took me up to the third floor, which was familiar enough. Large spaces and big windows and sunlight coming through, and the scent of roses hanging in the air, just like always. But then he continued up a narrow stairway I had never seen before and took us through another two doors before we came out—on the rooftop somewhere west of the building.

Valentine was sitting on a ledge with Shadow on his shoulder, looking at the sun that would take another couple of hours to set into the horizon.

I'd only ever been on the rooftop of the Paradise once before—another one with enough space to land two helicopters safely. But it had been dark then—we'd gone to the mall at ten p.m.—so I hadn't seen much.

This rooftop was a lot smaller, and there wasn't much to see except concrete and a wide, open space. With these new ears I heard the sound of the music coming from the pools around the building, and with these new eyes I saw the silhouettes of the Isles ahead—the Whispering Woods and Witches' Wing and Dragons' Den.

A whole world I'd had no idea existed, and now I was part of it, too.

Valentine didn't turn when he heard us. Only Shadow flew off his shoulder and came over my head, wings almost completely silent as he checked to see that I was okay.

"Can you give me a minute?" I asked Grey. Not that I had anything to hide, but I knew talking to Valentine would be completely different if he was here, too.

Grey didn't like it, but he kissed me on the lips and said, "I'll be a call away."

"I can take him and he knows it," I said, loudly so I knew Valentine would hear it, too. I could have sworn I heard him snorting.

But a moment later, Grey left, dragging his feet, and then we were alone, the three of us.

Releasing a long breath, I went closer to Valentine and I looked out at the sun, too. At the incredible colors. At the sky that was a million shades of blue merged together so perfectly, not a cloud in sight.

"It's beautiful," I said, then realized that this was all new to Valentine, too. He'd spent his whole life in darkness, and the sunlight was something he only saw for the first time weeks ago.

"Eh. I told you before, it was kind of disappointing," he said, finally turning toward me, and at the sound of his voice, my heart skipped a little beat.

He heard it—he always heard it, and he smiled, same as always.

But Valentine looked okay. Whether I wanted to hug him or push him off the ledge was still debatable—probably the latter—but he really did look okay. More than that—he was wearing a pink shirt. A rosy pink that made his eyes look a million times lighter, and I thought to myself, Mama Si did it on purpose. She gave the brothers these colorful clothes on purpose.

And I loved it.

"The sun was disappointing to you," I said, stepping onto the ledge so I could sit with them, too.

"Yes," he said, waving his hand at the view. "I expected it to look more like"—he paused, then looked at me—" you ."

He did tell me once that I reminded him of the sun—it's why he started calling me Sunshine.

"Smooth, Valentine. Really smooth."

"It's the truth," he said with a shrug. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm good," I said with a nod. "You're wearing pink."

A smile stretched his lips. "Suits me, I think."

"It really does," I said with a nod. "Makes your eyes pop." Something Adam used to tell me that was supposed to be a good thing.

Laughter burst out of him for a second. "Does it now? I think I need a mirror."

"Don't go falling in love with yourself," I said, smiling myself.

"I wouldn't dare," Valentine said. "My standards would be too high for everyone else."

Now I laughed. "You really think highly of yourself."

He shrugged. "I am very highly." Impossible not to keep laughing. "You've read Dorian Gray, haven't you?"

I nodded. "I have."

"Remember Sybil, the actress who falls in love with him, then never recovers when he leaves her?"

"Let me guess—that's how it would be for you if you fell in love with yourself."

He grinned. "I would never recover," he solemnly said with a hand to his heart.

"You're so full of yourself, Valentine Evernight."

"How could I not be?" he teased.

"I think I was wrong—you're already in love with you!" And I pretended to be shocked.

"Absolutely. I am." It was a damn lie.

"So that's why you awakened a siren to ruin the world as you know it."

"An act of love, indeed." His smile faltered. "Do you think Dorian was good?"

"I think he was naive, at least at first. Henry was bad," I said. "He is your Genevieve."

He laughed a little, and it wasn't pleasant.

"Why did you trust Genevieve?" I'd wondered since that first time we talked about this. "You knew what she was—you had to." Maybe he'd been a kid when it all started, but Valentine grew up to be a very smart man.

"Absolutely," he said without missing a beat. "Make no mistake, I was never under the illusion that she was good, but that's just it. She was all I knew, and back then I had no clue that people could be good. I genuinely believed that they are bad at their core." He gave me a look. "Before you ."

I shook my head. "You suck."

"Oh, I do much worse than just suck ."

"Yet you don't look like you care all that much." His face said it all. He was perfectly calm.

"Well, you're here. You're okay. So far I'd say I'm doing fine."

I wished I could have doubted my own ears, but Valentine was this senseless for real, so I didn't. "This isn't about me, Valentine."

"Not at first, no," he said, and he kept his eyes on the sky because he didn't dare look at me. "It is now."

"Why did you call her back last night?" I whispered. "Why, just…why not let us leave?"

" Leave?" He looked at me then. "You think she would have let you leave?!"

He was right. Syra was definitely not the type to just let something go. Especially something as big as what she thought she had—another chance at the life that was stolen from her.

Still.

"We'd have stayed hidden. She wouldn't have found us."

"She would have burned the world to the ground searching," Valentine said.

This time my laughter was bitter. "And you suddenly care about the world now?!"

"Don't be silly, Sunshine. I don't," he said. "But you do. You care about this rotten place."

"And you expect me to believe that?" I hated that my voice shook, but I said the words anyway. "You expect me to believe that what I want means something to you?"

"It means everything to me regardless of what you believe." And he turned toward me with his whole body. "I am a bad man, Sunshine. There's no going in rounds about it. Your well-being means everything to me, but that doesn't mean I am to be trusted. It just means I'm okay with doing exactly what bad people do to make sure you're safe, that's all."

I was laughing while tears slipped down my cheeks. "Oh, you're not a bad man, Valentine. You've just done some bad things, that's all. Some pretty fucked up things." But he wasn't bad in his core. I'd die before I believed it because I saw him. It was only my imagination, yes, but I saw him when he was just a little boy, motherless, and it must have been so easy for Genevieve to sink her filthy claws in his mind, to plant whichever seeds she wanted in him. To manipulate him, make him believe things that weren't even halfway true.

"Isn't that what bad men do?" he wondered, but he wasn't sad about it. He wasn't regretful. In typical Valentine fashion, he'd just…accepted it.

"Good men can do bad things, too. And bad men can sometimes do good." Mama Si was bad, or at least mostly bad, and she was capable of doing good. She'd helped me before. She was helping me now, by keeping me here.

Then Valentine sighed. " Labels . Unimportant."

"They're very important. Without them how can we know who we are?"

"I know who I am, and I've never claimed to be otherwise. I was very certain of it, too, until you came along, Sunshine," he said. "So, no—I couldn't let you leave last night. Not just because I knew Syra would never give up searching for you, and she'd kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of land while she did, but because she'd find you. She would find you within days, maybe hours, and when she did, she wouldn't show any mercy. When she did, she would be pissed off and she would throw you in a cage somewhere and wait for you to give birth, then kill you." He said all of it like he'd thought those same words a million times before.

"But last night when I called for her, I knew she wouldn't be that angry. Irritated, yes, but not angry. The chances of her reacting out of spite were minimal, so I did it. I did what I had to do to keep you safe."

I saw it. Really, I saw how it all looked from his point of view. "What were you planning, Valentine? What the hell were you up to?" He was always up to something and it really had become impossible to predict his next move.

"To get you out," Valentine said. "That day when your magic let go of me, and I found you in the garden, I heard everything, and I had to make a plan right then and there. Act quickly before my chance slipped. Then I made a deal with the sirens, too, when I found out that Syra planned to unload her magic in you. They were going to come and stop her while she was doing it and kill her right there on the spot. She'd be too distracted to stop them. Too weak." His eyes closed and his fists tightened over his lap.

I laughed bitterly. "You miscalculated a few things there, I'm afraid."

"I did. It wasn't the best plan, I'll admit," he said, shaking his head. "First, I thought I had more time to prepare, and second, I didn't think for a second she'd want to go ahead with the ritual right away last night. A miracle Shadow managed to find the sirens and call for them—he hates water." Slowly he raised his finger to Shadow's chest and rubbed it a few times, causing the little dragon to let out that sound I heard so rarely—like a cat purring.

"You played your part well. I believed all of it." I hadn't even hesitated to think he'd betrayed me— again. With everything that he'd already done, trying to kill me and awakening Syra, I wasn't going to feel guilty about it, but maybe next time I could stop and think for a minute.

Or maybe it would be best if there wasn't a next time at all.

"I had to. Everything was at stake, and Syra was a very smart woman. Nothing escaped her attention, not even the smallest expressions," he said.

"I can't believe you did that, Valentine. Or that that happened. Or that she's dead ." My hands closed around my neck, and the image of Syra's face was right in front of me again, behind my closed lids. Those eyes and the blood and her words… don't be good. I had no idea why I kept replaying those three words over and over again. Why they mattered so much.

"And I can't believe you're going to have a baby, Sunshine. That I'm going to have a nephew." There wasn't a hint of a bad emotion anywhere on his face as he looked down at my stomach. I closed my hands around it instinctively and laughed.

"Don't worry—I have yet to believe it myself," I admitted. "You—an uncle? It's too absurd ."

" Uncle Valentine. It has a ring to it," he said as he smiled at the ocean—a smile I'd never seen on him before.

"Agreed," I said, and for some reason tears pricked the back of my eyes. I wouldn't let them spill, but I got so emotional when it came to Valentine—so fucking emotional. "And maybe you can teach him how to ride a bike now that Syra is gone."

That was just me and my wishful thinking, unfortunately. I wasn't as naive anymore as to think this was the end of it.

"A bike, yes," Valentine said, chuckling. "Absolutely. I will."

I sighed, closing my eyes for a moment, shaking my head to clear those silly thoughts. Forcing myself back to the present because we still needed to talk.

"She's really gone. Syra's dead," I repeated, more to myself than him.

"That's one thing the sisters miscalculated—how easy it would be to kill her," he said with a flinch. "Even when she was barely standing, she killed one of them. Such power…" He shook his head as his voice trailed off.

"Call me crazy but I'm really glad Sedelis couldn't do what she planned to do. Really glad!" Because if Sedelis had been the one to wield Syra's power, we'd have all been dead and buried by now.

"Only because Syra didn't have the time. She'd have become worse than Sedelis, believe me. In just a couple of years," Valentine said. "It was terrifying how quickly she was getting used to the power. To the way people submitted to her. She was starting to imagine herself as queen. "

"And nobody could have stood in her way." Nobody would even try.

"True. Her interest shifted in the past few days—I felt it," Valentine said, shaking his head in wonder. "She came to terms with her past, I think, once she saw the modern world. Once she saw what more she could have."

But that didn't feel exactly right. "It… corrupted her, the pain. The helplessness she once felt. It ruined everything that made her her , and she was still discovering her new self when she woke up."

Valentine thought about it for a long moment, and we continued to stare at the sky together.

"What really happened to her, Sunshine? You saw, didn't you? She showed you."

Shivers ran up and down my back and the images were in front of my mind's eye right away. "She was happy with Hansil. They lived on a beach, all alone. They weren't bothering anyone. Syra was pregnant. They were just…happy." The way they'd gone swimming that morning. The way they'd made love in the water. The way they'd laid on the beach together… "Then they came and killed her baby and ate Hansil right in front of her."

I would never dream of justifying everything Syra had done, all those innocent lives she'd taken, the land she'd ruined. Never —that had no excuse. But if she'd taken the time to kill her sisters for what they'd done—all of them, and slowly?

I would have never seen anything wrong with it. Whatever that made me, I'd have fucking helped her get it over with myself.

"That was it," I continued. "The other way to supply Ennaris with magic without having to eat human flesh—through infant sirens."

"She told me that part, yes," Valentine said. "How insane is it that they were supposed to fall in love when they were made? Their own sister lied to them. The first one—she lied, and she basically decided what their lives were going to look like since the beginning."

"How?" I wondered, because I was curious, too curious.

"The eldest sister—Minel, who died in the original battle—was born knowing the truth, but apparently, she fell in love with a man once, and he did not love her back. Ran from her, until she caught him and killed him. From then on, she decided that sirens cannot be in love, that it hurt too much to not be loved back. So, she made her sisters believe that sirens cannot fall in love if they tried," Valentine said. "She also told them that it was impossible for a siren to reproduce, that they can't get pregnant at all. Until Syra."

My God, I couldn't even imagine it. To live for hundreds of years misled by your own family, your own sister. To be betrayed like that…

"Tell me, Sunshine, because I'm curious to know your mind. What was Syra? Because she both found a way to save the world from her sisters, to save innocent human lives, and she got rid of the worst of them when they fought five hundred years ago. She also ruined countless lives and continued to do so even as she was dormant—all of this against her will. And then she woke up and she had a thirst for life again, just like all living things. She developed new tastes, new purposes—she wanted to live ." He smiled so brightly the sun paled in comparison. "So, tell me—was Syra good ? Was she just a good woman who did very bad things?"

Three words whispered in my ear, don't be good.

"I don't know, Valentine," I answered honestly. "Maybe she was good. Once, she was. At least better than the rest of them. And then…she didn't want to be good anymore."

"I can understand that. I never wanted to be good, either," he said.

That made me laugh. "Oh, don't worry—nobody will mistake you for good . You've made sure of that."

"Except you," he said, cutting off my laughter. "You still think I'm good."

I shook my head. "I begged you in that tomb not to do it."

"Do you think it would have made a difference if I'd stopped? Sedelis and Genevieve wouldn't have."

"It would have made a difference to me! " If he'd only stopped. If he'd changed his mind while there was still time…

"And that will forever remain my regret," Valentine said, and he put his leg under the other until he was sitting in front of me, then took my hand between his. I thought I'd be irritated or pissed off that he touched me, and I thought I'd want to move away.

I didn't.

"But think about it, Sunshine. Would you have rather lived the way we used to live?" he whispered, making my heart jump, which in turn made him smile again. Always made him smile. "Would you have rather lived trapped in the Whispering Woods forever, never seeing the light of day again? Would you have rather lived under that curse that took so much from everyone, that made what is left of Ennaris so… vile ?"

I shook my head again, looking at our hands together. "I don't know. Logic says no, but look at me now. I'm pregnant, Valentine. And something's been done to me, and now I can see the sun, but the sun isn't going to stop the siren sisters from coming for me. The sun isn't going to save me from their wrath, just like all that fucking power couldn't save Syra from them, either." The sirens were the monsters here, I knew that. They were the reason for every misfortune Ennaris had had to endure, starting with the very first one—Minel.

I'd seen her statue in that fountain in this very building when Amber had showed it to me. Back when I knew nothing, she said those sirens had saved the world, but they hadn't. They'd doomed it.

"You will be fine. Both you and the baby—you will be just fine," Valentine said, squeezing my hand.

"What exactly did she do to me? How could she just unload her magic— how ? Grey said it was through Shadow, but that makes little sense to me."

"I'm not sure—she didn't tell me much," Valentine said, and even if a part of me was tempted to think he was lying, he wasn't. "She planned to basically store her energy in you so that you wouldn't be able to leave her side if you tried—that's all I was able to gather. And yes, she did it through me and Shadow because he's a Ruit. His body—and mine—can act like a bridge between different kinds of magic if the wielder knows what they're doing." He flinched. "I haven't pieced things together yet the way I should have—there wasn't enough time, so…I don't know." And the guilt showed all over his face.

"So, basically she infused me with her magic—is that it?"

"I think so," he said, even though he wasn't sure of it.

"But I don't feel it." I felt just the same as always. No difference whatsoever.

"Really?" Valentine analyzed my face. "You don't feel more magic? You don't feel more powerful ?"

"Not at all. I feel the same as always," I admitted, and he seemed to be surprised. "Why would she do something like that? Why would she…" I shook my head. "She knew I wouldn't leave her side as long as she kept Grey under her claws. Why?" Why would she choose to give me her power?

For a moment, Valentine was silent.

"We'll figure it out," he eventually said.

"What the hell am I going to do now? Mama Si isn't going to keep me here forever, and they'll figure out where we are in no time. We?—"

The door on the rooftop floor pushed open, cutting me off, and I thought for sure it was Grey coming to see what was taking so long.

But it wasn't Grey.

It was Mama Si, followed by Assa, and her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.