Page 157 of Mama Si's Paradise

The power that followed was immediate.

I felt it, too, as if it was mine, crawling under my skin. Syra screamed again, this time a short scream, a second long—and it was done.

It wasdone.

She was never going to be the same Syra again.

When she rose to her feet and turned to the ocean, she was smiling, lips smeared with the blood of the man she loved. She was smiling because they’d been right all along when they said nothing gave a siren more power than the heart of the man she loved.

Now, she had all of it right there at her fingertips. She had all the power anyone could ever need. She could rule the universe with it—and after all, if she couldn’t be with Hansil Knight, what did it matter how big of a monster she became?

She wanted to. Shewantedto be a beast.

And her sisters were going to pay the price for betraying her first.

Slamming her fist in the rocks right there on the shore, Syra let out all the magic that had accumulated within her in the minutes after she’d swallowed Hansil’s heart. So much of it flowed from her hand and slipped into the ground at the same time, its only aim to destroy. Destroy everything in its path, land and magic and people, just likeshehad been destroyed from the inside out.

“Ennaris will fall,”she said to the ground,orderedit.

And indeed, Ennaris fell that very day before the sun set completely behind the horizon.

“So,you see, Doll, love makes us better than anything else in the world, and it also turns us into the most vile versions of ourselves with the same intensity.”

Emerald’s voice suddenly popped into my mind as I watched the view in front of me moving so much faster by the second. As I watched how the entire land of Ennaris, all of that vast continent, shook and groaned and burned andbrokeunder the power coming at it from the inside, straight from Syra’s body.

“The siren sisters didn’t see it coming. They never thought Syra would react this way to their betrayal—they were merely doing her a favor, in their minds. They were saving her from herself, and now, she was going to ruin Ennaris forever,” Emerald continued as I watched the broken pieces of land move farther and farther away, most on fire, and I could have sworn I heard screams in the distance.

So many screams…

“But the sisters still fought, even though they knew they couldn’t kill Syra. They still fought her with all they had, and in the following weeks they managed to spell her into a state of sleep using a powerful incantation made by the witches with the remains of Hansil Knight’s body. They trapped her as wellas they could, but they knew that if she ever awakens again, she would kill them all. She would destroy what was left of Ennaris, and everything in it. She would destroy the whole world out of rage and spite,” said Emerald.

“And that was why they, together with the witches, created a series of spells that would ensure her mind would never awaken again. It only worked because the magic was enhanced by the blood and bones of Syra’s true love, the same blood in that tiny piece of heart she’d eaten that had given her such power. And as long as his bloodline remains in Ennaris, the spell that keeps her under will not be undone.”

Everything came to a halt.

The fires that had been burning in the pieces of land torn apart from one another faded, leaving behind tendrils of smoke that rose into a sky that was welcoming dawn.

For a second, it was all suspended in time.

Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Nothing made a single sound.

Then something pulled me back with so much strength that I fell.

A scream left me when my ass hit the floor and I actually had hands to touch with and a mouth to scream with and a body to move with.

“Oh, God…oh, my God,” I kept whispering, crawling backward as fast as I could as I blinked and blinked and more of Emerald’s underground library revealed itself to my eyes. I’d come out of the glass ball and I’d fallen to the floor. I was moving backward still, and Emerald was walking down those stairs calmly with a huge smile on her face.

Then she showed me the book in her hand.

“And that’s the end of book one.”

Note from the Author:

Did I scare you a little bit there?

*cute smiling emoji with hand in front of mouth*

Please carry on. The book is not over yet. :)

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