Chapter 5

Five

Nightfall seemed like an eternity away.

I ignored Valentine and the other brothers while I drank the wine—Romin style—and practically ran out of the office, unable to sit still for a second longer. There wasn't much else they could tell me, anyway—they wouldn't help me get Grey back, just like I knew they wouldn't. My only hope were the sirens, and until they got here, I couldn't rest.

There was no fear left in me as I walked the now bright hallways of the Evernight castle. God, it was like a different world altogether. Everything had changed, every color and every corner—or maybe it was the fact that I no longer looked over my shoulder and no longer rushed to get to my tower. I was no longer terrified that the brothers would catch me and rape me and drink me dry.

Finally, I was able to protect myself if they came for me. Finally, I counted on no one but my magic to keep me safe.

But it wasn't half as relieving when I was here alone. When I knew that Grey was so far away from me, unable to escape the clutches of the most powerful being in the world.

The sound of footsteps reached my ears before I turned the corner that would lead me to the main hallway. I was planning to take a shower, change my clothes, wait for nightfall—and then I saw them.

Four brides—Vera, Rachel, Paris and Cynthia walking arm in arm, their faces pale, their shoulders hunched.

For a moment, I paused.

God, I used to like these women once. I hung out with them daily, told them my stories, listened to theirs.

And then they'd all turned on me for something they knew I didn't do, something they saw with their own eyes. Some of them—like Vera—had even turned around and walked away when they saw Tristian dragging me toward his tower that day, his intentions clear.

They'd just walked away and left me there.

If you ask me, it takes a special kind of monster to do that. A very, very dangerous kind.

Grey was right about them all along—they were all snakes. But I'd be damned if I allowed any of them to speak to me in the way they had before I left for Agva. If they did, they would regret it. One word—one fucking word—and they would feel my wrath.

With my head up, I walked straight toward them, holding their eyes, never blinking mine. My magic was going wild inside me, burning me with the intensity of a miniature sun, so desperate to be free, to attack, to release some tension from my body.

Not yet, though. Not unless they provoked me.

Unfortunately for me, they didn't. Instead, they stepped to the side, backs against the wall and lowered their heads as I passed them by. They barely breathed, let alone uttered a single word—and I strained my ears to hear it. I wanted them to tell me to go kill myself again just so I could give myself a reason to let go.

It wasn't meant to be.

I turned the corner and slowed my step, waited and waited, hoping they'd say something when they thought I was far enough away, but they still didn't.

And before I knew it, I was in the main hall, looking at the doors of the third tower, so familiar yet they looked brand new with the light from the big windows I had never really seen before. They'd always been covered by thick black drapes that had blended in with the walls.

Failure. I felt like such a fucking failure to be here again, away from Grey, and this time I knew he was alive. I knew exactly where he was and why he wasn't with me.

I knew, yet I was still here, all by myself, and I couldn't stand to be in my own skin, and those voices in my head were screaming now. Screaming and thrashing and reminding me what a coward I was for caring about showers and clothes and nightfall— no.

Fuck all of it, I wasn't going to wait for nightfall. I was going to find my way to the Eighth Isle right now.

Turning toward the corridor that led to the main entrance, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I ran and I didn't even bother to look around me, to see if someone was coming, if someone was hiding in the corners, waiting for the right moment to grab me. No, they wouldn't dare. Not now, not when I'd left Tristian twisted and on the floor right in front of his doors. Not when they knew I wouldn't think twice about killing them— without feeling guilty—if they so much as laid their hands on me.

I pushed the main doors open, both of them, and it was easy. So damn easy despite their weight. It was impossible how much stronger I'd become in those three days I'd spent with Grey, but I was thankful for it. Where I was going, I was going to need all the strength and all the magic my body could handle.

The tears that slipped down my cheeks were angry tears, and I only felt them when I blinked my eyes fast from the bright sunlight outside.

What a strange view—the sun shining over the Whispering Woods. The sky blue. The trees green and the birds chirping.

And Grey was still gone.

My heart was hammering in my ribcage as I ran forward with all my strength, and I was shaking but I didn't let that stop me. I was sobbing, too, with the pain and the anger and the helplessness that weighed me down and the fact that I couldn't save Grey this time. That I was going to die at the hands of Syra when I tried, and he'd be stuck in that place with her forever.

It didn't matter, though. I couldn't stop running. Trees all around me, the same ones that had once been dark and scary and had terrified me, but now they looked so ordinary. So unimportant. Even if there were snakes wrapped around each of these trunks, they wouldn't scare me. I wouldn't even think twice about it. Whatever was in my way, I'd ruin it completely.

All that mattered was that I got to Grey.

And then suddenly, arms wrapped around me out of nowhere. I'd been running so fast that my legs raised in the air, still moving.

"Stop, Sunshine."

I screamed.

Birds flew away, and it felt like they were screaming with me as they went. Arms of steel held me even as I thrashed and cried and tried to free myself, tried to keep running, right through that wall and to the ocean so I could swim all the way to the Eighth Isle.

But Valentine didn't let me go.

Calm down first, he said, and he wasn't afraid of my magic, though he'd felt it firsthand. He wasn't afraid at all that I'd attack him—and I was going to, I really was.

But it was such chaos inside me right now that all my magic knew how to do was burn me. My thoughts made no sense, and my body was already numb, limbs weighed down so that what could have been only seconds later, I stopped thrashing and trying to push Valentine away.

I stopped screaming and crying and thinking.

I just…stopped.

"We'll get him back, but not like this," Valentine whispered in my ear. "You're in no way prepared for Syra. I won't let you go like this unless you kill me first."

And I wanted to. My God, I wanted to kill him so badly, but my resolve was gone. My energy depleted. My will to live perished.

"Let me go," I thought I whispered. "Please, just let me go." I didn't want his arms around me, his body close to me in any way. I didn't want to be on the same fucking planet as him—Valentine Evernight, the first man I'd ever truly loved. Not romantically, but I'd loved him.

And he'd hurt me worse than anyone, even my own grandmother.

By some miracle, he let me go. His arms around me loosened slowly, his body stiff, as if he'd been surprised at my begging him, but I would do it again if it got him off me. I'd do it all fucking day.

When he stepped back and I was free, I found my legs barely held me. I looked up at the blue sky, blinking the tears away as fast as I could.

It sucked to admit to myself that Valentine was absolutely right. I was in no way ready to even make it to the Eighth Isle in one piece, let alone face Syra or save Grey. I was weak. I was alone. I was hurting—a very bad combination.

And I would only get one shot at finding Grey, bringing him back home. One shot, and if I lost my head, I was going to die before I even saw him.

No, I couldn't afford to be stupid, not now. As much as it killed me, I had to sit tight and calm down and think . Make a plan. Prepare.

So, I slowly turned to the castle again, to Valentine still standing behind me among the trees, and I could hear Shadow's wings beating over us somewhere, but I didn't even look up to acknowledge him.

"You did this," I whispered because it was impossible to stop those words from coming out of me. They were too powerful. "You…you filthy fucking serpent . You're evil."

Valentine's jaws clenched and his fists had turned completely white, but he said nothing, just held my eyes. He still had the balls to fucking look me in the face.

"How could you? What…what the hell is wrong with you ?!" My voice rose with each word. Not like I was trying to control myself at this point. "What the hell is wrong with you, you sick bastard? You think you can just choose to ruin the whole fucking world because you aren't happy with how things are going?!"

And wasn't it funny that he did ?

"I had a plan," he had the audacity to say, his voice strained. "I had no idea what Sedelis wanted to do, and I thought Syra wouldn't…" His eyes closed and he lowered his head. "I had a plan."

I laughed again.

Really, from the bottom of my heart, I laughed like a fucking maniac, throwing my head back, looking at the open sky. Never in a billion years could I have thought that I'd want it to be as dark as it had been before in the Woods. Never would I have believed that I'd yearn for that black cloud to be around this Isle, blocking out the sun from me forever, for things to go back to the way they were. To when Grey was here. When I was in his arms.

"You had a plan." He'd rested the fate of an entire world on the idea that he had a plan. Really—typical Valentine. I would have been surprised if he were any…less. "You're not just evil, you're rotten."

It was useless to stay out here and talk to him. So, I walked around him, not able to even look him in the face anymore. I was calm. I was still standing. I didn't need to be near him for a second longer.

"You're right, Sunshine," Valentine said just as I passed by him. "I am rotten. And I might be the most evil man in the world, but don't think for a second that I wouldn't give up my life for yours."

I cried and cried and cried all the way inside the castle, and up to my bedroom in the third tower. I cried because half of me believed him and hated him for it, and half of me thought he was full of shit and hated him for it more. Such an incredible combination that I was surprised I could still go about the things that I needed to do—like shower in the same bathroom where I'd showered with Grey. Go back to the closet that had become my safe place in the weeks after Grey's banishment, where his portrait was still against the wall, as if he'd been waiting for me to come back for days. I could still pick out clean clothes to wear and sit in front of the painting, touch the colors with my fingertips, and tell them that they did not do the real Grey justice—not even close. There was a spark in his eyes that these colors could never replicate. There was the way he looked at me that these colors could never imitate properly.

But I sat there and told them all about how happy I'd been living in a cave on a ruined Isle with Grey.

That's how I waited for the sirens to arrive, knowing full well that they weren't going to make any difference at all.

Nighttime was different in the Whispering Woods. I thought it would be like before, when the dark cloud still wrapped around this entire Isle, but back then the darkness had been so deep. Never-ending.

Now, as I looked out the windows of the room Romin had taken us to, to meet with the sirens, I realized just how big a difference a half moon and stars in the sky made. I realized how much light they gave off and how much the magic of the curse had taken from the Woods.

The sky was beautiful tonight, yet I'd trade all the stars in it, and a thousand moons, for that dark cloud to come back. Still, even now, hours later when I'd calmed down and was able to think rationally, I wished it.

But my wishes had never really found their way to coming true, so I no longer even expected them to.

"She will stand down."

The words echoed in my head followed by white noise, like I was standing in a different place, a different room—not one where most people present didn't breathe in air at all. The three Evernight brothers, and the five siren sisters who remained.

None of them breathed, only me.

I turned away from the window and to them.

They sat on the other side of the wide table that Romin had had prepared for their arrival. It was a fancy room, wide and open, with floor to ceiling windows and balconies with beautiful railings in each corner, the curtains pulled to the sides so we could see them. The chandeliers were full of crystals, and the dark red carpet looked brand new, and the feast they'd set up on the table remained untouched—save for the wine Romin drank.

"She will not attack us," the siren said again—was her name Fessa or was she Raxae? I couldn't care enough to remember.

"At least for the time being," said Andya, and her I recognized because of her piercing green eyes, deeper than that pool in the tomb mountain had been.

They sat close to one another, all wearing white dresses, the hems that touched their bare feet muddy. They all looked better, yet worse at the same time.

Better as in their skin had color and their hair was so much smoother than it had been. They no longer looked like animated corpses. They looked alive, and they wore no magic to shield their looks at all—I could tell.

That's because they no longer spent all their power to keep the spell going. Now, their magic remained inside them, and the difference was staggering.

The look in their eyes, though, was so much worse. Last time, they'd been happy. Excited, with mischievous little grins on their faces, but now they looked grim. They looked afraid. Desperate and defeated.

"Why?" asked Romin, sitting at the head of the table across from them, with Emil on one side and Tristian on the other, while I remained farther away, standing, though they'd brought a chair for me near Emil. Valentine was nowhere to be seen.

"When did you meet with her?" asked Tristian. "Did you see her personally?"

"How powerful is she exactly? Did she gain back everything she had when she ruined Ennaris?" asked Emil.

The siren sisters all looked at one another for a loaded second. Not that I expected a good answer, but I waited with my breath held for them to speak anyway.

"She sent for us soon after she pulled the entire Eighth Isle out of the ocean," said Mea with the dark and curly hair. "She built herself a castle and plans to stay there."

If I'd cared enough, I'd have wondered why she sounded so jealous.

"We did see her personally. She's very much alive. She's spread our sister Sedelis's ashes onto the floors of her castle because she killed her—but you already knew this. She was there…" Andya looked at me. "Were you not, Fall?"

"I was." My voice sounded so different, like it wasn't coming out of me at all.

"Then you also know that she has all her power," said the first one again—Fessa. "She's regained all of it, just as it was before we stopped her from ruining everything."

My God, she was absolutely terrified. I could see the shivers washing down her arms.

"It doesn't matter," said the last one—Raxae with the chocolate brown hair that matched the color of her wide, round eyes. "She will not attack. She will not be using that magic on us."

"Yes, but wh—" Romin started to ask again.

"Grey," Andya cut him off.

There went my heart, falling and falling all the way to the floor.

"Because she wants Grey, and he's chosen to stay there with her."

I saw red.

"He didn't choose anything," I spit before I could help myself.

"He did," Andya told me, raising her chin. "They made a deal. He will be staying with her. They will remain on the Eighth Isle together. Syra will not attack anyone—she gave us her word."

Laughter came out of me, raw and ugly. "She will kill Grey. She's fucking insane—she will kill him!" Did they really need me to spell that out for them?!

But more importantly, how big of a fool was I really to actually think they gave a rat's ass about Grey?

"She won't," Raxae said. "She thinks he's Hansil."

I fisted my hands so hard my palms bled. "She knows he's not Hansil. She ate Hansil's heart!" I whispered, with so much hatred, I was surprised she didn't drop dead right there on the table.

"But she'll take Grey," said Andya, folding her hands on the table as if to appear calm, but I could see through the expression on her face.

"He looks so much like him," said Fessa, smiling like she was fucking high now. "Exactly like Hansil—right, sisters?"

"Fessa," Raxae warned, but the siren didn't give a shit.

"Mhmm, he was so, so delicious. I remember the taste of his flesh…"

My stomach threatened to come right out of my mouth in an instant.

"Don't mind her—she ate a poisoned liver," said Oreinne, her voice light as a breeze—and I didn't think I'd ever heard her speaking before.

"So Syra will really stand down?" said Romin, not in the least worried by that sentence. "You're absolutely, one hundred percent certain that we're safe from her?"

We're not, I wanted to say. Nobody is safe from Syra.

Except I didn't bother. What would be the point?

Closing my eyes, I released a long breath—and any expectations I might have had that the sirens would help me. That the Evernights would help me.

They wouldn't. I was on my own.

"Yes, we're certain," Andya eventually said.

The brothers sighed in relief, but…

"For now," Raxae added.

"And there's nothing we can do about it?" said Emil, and he was afraid, too. It kept surprising me to see them like this because never did I think it was possible.

Then again—never would I have dreamed that Syra would awaken again, not for any reason in the world. Least of all that it would be Valentine himself to do it.

"She killed our sister easier now than she did back then," Andya said.

"Because we're weak. Because we've been stripped of everything that makes us us for five centuries," said Raxae.

"But there's five of you and only one of her," Romin insisted. "And we're here, too. All four of us. Does that make a difference?"

I no longer hoped or prayed, simply listened.

"None whatsoever. She can kill us all if we attack her now," Andya said.

"And why would we want to if she doesn't attack us? If she stays on that Isle with Grey, why would we waste energy, unnecessary magic?" said Fessa. Of course, she did.

"Did you see him?" I asked before I could help myself.

"We did," said Raxae.

"He's content," said Andya. "He's content to stay with her and keep her on the Eighth Isle while the rest of Ennaris heals."

" Liar ," I spit, and so what if she killed me? I was going to die soon anyway.

But Andya threw her head back and laughed. "Makes no difference, does it? Whether I lie or not." She smiled like a fucking snake. "We're safe as long as Grey is on the Eighth Isle and Syra is content."

"And…when she's not content anymore?" Romin asked, as if he'd read the question right inside my mind.

The sisters looked at one another again.

Neither said a single word, not even Fessa—who was smiling at herself with her eyes half closed, swinging slightly to the sides to a melody only she could hear.

The next moment, they stood up at the same time.

My heart continued to fall. A part of me still wanted to beg them— please, don't just leave him there. Please, do something! Help me! because they were sirens, and if they walked away from this, how could I ever hope to find Grey and free him?

But I didn't let myself beg because, again—what the hell would be the point?

"For now, we remain vigilant," said Andya. "We wait and see how things settle. We gather strength."

"If you hear something—" Romin started.

"You will be the first to know," Raxae told him.

"And be sure to speak to the other Isles. The people are already growing restless now that the spell has unraveled," said Oreinne in that velvety voice. "The unknown can be quite scary, and nobody knows what to expect yet."

"I will," Romin said with a deep nod as they moved around the table and to the door on the other side of the room.

"So long, Romin. We'll meet again," Andya solemnly said.

"Hopefully not too soon," Emil muttered under his breath, and though they heard him, they didn't react.

But as I watched them walking way, their sheer dresses revealing their slender bodies and long legs, I thought of something else, too.

"What's the real story?"

All the siren sisters stopped walking two feet away from the door. They turned to me, their eyes wide, their lips parted.

"Excuse me?" Raxae said, her eyes boring into me.

"The real story of how you ate Hansil and Syra ruined Ennaris. What is it?"

For a second, nobody moved a single inch.

"Read a book," Andya said.

"I have, but Syra asked Sedelis if the people knew the real story before she killed her, not the one we know from books," I said, even if I hated to even mention those names.

And I saw it.

My God, they didn't need to speak at all because I saw the lie in their eyes even before Oreinne said, " That is the real story. The only story."

The siren sisters turned around and walked out the door, their bare feet soundless as they went.

The brothers all looked at me, the question, the accusation at the tip of their tongues. If I gave them the chance, they'd feel entitled to tell me to watch how I spoke to the sirens, I thought, so I didn't. With my head up, I walked out of the room without a glance their way, begging myself not to throw up.