Chapter 2

He was coming after me.

The hallway walls were closing in on me as I ran to get back to the third tower, but Romin was coming after me. I heard his footsteps, could see his smiling face right there in front of my eyes, and when I finally made it to the main hall of the ground floor, Emil and Tristian were there, too. Waiting.

I moved to the side as fast as I could. My God, the way they were looking at me made me sick. They were smiling, too, just like Romin, like they were relieved. Like they'd already won.

They whispered to one another as they watched me from the middle of the hall, and Romin joined them. The beating of my heart in my ears didn't let me hear a single word, and I was thankful for it. By the time I made it to the doors that led to the third tower, my soul was about ready to leave my body.

Trapped. I had never felt more trapped in my life than I did to be the center of their attention, even when I pushed the doors open behind me and moved inside, about to slam them closed.

"You think those doors are going to keep you from us?" Tristian chuckled, like he thought me fucking adorable.

"You think anything is going to keep you from us now?" said Emil, licking his lips like a fucking maniac. My legs were shaking so badly.

"Don't be rude, brothers. She just lost her precious Grey. She's in mourning," Romin said, and he was openly mocking me.

"We can help with that, though, can't we?" said Tristian, and they all started coming toward me slowly.

Oh, God…

"Yes, we can. In fact, let us erase your mind of anything Grey by the end of the day, sweet Fall. You won't be disappointed." Emil grinned like a fucking monster.

"That's a promise," said Tristian, while Romin just smiled and looked at me from under his lashes, like a predator eyes his helpless prey.

"Stop!" I said with as much conviction as I could muster.

I was in the third tower. They couldn't come into the third tower without Grey inviting them in, right? Or without Grey specifically telling them they could.

The duel was done. They couldn't barge in here again like they had last morning—they couldn't, not without a reason.

"But we don't want to stop," Emil said. "Come to us, Fall. Let us ease your?—"

"Don't come any closer," I spit with all the hatred that they made me feel. All the fear that was making my legs shake so badly.

The brothers stopped walking, still ten feet away from me.

"Now, now, Fall. Don't be—" Romin started, but I wasn't about to let him finish.

"This is my tower. You are not allowed in here without my permission."

The brothers looked at one another, then burst out laughing.

"I understand that you're confused on how things work around here because you're still fairly new, but the tower is not yours. We do not give our towers to our brides. This used to be Grey's, and Grey is not here anymore, so—" Romin started, talking slowly to me like I was a damn child.

"He gave it to me," I cut him off. "Grey gave me his tower. He said it was mine the first time I came through these doors." And that was the truth.

The night I came back from Faeries' Aerie, before the Blood Call, and Grey took me to show me the room he'd made for me, he said, Welcome to the third tower. Consider it yours.

I hadn't thought much of it then, but now…if it got me even a little bit of safety from these monsters, I was going to use it. I was going to use all I had until I figured out another way.

The brothers looked at one another again. "Did he now," said Romin, and it wasn't a question, and he didn't look half as amused as a moment ago.

"He did." Could he tell the truth in my voice?

Would this even fucking work? Were they going to take my word for it or try to come through, anyway? Could I even forbid them from entering these doors?

So many possibilities. Entirely too many…

"You're a bride," Emil said, but he was looking at Romin, as if to wait for confirmation.

"Brides don't own towers," said Tristian, but he didn't sound like he was all that sure.

That gave me a little bit of confidence. "They do when their owner gives it to them," I forced myself to say. "And this tower is mine. Grey gave it to me. None of you—or anyone else—is welcome through these doors."

God, please, please, please, I chanted in my head.

A loaded second of silence ticked by. I wasn't even breathing as I held Romin's eyes, and though he was smiling, he wasn't feeling any kind of a positive emotion.

No, he wanted to rip me apart piece by piece now more than ever.

"Romin," Emil said with a growl, and if I wasn't holding onto the doors' handles, I'd have hit the floor by now.

"If Grey gave her this tower, she is within her rights to claim it for herself and forbid us from entering."

It was like he'd put the whole world in the palm of my hand.

Romin slowly started coming toward me, and the tips of his fangs were barely there as he approached.

"If Grey gave her this tower, then we are indeed not to enter through those doors."

Stop! I shouted in my mind, and I willed him to stop moving with every fiber in my being.

But Romin took another step, and another, and another—until he was barely two feet away. I felt the energy coming off him, like heat—the bad kind of heat that had been about to scorch me the night of the Blood Call. It was magic, his magic, and it was coming at me, trying to slowly get me to submit.

For a moment there, I thought he'd succeed. For a moment there, I thought this wasn't going to work. There was nowhere to go in this castle that they couldn't find me, and I was as good as dead already.

But then…I felt it. I felt the other kind of magic, the one that sort of pushed against Romin like a steady, cool energy. It was solid, like a damn wall, and slowly, the heat coming from Romin began to lose strength, then disappeared completely.

The look on his face was priceless, and I'd have laughed if I wasn't so terrified.

"She's telling the truth," said Romin reluctantly, taking a step back, while the two other brothers looked at him like they couldn't believe what he just said.

"Are you serious?!" Tristian asked, but I didn't look away from Romin again.

With shaking hands, I brought the doors closer and closer until he could only see half of my face.

Over. It was done.

"Stay out," I spit, then slammed the doors shut with all my strength.

It had worked.

My God, the magic had actually worked.

At first, I had no more energy left to walk, so I sat there by the doors for a while, looking at them, at the handles, as if to make sure they wouldn't turn. As if to make sure that Romin hadn't just been bluffing to play with me. I genuinely expected him to come through the doors with a smile on his face, saying, Gotcha! before he grabbed me and dragged me all the way to his own fucking bedroom.

He didn't, though. This tower was really mine now. Grey had genuinely given it to me. He'd meant those words he said that night; otherwise, the magic wouldn't have turned Romin away the way it did. He had given me his tower and with such ease, like he knew it was going to save me from his brothers one day.

And now he was gone.

I had no idea how I made it upstairs to the third floor, but I found his bedroom—our bedroom—and I lay on the bed again. I was cold and hot at the same time, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why it felt like I'd died. Like I was gone, too. Like what remained in this room, lying on his bed was just a shell of who I had been at dawn.

Eventually, my eyes closed, and sleep took me.

When I woke up, it was already seven p.m. My stomach growled, my body weak with hunger, but the thought of putting food in my mouth made me want to gag.

No, I would not be eating today. At least not yet.

So many things went through my mind as I went to the bathroom—our bathroom. That very place where we'd showered together just a day ago. Where we'd been together against those tiles in the shower cabin.

So little time to even come to terms with the fact that I was Grey's now. So little time to understand the Blood Call and what it meant that I'd chosen him and what my life was truly going to look like in the Whispering Woods until I died.

It hadn't seemed all that bad then.

In fact, I couldn't bring myself to care about much other than Grey in those two days. Two fucking days, that's all I'd gotten.

So little time.

And now everything had changed again.

I walked the hallways of the third tower feeling like a damn ghost. I hardly felt my bare feet touching the hardwood floors or the carpets, but somehow, I found my way into the room that Grey had made for me. The books and the easels and the instruments—and the birds.

The birds locked in a cage just like I was locked in this tower, chirping happily when I switched the lights on. Tears spilled out of me instantly as I went to the container with their food in it, the one Grey had fed them from that night. I did the same, mimicking his motions, trying to smile at the birds while I cried my heart out, yet somehow the pain didn't lessen.

Did these birds understand what the tears meant? Could they see how I was dying, how I was already halfway dead? Could they tell Grey was gone?

Had they accepted it already?

Because I hadn't. I couldn't. I didn't know how to handle my whole life being taken away from me once more.

Had the universe no mercy? How many more times was it going to break me until my heart gave up and stopped beating for good?

No answer.

I just fed the birds and I cried, then sat in the recliner where Grey had sat last time and I cried, and held onto the armrests and I cried, and prayed for an ending to my misery and I cried.

Once, Brandon told me that it was easier for me.

When his grandmother died and he was devastated, I told him that he was going to be okay, that life goes on, and that he would learn to live with the pain. And he said that I didn't understand what it was like for him because I was different. Because it was easier for me. I'd had so much taken away from me, so much I didn't even have to begin with, so I went through loss easier.

Somehow, in his mind, that made sense.

Somehow, he almost convinced me that he was right. Maybe it was easier for me. No father, didn't know my mother at all—even before her death, she rarely spent time with me, and when she did, she was stoned. My grandmother hated my guts. I had no friends, nobody I really fit in with.

I guess that's why I clung to Brandon the way I did.

It wasn't true, though. Right now, I wished it was, but this wasn't easier. Grey was banished, and he would die soon if he hadn't already. Storm was away on a mountain, starving himself to death because he didn't want to be in a world where Grey wasn't. I didn't want to be in a world where Grey wasn't, either, but there was a rational part of my mind that insisted that I didn't even know him.

I'd had two days—that's it. Weeks and weeks of being scared of him, and then suddenly, it was him, all him, everything I saw. That wasn't natural, was it? It was just the Blood Call. The magic. The curse. It wasn't natural to feel so connected to someone in such a short time, to know who he was on the inside as clearly as I knew myself.

An illusion, that's what it was. I didn't really know Grey—I just thought I did.

That's what the rational, logical part of me said.

Except my heart knew differently. My soul knew differently. Just the reminder of what it had felt like to be in his arms—like I'd finally found my place—made me want to crawl right out of my skin now that it was taken from me again.

And it was all my fault. All my fucking fault for…existing.

"I'm tired," I told the birds, sinking my nails into my legs. "I'm so tired."

Yet somehow, in some fucked up way, giving up still wasn't an option. In some fucked up, completely senseless way, I was clinging to survival, silently preparing to fight with everything I had to…what exactly? Live? Escape this Isle? Go back to the real world?

Grey couldn't come back. Romin couldn't summon him here again, so what was the point of any of it? What was the point of trying?

I had no clue, but apparently, that's exactly what I was going to do.

As I watched the colorful birds flying and singing songs I could understand as perfectly as I did any melody from an instrument, I was already thinking about all the possibilities in the back of my mind.

Valentine was alive. Even Shadow was alive, so that meant he would be coming for me again. He failed to kill me that first time, so he would be coming for me again as soon as he was able to. Valentine was not a man to leave things unfinished—of that I was sure. I needed to watch my back from him first.

And then came the others.

Tristian, Emil, Romin. There was no doubt in my mind that given the chance, the first two would have their way with me in whichever way they pleased, and they wouldn't stop no matter how hard I fought back or how much I begged. Romin might hold himself back because he was too proud to admit that he'd force himself on me. He'd try to get me to willingly submit to him first, so right now, the first two were more dangerous.

Everything in this place was dangerous—all of it. And the only way I would survive was if I stuck to this tower for as long as I could, and I learned how to protect myself.

With magic. The same magic that now ran in my veins. The same magic that was supposed to have been fully unlocked in me with the Blood Call. Actual magic that I could use against Tristian and Emil, and even Romin if it came to it. Magic I could use against Valentine.

I remained in that recliner curled up in a ball with my hands around my head, trying to think of every possible scenario, every option I really had, while my tears slowed down, then dried completely.

Magic. That's all I had now. The only thing that could keep me safe from these monsters until I figured out a way to get out of the Whispering Woods. There had to be a way, and I was going to find it even if it took me a hundred years. Just like Syra was a hundred percent convinced that she could find another way to supply Ennaris with magic instead of eating human flesh, I was convinced that there was a way out of this trap of an Isle.

And I swore to myself that no matter what I had to do, no matter how long it took, I was going to find it.