Chapter 4

Four

Fall Hayes

The smell in the air was familiar, though it didn't really smell like anything I could name. Just… a place. The furniture. The curtains. The sheets around me.

Sheets , not water.

I sat up with a jolt, blinking my eyes fast to adjust to the bright light coming at me from ahead, a light that had no business being there at all. Because I knew where I was. I'd stayed in this very room for over a month.

It was my bedroom in the fifth tower of the Evernight castle, in Valentine's tower—which was in the Whispering Woods.

The Whispering Woods, one of the Seven Isles that was shielded by a dark cloud made of magic, impenetrable by sunlight. It had been this way for the last five hundred years.

So why the hell was the sun shining right outside the window?!

Pushing the sheets off me, I ignored the fact that I was wearing a nightgown, and I had no shoes on. I ignored the fact that I was in the fifth tower, in this very room, and the fact that the hardwood floor was warm against my bare feet. Warm—because the sun had fallen on it.

I just focused on the fact that it was daylight outside, held my breath until I was right by the window, and looked through it.

"Oh, my God…" I whispered, bringing my hands in front of my mouth.

My eyes were telling me that it was daylight in the Whispering Woods, that the trees were green and the castle's walls full of life, that not a hint of those black clouds was anywhere around me anymore.

Which couldn't be…could it?

This was the Whispering Woods. The Evernights lived here, bound to this Isle, kept far away from Syra's senses by that darkness, but close enough that the spell that kept her under continued to work.

Except…the spell no longer existed, did it?

"The spell is undone," I said to the window.

The spell was undone by Valentine and Genevieve and Sedelis, and now Grey…

Grey was not in the water with me.

I was running before I knew it.

My heart slammed in my chest and the magic in my gut wanted to explode out of me, ruin everything in its path until this whole place ceased to exist. It was a miracle I was able to hold it back as I ran down the stairs and through corridors that should have been familiar to me but weren't, because now light came through the windows. Where everything had seemed dark and sinister before, now it was bright and lively, and my brain couldn't make the connection yet.

I walked out of the fifth tower and into the main hall, so disoriented still, and I continued to the entrance doors because I needed to be outside. I needed to be out there, under the sunlight and the open sky. I needed to convince myself that this was, indeed, real. That it had actually happened.

One of the main doors was already open, and sunlight streamed in almost to the middle of the hallway. The marble of the floor looked so different, so colorful, with a million shades of brown and maroon, not just black and white. So much had been hidden by that darkness—like the deep purple tint to the black walls, and the pale colors of the vases, and the paintings, and the decorations.

And then there was the outside. The sun on my face—warm and bright and real.

Then there was the sky, blue, not a single cloud anywhere that I could see.

Then there were the guards dressed in their uniforms standing by the sides, and the torch hangers, now empty, and the trees so green, and the flowers so open.

It had happened. The spell was broken. Syra was awake, and Grey was in the Eighth Isle with her.

I was running again, too shocked to cry, just trying to hold back the magic that still wanted to burst out of me. Not yet, I told myself with each step. It wasn't time yet, not until I knew what the hell was going on.

There was one person who could tell me that—Romin Evernight, ruler of this Court, of the entire Seven Isles. He would have the answers I needed, and so I ran all the way to the first tower barefoot, with nothing on but a nightgown that fell to my ankles. I pushed the doors open and climbed to the first floor and went all the way to his office barely breathing in a handful of times.

The doors to it were open, too, and the guards that stood by the walls like always barely looked my way. There was no window here in this hallway nor in Romin's office. Vampires didn't much care to see the outside, the brides told me once. It was more than enough that they heard too much—they didn't need to be distracted by the sight of things, too. That's why this place was still in the dark.

Romin's voice reached me when I was halfway to the doors—and he sounded pissed off as he yelled at someone. Soon I was at the doorway and saw inside.

All the brothers were in there, standing near Romin's round desk, Emil and Tristian by his sides as he looked down at Valentine and shouted, "…not a fucking game, do you realize that?! This is not something to mess around with! "

Valentine kept his head down, his hands folded behind his back, and he had his eyes closed as he clenched his jaw so hard I could see it from a distance.

When he felt me there, he finally raised his head. Our eyes met—and it had happened so rarely that I'd despised a being with my everything the way I did him in those moments.

"What the fuck have you done?!" I whispered, unable to hold myself back as angry tears gathered in my eyes.

I blinked them back because I wasn't going to cry in front of them today. Not for as long as I could help it.

The others were already turning to me, and Tristian flinched at the sight of my face, which I took as a small victory. Not that it mattered, anyway.

"Fall," Romin said, like he was surprised that I was standing still.

I was surprised, too. I should have died of a heart attack the moment Syra laid eyes on Grey and called him Hansil. The moment when I knew that all had already gone to shit.

But I didn't. I was still here, and so I made myself walk into the office, eyes on Valentine.

I couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to. God, I hated him so much I didn't want to ever stop, so I slapped the hell out of him, and his head flew to the side.

He didn't stop me, either, so I slapped him again, and the tears spilled— fuck it, I thought. Who even cared if they saw?

I slapped him a third time, but he didn't fucking react at all. Valentine didn't push me away and I wished he would. I wished he made it hurt really, really badly so that I could feel something else besides this all-consuming desperation that was crawling under my skin.

Then I grabbed him by his shirt and shook him as much as I could.

" You fucking bastard! How could you?!"

He let me scream at his face a few more times, and he never once tried to stop me. He never once opened his mouth or said something, didn't even try to deny it. He only looked at me as I cried and shook him and asked him how he could doom me like that over and over again.

The others didn't interrupt. They just stepped back and kept their heads down, and nobody was smiling or laughing. Nobody was entertained—because they all knew the truth by now. They all knew what he had done.

My God, what the hell was I doing, wasting time with Valentine?! I should be out there going to Grey. I should be in the ocean right now, swimming my way to the Eighth Isle to find him.

"Fall, calm down," Romin finally said, but I barely heard him.

I let go of Valentine and stepped back, shaking still, unable to speak until I had my emotions under control.

This was a waste of time. Lashing out at Valentine wasn't going to change what he'd already done. So, I turned to Romin, ignoring Emil and Tristian, who didn't have a comment for me or my nightgown for fucking once—and thank God they didn't. All this magic burning inside me was desperate for release, and they were both at the top of my hate-list together with their little brother.

"How long have I been out?" I asked Romin, who looked so pale now that I was focusing on his face.

His hair was all over the place, his black shirt wrinkled, and his eyes were bloodshot.

He looked…afraid.

"About four hours," he said.

"He awakened Syra," I said, as if I had any doubts that they already knew.

Romin nodded. "Yes, that is what we were talking to Valentine about."

"Why are you talking to Valentine about it?" I said. "Grey is still there, still on the Eighth Isle with her. We need to be on our way there right now."

A voice in my head, a little whisper kept insisting that I was wasting time talking to Romin, too. That it was silly of me to even assume that he'd want to go after Grey when he was the one to banish him unfairly in the first place. He'd been afraid of Grey and couldn't wait to get rid of him—and I was expecting help from him ?

"That's impossible," Romin said. "We can't even get close to the Eighth Isle."

I shook my head. "How do you know? Have you been there yourself?"

Romin sighed, closing his eyes, as Valentine slowly raised his hand and rubbed his cheeks. I'd slapped him harder than I'd intended, but I had absolutely no regrets.

"Syra is awake, Romin. This is not a joke. He and Genevieve and Sedelis woke her, and they broke the spell?—"

"We know," he cut me off once more. "Valentine told us everything. We know, Fall."

And that was why he looked worse than I'd ever seen him before.

"So…so, what now?" Such a silly question. I even looked at the others, at Emil and Tristian, as if I was hoping they'd have an answer for me

They didn't. All they could do was look at me with their mouths sealed shut.

Romin sighed again, rubbing his face. "Let's sit down." And he made for his table.

"Romin—" I warned, but he wouldn't have it.

" Sit. Down ," he ordered with a growl. "All of you, now."

I figured if I wanted to get this over with sooner, I had to do what he said. Otherwise, we were never going to see the end of it, and I really needed to get to the fucking point already.

Valentine's eyes were on me. He waited until all of us were sitting down, me on Romin's left, like always, and the others on his right. Then he slowly came to sit next to me, pulling his chair away like he thought I might lash out and slap him again.

He wasn't wrong.

"She's awake," I said because I needed to be repeating it every minute just to believe it.

Romin waved a hand and his precious wine appeared right there in front of him. He poured us all a glass and his magic brought them in front of us, and I took a big sip, too. God knew I needed the distraction, if only for a second.

"And the spell is broken—yes, like I said—we know," Romin said. "But Syra's been awake half a day now, and she still hasn't attacked any Isle."

"Regardless. Grey is there with her. She threw us all out of the Isle with her magic, right into the ocean, but she kept him there."

The way Romin looked at me…

"And there's really nothing we can do about it."

"She thinks he's Hansil," Valentine said from my side, and just to hear the sound of his voice made me cringe.

"Of course she doesn't—she saw Hansil's remains. She fucking ate his heart herself," I spit.

"But she was dormant for five hundred years. Her sense of time or of anything else can't be trusted right now," Valentine continued, as if he thought I cared about his opinion.

But Emil beat me to it. "Yes—because she wasn't supposed to be awake, you little shit. You fucked everything up, you realize that?"

Never in my life did I think there could come a day when I'd hate Emil less than I hated Valentine, but here we were.

"Sedelis tricked us," Valentine started, and I laughed.

It came out twisted, but I laughed. "Of course she did—she's a siren! " Did he really need me to remind him why sirens can't be trusted when he knew the stories a million times better than I did?

"Was," Romin said. "She was a siren. Syra killed her." And then he downed the rest of his wine in one gulp.

"Yes, I was there. She killed her without making an effort," I told Romin, and he turned a shade paler right away. "Sedelis was actually hoping to take her power from her. She attacked Syra and knocked her out, then tried to spell her." The memory was like a dream because my brain still refused to come to terms with what had happened in the past day, but I still saw it in my mind in detail.

I still saw how Valentine had attacked Sedelis and had stopped her before she could finish chanting.

How that had given Syra time to wake up and stop Sedelis.

"And do what? With all that power—what was she going to do?" asked Emil.

"She couldn't have just taken the power for herself," said Romin.

"Yes, she could," Valentine said. "She would have. Sedelis had worked for decades on a spell to extract raw magical power. It is possible, technically, but it's something very few species can do."

I turned to him—the sound of his voice irritated me so much.

"Which species are those?" asked Romin, as if that had any importance.

"Sirens—obviously. Skinwalkers," Valentine said. "Some dragons, too, though in different ways."

I shook my head, turning to Romin again. "What matters is that she didn't succeed. He attacked Sedelis before she finished whatever spell she was chanting." And I nodded my head to the side, to Valentine. "Syra still has her power—and Grey is still with her."

"I don't get it," Tristian said, smiling and shaking his head at Valentine. "You've been planning this…how long?"

Valentine looked at his brother like he wanted to murder him but said nothing.

"Well, according to Genevieve, she got her claws in him when he was six years old, and she took it from there. Did he tell you her story, too?" I asked the brothers, and the way they looked at me said that it was a no . "She was forced here to this Isle to serve your father as a babymaker, too—just like me. Except she was going to kill herself because she refused to accept that fate. That's when Sedelis found her and used her all these years to groom one of you because she couldn't awaken Syra on her own. She needed the blood of an Evernight—willingly given, too. She picked Valentine." And all of them had been too fucking blind to see it.

For a moment, silence reigned in the room.

"I told you. I warned you, Romin." And he'd laughed in my face.

Now, all he could do was lower his fucking head and pour himself more wine.

"This is fucked up," Emil said, his hands over the table fisted, completely white as he looked at Valentine.

Valentine, who didn't seem half as bothered as he should have been for basically bringing about the end of the world.

"Where is she now?" I asked Romin, and he knew I meant Genevieve. She had been in the ocean with us after Syra threw us out of the Isle—I remembered her screams. She was alive.

"Locked herself in her chambers. Won't let anybody through," said Romin reluctantly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"We have to find Grey. He's your brother," I said, even though I knew it was in vain. But I still had to try, didn't I? I had to ask for help before I dove into the ocean and swam to the Eighth Isle by myself—because I knew the outcome of that plan: certain death.

"Even if we could go to the Eighth Isle, it would be impossible to find him, Fall. If she killed Sedelis with such ease…" Romin's voice trailed off. He didn't even need to finish his sentence. I knew exactly what was on his mind.

I stood up, my legs shaking, my magic coming alive once more. But before I could shout at them that they were cowards, the backdoor of Romin's office, the one that merged so perfectly with the wall, opened, and Vinny came through.

He didn't smile, didn't make eye contact with anybody, and he was just as pale as Romin. As the rest of us. He simply walked all the way to him, then leaned down and whispered something in his ear.

If my heart wasn't hammering in my chest, I'd have heard it the way the others did. My ears were good enough at picking up the smallest sounds now, too.

As it was, when Vinny retreated back to that door in the wall, Romin stood up, his eyes glistening with excitement.

"The siren sisters have sent word. They'll be coming to the castle at nightfall to talk."

Everything came to a halt.

The siren sisters, the ones who'd had no idea what Sedelis had planned, the ones who had put Syra under in the first place—basically the only creatures in the world right now who could potentially win against her.

The siren sisters were coming, and even though I had barely any hope left in me, I still prayed with all my heart that they would help me find Grey and put an end to Syra before it became too late for real.