Chapter 32

It tookhim less than a minute to fly us down the mountain and to the main entrance, the same place where we'd last seen Valentine. My gut wanted to fucking explode both with magic and my instincts that were all on high alert now. Every damn alarm in my head had gone off at the same time, like my body knew what the hell was going on here before I did. Like it knew what we were going to find down that narrow tunnel that led inside the mountain before we got there.

Then we did.

There was more than enough light to brighten up the entire space from the turquoise water of the pool in front of the sleeping dragon, so we saw Valentine kneeling in front of it with his hands raised forward. He didn't react when we came through, didn't even turn his head back, just kept staring at the water and whispering senseless words that had the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

I knew it. I fucking knew Valentine was here—I knew it!

Except I had no idea what the hell he was doing.

I looked at Grey, who seemed just as confused as me. Slowly, he went deeper into the cave, perfectly silent, and I followed close behind, taking in the giant dragon sleeping near the pool with the raised rock between its talons, and Syra sleeping at the top of it. Even though I'd been in this cave every single day now when searching for Valentine, it still seemed so surreal to me that it existed. What it served.

"Valentine."

Grey's voice echoed against the high ceiling of the cave, and I almost reminded him that the Great White was right there, that too much noise could awaken him.

But then Valentine turned, and he didn't seem surprised in the least to find us there. In fact, he didn't even stop chanting, and I realized he was wearing only his pants. No shirt on him, and Shadow was sitting near him by the edge of the pool in silence, watching us, wings half spread like he was preparing to take flight.

Meanwhile magic, as invisible as mine had been just now, was coming out of Valentine's hands and going straight into the water—except it didn't disrupt it at all. The water sort of absorbed the magic without a ripple and without a single sound.

"Valentine, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" Grey said, his voice growing louder, his wings spread, and Shadow was already in the air, flying over Valentine's head.

I grabbed his arm and held him back. "Grey, stop." Whatever Valentine was doing, it could be dangerous. It could backfire. It could hurt him, maybe even do to him what my magic had done to that rock.

"Answer me," Grey growled, but he stopped walking, and Valentine locked eyes with me for only a second before he turned to the water again.

I squeezed Grey's arm. "Just give me a minute."

Shadow wouldn't hurt me. Valentine wouldn't, either. He'd talk to me. I'd make him if I had to—but he'd talk to me.

Grey let me get closer, and he stayed close behind, but he no longer looked like he was about to attack his brother. Slowly, I went and sat down next to Valentine right there by the pool, looking at his profile as he whispered those words, the bright light of the water revealing the shape of him I knew so well.

He looked good. His skin was clean, his hair combed back, and he had a short stubble covering his cheeks that I'd never seen on him before. He'd been here on this Isle all this time. I had no clue how he hid himself from Grey and Storm, but he'd been here, there was no doubt about it.

"Valentine," I whispered, but he refused to stop chanting. "Valentine, look at me."

He didn't move a single inch.

Grey was standing two feet behind me, and I turned to him for a second, just to assure him that I was fine.

Then I put my hand on Valentine's shoulder.

His eyes popped open, and he looked at me from his peripheral, those whispers coming out of his lips in a rush.

"What are you doing, Valentine? Talk to me—what are you doing?!" Why was he chanting at the water?

He turned toward me and looked at me without blinking for a long time—as long as it took him to stop chanting.

"What is it?" I whispered to Valentine. He looked the same, but also so different. His eyes looked blue with the light of the water, and that stubble made him look at least a decade older, too.

"Hey, Sunshine," he finally said, making my heart skip a beat. He heard it and smiled. "Still one of my favorite melodies."

I shook my head. "What the hell are you doing, Valentine? Why are you whispering at the water?" Why was he hiding on the Eighth Isle? Why was he hiding from us for three days—just…why?

His smile fell. "I'm making it right."

"You're making what right?" Did he mean his banishment?

"This." He looked up at the ceiling. "This whole thing. This Isle—all the Isles. The Fall of Ennaris." And he smiled again, so sadly it was heartbreaking.

I shook my head. "I don't understand. How are you going to make it right? What are you trying to do here exactly?"

"It's okay. You were human once. It's okay if you don't understand what it's like to be stuck in this cursed place forever," Valentine said. "I've missed you, Sunshine."

"I missed you, too," I said, and I meant it. "I missed talking to you."

"Really?" His brows shot up.

"Yes, really. You're my best friend, believe it or not. Or at least you were," I muttered, and yes, I was pretending for the sake of getting him out of here so we could talk in peace, away from the gigantic dragon, but it was also the truth. The whole truth without the layer of anger that coated it right now.

"Let's get out of here and talk, can we? Let's get out and you can tell me how you want to make it right."

I reached for his hand and he let me grab it, but when I pulled him to the side, he didn't budge.

"I can't do that, Sunshine," he whispered. "I have to wait here."

"Wait for what?" Nothing else was on this Isle—we checked a million times a day. "What is going on, Valentine?"

"The end," he simply said. "The end of Ennaris, as it should have been since the beginning. It was never supposed to survive Syra, Sunshine. It was supposed to perish underneath the ocean—but it's okay. It will now."

What the… "Are…are you serious?"

"Of course," said Valentine, completely at ease. "Ennaris will be no more. The curse will be no more. We…" He gave me a look. "…will be free, at last."

"You're trying to destroy the Isles?" said Grey as he slowly came closer from my other side, as if he didn't want to spook Valentine. I was thankful for it because we needed to know what the hell he was thinking.

"Precisely," Valentine said without looking at him at all.

"You can't if you try," Grey said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Others have before you, remember? We all learned about George and Elijah Evernight. They tried to destroy the curse. They failed."

I, for one, had never heard those names before, but Valentine apparently had because he nodded.

"I remember them, yes. But they didn't have the power necessary to unravel the spell of the curse in the first place—how could they have ruined these forsaken lands? I didn't really have any hopes myself, until…until Fall." He finally turned to Grey, and my God, Valentine looked absolutely possessed. "We live off scraps. We're constantly fighting for survival when the curse has turned the land against us, too. Have you seen the animals here? Do you not realize that we're all going to end up like them sooner rather than later?"

"It matters little what we realize or don't. The curse can't be broken," Grey said through gritted teeth.

But Valentine smiled.

He smiled, and in it I saw my fate as if written with letters in front of my eyes—we were doomed.

Valentine was not someone to start something he couldn't finish. If he was here, trying this, it's because he was sure he could actually do it.

"Valentine, whatever you think you're doing, stop it. Right now—stop it," I said, as the fear made the magic in my stomach gather into a ball of raw heat.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that already, Sunshine," he said. "The layers of the spell are unraveling. Soon, the curse will be no more."

"You've lost your damn mind," Grey hissed, coming closer to him. "You can't unravel the curse, you fool!"

As if on cue, even before the words had completely left his mouth, the ground shook again, this time much more violently.

A small scream left me when I almost fell into the pool, but Grey was already pulling me up to my feet by the arm, and Valentine was standing up, too, still smiling.

Still fucking smiling.

"I can and I have. The counter spell that was centuries in the making is burning down the layers of it as we speak," he proudly said, raising his arms to the sides as he slowly moved backward, away from us, and Shadow took his place on his shoulder.

Bile rose up my throat. "No…" I whispered because this couldn't be right. He couldn't just kill the entire Isles. He couldn't do it. He wasn't strong enough, nobody was!

Nobody, except?—

"Syra."

Grey's voice rang in my ears, and my eyes moved to that rock, to the dragon wrapped around it, still asleep somehow. Still not moving, even though we were shouting. Maybe Valentine had put him to sleep for good when he first came here, and right now I was thankful for it. If that creature woke up, we were all really, truly fucked.

"Syra, yes," Valentine confirmed.

"You're trying to break the curse and awaken Syra?" Grey's words struggled to make sense to me even before Valentine confirmed it with a deep and proud nod.

No way, my mind insisted. No fucking way this is real.

Because that would mean…

"The end," I breathed. "She'll destroy everything the way she was always going to. It will be the end." For real. Ennaris would really be gone, just like Valentine said.

My God…

"It will be freedom," he said. "This is no life. We're being consumed by our own nature, our own magic. We were never meant to live like this. We need to be set free once and for all."

I shook my head. "Valentine, the people are fine. I was in the Blood Burrow and in Faeries' Aerie—nobody is being consumed by anything. They're just weak. Their magic is weak, but they're fine!" He'd seen it for himself, hadn't he? In the mirror room, as well as the towns in the Whispering Woods. I'd been there, too—people weren't half as miserable as he seemed to think.

"We are magic!" Valentine said. "Without it, we're not us!"

"So, you want to fucking kill everyone?" Grey said, and he, too, had been caught by surprise, except he wasn't half as worried as I was when he shook his head. "Whatever you did here today, Valentine, we can fix it. Come home with us. We'll fix it."

But Valentine laughed, and the sound was ice-cold. It echoed all the way to the ceiling, and Grey and I both turned to the Great White, expecting to find his eyes open.

Still closed.

My heart was in my throat. "Valentine, please…"

"Don't worry, Sunshine. He won't wake up unless I call for him," Valentine said. "And there's nothing to fix here anymore, brother. Ennaris will be no more."

Grey stepped closer to him. "If you messed with the curse, the consequences can be dire. Stop this nonsense," he spit, but Valentine wasn't worried.

"It has already started. There's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it," he said. "Watch the spell unraveling. Feel the layers of it peeling off."

As if on cue, just as he said it, I felt it.

It was in the air, the magic thick and heavy, like it was retreating within itself when I paid attention to it.

"You're mad!" Grey shouted. "You can't awaken Syra if you try—you can't!"

"Of course, I can," said Valentine, and I knew him well enough by now to know that he meant it.

"Grey," I whispered, pulling him back by the arm, but he was too focused on Valentine still.

On Valentine, who produced a small knife out of thin fucking air. He ran the blade down his palm lightning fast, then squeezed his fist over the pool's edge.

To watch the way his blood dripped into the turquoise water made my skin crawl.

"Siren blood put her under, together with Hansil Knight's," Grey said, and I prayed with all my heart that he was right. "Your blood won't awaken her, Valentine. You need siren blood for it to work."

The loaded second of silence that followed Grey's voice could have weighed as much as the mountain. Valentine's sneaky smile took over his face just as something moved to our right. Something in the water.

I turned, heart still, lungs empty, eyes unblinking to see the creature slowly coming out of the water's surface, eyes wide and blue like crystals, a huge smile on her distorted face, her skin just as grey as I remembered.

"Good evening, children. Missed me?" Sedelis said.

It was a goddamn miracle I didn't pass out.