Chapter 3

I missedhim so much it hurt me physically.

How was it possible to get used to a man so quickly when I'd been with him two nights?

They had been the best nights—and mornings—of my life, but still, only two. How could I become so connected to a stranger and feel like I'd known him since the moment he was born?

No idea but there I was, biting my tongue to keep the tears at bay because I'd cried enough. Now, I focused ahead, on growing stronger, on keeping myself protected—for once taking my own self, my own safety and well-being, into my own hands. For once not looking for someone else to save me, to protect me—just me. A Fall Hayes strong enough, smart enough to withstand the Evernight brothers. Strong enough to save herself from this fucked up world.

I slept sitting in the recliner that day.

When I woke up and I made my way back to the bedroom, I found a tray full of cold food on the floor in front of the door. I didn't really taste it, but I ate anyway just to give myself some energy.

Then, I slept some more.

For almost two days, all I did was sleep and think and toss and turn, with only that cold food that had been brought to my door by probably Aster or Vinny. The thought of going to the kitchen to grab something else made me want to break something, or dry heave, so I didn't bother. I just stayed in this state of paralysis of the mind, with the same things running through it over and over, but I didn't cry again.

It occurred to me that in a way, Brandon washalf right about what he'd said.

It wasn't easier for me. The pain wasn't less because of what I'd gone through, but I knew that I would get used to living with it. It would eventually become part of me, no matter how much it hurt. I knew that I was capable of surviving, that I could get fucking used to everything—and maybe that's what made it a bit easier.

Right now, I'd think of that as my superpower.

By the end of the second day, my body was too weak, my headache about to split my skull wide open because I needed food. There was no way I could go to bed and actually sleep in the state I was in, even though I was very aware that I wasn't in any condition to keep myself safe from anyone at all.

So, I waited for midnight, and then I forced myself to stumble out of the silent, dark tower and into the ground floor of the castle.

Empty. The hall was empty, but that didn't mean much. Lucky for me, I had become a bit delirious with hunger and with my own messed up thoughts, so I hardly stopped to look and see if someone was coming for me as I made my way to the dining room, and then into the kitchen. It was empty, but that didn't stop me from seeing Grey in my mind's eye standing in front of the open fridges while his leg bled because he'd captured a cougar without hurting her. I saw the whole thing as I had that night, and it was like I was living in those moments all over again.

The urge to want to go back in time was so strong it doubled me over. I'd give up everything to be there again. To go to that night, to talk to him, to clean his leg and then stick to his side every second after. Every fucking second of every day for the rest of eternity.

But reality was a cruel bitch and soon I had no choice but to accept that Grey wasn't here. He wasn't looking for rabbit meat in the fridge. He wasn't bleeding all over the kitchen floor.

He was gone.

So, I forced myself to move, grabbed a basket from the cabinets and put in it every food I could find that would last without a fridge because I wasn't planning to come out here again in a long time. I would just camp in the third tower and let the rest of the castle fucking burn for all I cared.

Bananas and apples and oranges and bread and cheese and dried meat—I got all of it until I could hardly carry that basket, and then I turned to leave. Go back to my tower. Eat. Think. Sleep.

Wake up tomorrow and do the same all over again.

Except I still hadn't made it to the doors of it when I noticed movement on my right, and it was a damn miracle the basket's handle remained in my hand.

Romin was resting a shoulder against a pillar near one of the many corners around me, watching me with a smile on his face.

"Look who finally crawled out of her hole."

His voice was cheerful, excited, sharp enough to fucking pierce right through me. I froze, unsure whether to believe my eyes at all. The state I had been in the past two days made everything…questionable.

"You don't look so good, Fall. My, my," he whispered as he slowly moved away from the pillar and came toward me. "You don't look good at all."

"What do you want?" I spit with as much bite as I had energy to put in my voice.

But that only made Romin smile wider.

I took a quick look around—where were Emil and Tristian? Were they waiting for me behind corners I couldn't see?

Nobody was there, but I moved toward the doors of the third tower anyway.

"That's no way to speak to your master," said Romin, but he was grinning ear to ear. "I'll admit, I was considering you might try to starve yourself in there." And he laughed.

The image I'd constructed in my mind of Storm inside a cave, refusing to eat as he waited for death, came before my eyes. God, I hated this man so much…

With my head up, I continued to walk toward the doors, but my focus was on him. That's why I saw it when he moved, lightning fast, and stopped in front of me, blocking my way.

"Enough with this nonsense, Fall. You're a bride. You have a duty to this Court," he had the audacity to say.

"And you had a duty to rule this Court fairly, not to let your fear of your own brother get in your way of making the right decisions."

Oh, the way his smile dropped. Even if he sucked me dry right now, it would have been totally worth it.

"I am not afraid of anyone," he said, but he was full of shit.

"Oh, I believe you now." Grey was gone. None of the others were as powerful. He had no reason to be afraid…yet.

"It seems you're still in mourning, which is beyond me, but okay," he said with a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. "But your welcoming party is tomorrow night, and I order you as your ruler to leave this attitude in the tower when you attend."

For a moment I considered I heard him wrong, but no. He said those words. He actually said those words.

He must have been out of his fucking mind.

"A party." Did he seriously think that I would attend a party tomorrow or any other day that I had to spend on this God forsaken Isle?

"Yes, your party. All the Isles will be here to honor you."

I blinked and waited for a good minute, thinking, he's gonna start laughing soon. He was going to start laughing soon and tell me he had me because no way this wasn't a joke.

He didn't.

"I really hope you and all the Isles have the best time, and—because you seem to need me to actually say this—I won't be attending a party tomorrow night. Or ever."

He smiled and it was like tires screeching in my brain. My instincts could pick up on his magic like it was heat coming off him, even clearer than before.

"But you will. I order you, Fall Hayes, to be at your party tomorrow night. It's not really a choice. Not a request—an order," he said slowly.

"I don't care about your orders," I spit and moved around him to get to the doors. If he wanted to grab me, I couldn't stop him, anyway, so might as well give it a try and hope for the best.

But as soon as I opened the doors, Romin said, "Fine with me. I think you should want to, though. You should really care about disobeying my direct order because you won't like the consequences if you do."

I stopped. I turned to him again. "What consequences?"

"Your punishment," he said, hands behind him as he looked down at me. "I will be entitled to punish you—and deliver that punishment myself. Which means I'll be well within my rights to enter your tower to reach you, and take you out of there, and even chain you to the walls of my bedroom if I wanted to. The magic of this castle would no longer stand in my way."

Goose bumps rose on every inch of my skin. My God, his every word rang true.

"So, think about it, then, Fall." With that, he turned around and made for the other side of the hallway. "To be honest, I'd prefer it if you choose not to attend. That idea of chaining you to my bedroom wall?" Bile rose up my throat. "I just might put my very best efforts into making it a reality."

My heart skipped so many beats it was a wonder it hadn't shut down completely yet. I turned for the doors, swallowed the bile down as Romin laughed, and the echo of it slipped into my ears and fucking invaded my mind. The doors of the tower closed behind me, cutting him and the rest of the castle off, but I still heard him when I made it back to my bedroom. I still heard his words, and my imagination was eager to come up with a visual of them, too—of myself chained to a wall in Romin's bedroom, completely helpless while he did to me whatever the fuck went on in his twisted mind.

In my imagination, I could do nothing but take it.

"No," I said to the room, putting the basket full of food on the bed. "No. No. No."

I would not give Romin the right to walk through those doors. I would not allow him to get into this tower and drag me to his bedroom. Even if I had to show up to a party to keep him away, I would. The party would be full of other people. Emil and Tristian wouldn't attack me in front of everyone. I'd be safe—just to make a quick appearance.

Then I could be back here and start to actually work on my plan. To test my magic and train until I was strong enough to keep all three of them off me if they so much as came close enough to touch me again.

A knock on the door.

I sat on Grey's desk as soon as I woke up that morning, trying to understand the symbols in his books, trying to figure out if I could get some kind of help for my magic. A starting point. Any tips at all—how do I get it to work?

An hour in came that knock and it shocked me when I paid attention, and I actually felt the energy behind the door, divided into two.

When I opened it, I found Vinny and Aster with two large suitcases in front of them and fake smiles on their faces.

"Pardon to interrupt, Miss Hayes, but Master Valentine sent you your clothes. Everything you had in the closet at his tower," Aster said, her voice ice-cold, completely transformed as she pushed the suitcases toward me.

My stomach did a flip at the mentioning of that name.

Valentine was awake and well enough to put my things in suitcases and send them over to me.

"Thank you," I muttered, pulling them to the side so I could close the door fast. Just the way the both of them were looking at me made me feel like I was sitting on needles.

They hadn't looked at me like this before, had they? I would have remembered.

"Also, Master Romin sent you this dress for the party tonight. I was asked to do your hair and makeup if you tell me what time to be here. The guests arrive at seven," Aster continued, and it was like she was pulling her own words out of her throat with difficulty. Vinny, too—he seemed to be sweating as he offered me a hanger with a black cover over whatever outfit hung on it, that he'd been holding in his hand and I hadn't even noticed.

Ice in my veins. I took the dress anyway. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary. I'll do my own hair and makeup."

"I'm afraid it's non-negotiable, Miss Hayes. Master Romin's orders," Aster said, her cheeks a bit flushed as she forced herself to smile still.

God, she hated me. They both did. They despised me—and I couldn't find it in me to care.

"Fine. Be here at six." I stepped back and swung the door shut before I had to endure another second of their presence.

Tears pricked the back of my eyes as I put the stupid hanger on the bed, then took the cover off to reveal a long red dress with a dipped neckline and glitter on the flared bottom half. My poor tongue was bleeding from how hard I was biting it to contain myself.

A red dress.

I would rather be caught dead than wear this.

I grabbed it and threw it at a corner, then turned to the suitcases. If my memory served me right, I had a dark grey satin dress in the closet of my room in the fifth tower. I could wear that instead, just to spite Romin. Just to remind him that I wasn't his. Even if Grey wasn't here, even if the coward had fucking banished him, I still didn't belong to him no matter how many parties he forced me to attend. I was Grey's, and I'd keep reminding him of it because I had this strange feeling that I always would be. That I would miss him forever.

That I'd probably die alone.

And I was perfectly okay with that.

The closet was on the other side of the bed, and I wheeled the suitcases toward it and opened the door, walked in and turned up the switch as if I was expecting to find it empty. It wasn't.

Grey was all over those shelves.

My breath caught in my throat and my body froze in the doorway. His closet was a bit smaller than mine had been, only half full of clothes, black and dark grey, and a couple of items in white. It smelled like him in here. It smelled like Grey—spicy and dark.

This time, when the tears came, I wasn't strong enough to stop them. They spilled out of me all at once like they were in a damn race, and I stayed there leaning against the door frame, holding onto the suitcases, for quite a long time.

I just hadn't expected it to be so crowded in there. I hadn't expected every scent and every fabric and every color to remind me of Grey.

Eventually, I wheeled in the suitcases, and I took them to the very end of the room, to the empty shelves and racks and drawers. I would not be touching Grey's clothes here. I would not be taking anything away. I'd keep all of it to remind me of him. To give me strength and maybe help me break down more so that I could shed my old skin faster.

Only when I opened the suitcases and began to put everything on the shelves did I stop crying. And when I found what I'd been looking for—a simple grey satin, one-shoulder dress that fell to my ankles—I went to hang it with Grey's clothes because half of the hangers were empty.

But before I put it in place, I noticed something in the back, hidden away by black dress shirts. I could barely make out the corner of the silver frame and my heart skipped a beat.

A painting.

Without really expecting much, I pushed the shirts to the other side to reveal it, and my breath caught in my throat. For the second time in the past hour, I was paralyzed in place, but the tears must have dried already because they didn't come. Or maybe the shock of seeing Grey's face masterfully painted on that canvas wouldn't let them spill.

Slowly grabbing the edges, I took the painting out and dragged it to an empty wall at the end of the room where I'd laid my open suitcases. The painting reached up to my neck and was twice as wide as my shoulders. It was a portrait of Grey from the chest up. A fucking portrait of him that had captured every color of his eyes, and every curve and every sharp edge of his face, every string of his hair and the right width of his shoulders.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in front of it on the floor with my arms wrapped around my legs, looking at him. So beautiful. So goddamn perfect that I'd forgotten. Just a couple of days since I last saw him, and I'd already forgotten his face. It had blurred in my memories because my mind just wasn't creative enough to create the image of him properly, like this artist had on the canvas.

"I miss you."

The words slipped from my lips and they faded into the dark walls of the closet, never to be heard by anyone. But even so, I stayed there, and I analyzed every line and every color on that portrait until I knew it all by memory.

Time flew by and my entire body was completely numb from sitting so still for so long. So much longer than I'd realized.

Then Aster came knocking on the door.