Page 47 of The Eighth Isle

If she were, I’d have already been dead.

“They’re golems. She made golems,” said Valentine, and he was just as in awe and terrified as I was.

“What the fuck is agolem? And why do they look like…like…”Plastic,was the word that came to mind, but it was too absurd to say it out loud.

“Because they’re not real people,” Valentine whispered, moving closer to the siren pillar on the left of the bridge. “They’re made of earth and magic, and they’re supposed to beservants of witches, but they’re considered a myth. No witch has been able to make one since anybody remembers.”

His eyes were focused on those creatures, and he looked so different in the bright daylight. Not just because of the stubble, but his skin had more color to it and his eyes were so much lighter.

“Let me guess—you need a lot of magic to make them.”

“Correct,” he said, as I knew he would.

“Are they dangerous? What can they do? Can they use magic, too?” I asked because I needed to cross that bridge and get into that castle asap.

Grey was there. I knew in my heart that he was in there. That day he’d been inside the tomb mountain, and even though this place no longer resembled that mountain at all, it was it. Syra had transformed it intothis.

“The stories claim they can’t use magic, no. I’m not sure what they’ve been programmed to do, if they’ll try to stop us or not,” he said, then looked at me. “But there’s a way to find out.”

Every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps.

I’d loved this man once. Fuck, I really,trulyhad, but I would never make the mistake of trusting him again. He’d followed me, and I hadn’t wanted to waste the energy to stop him, but I wasn’t going to let him come with me into that castle. I wasn’t going to let him ruin this for me or even threaten it in any way.

“Sunshine?” he said when I remained perfectly quiet and just looked at him for a good minute.

“I’m not sorry at all,” I whispered, to defy the thoughts in my head, those that insisted thatI was.

I was sorry to do this, but I shouldn’t have been.

His eyes opened wide, and he had no chance to even move away before my magic charged at him, hit him in the chest and sent him back a couple of feet.

Shadow roared over our heads.

At the same time, another roar I’d become very familiar with sounded somewhere on the other side of that castle, behind the Great White that stood guard over it.

I’m sorry,I thought again, involuntarily, as Valentine fell to his knees with his lower jaw already twisted to the side, and his arms elongated, and his neck no longer holding up his head as it should.

I knew Valentine wouldn’t have stopped me even if he could. I knew Shadow wouldn’t attack me even though he continued to roar like that, and I knew Storm was somewhere close, too.

I knew Storm had felt me, knew I was here.

So, I swallowed the words before I said them to Valentine, who was now on the ground, half-hidden by the overgrown grass, body twisted in awful angles—and I ran over that bridge.

Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back,I chanted to myself, and this guilt that was eating me from the inside was going to fade away eventually. I ignored it as best I could, and I ran like my fucking life depended on it. Tears slipped down my cheeks, but I kept my attention on those men by the doorways—thegolems. Magic raged inside me, so powerful, so intense that it burned my skin. I had plenty of it to use on them if they so much as raised their hands toward me. If they so much as stepped in front of me or looked at me wrong.

Except they didn’t.

Could they even hear me? Because they didn’t turn their heads or their dead-looking eyes toward me at all when I jumped on the other side of the bridge, breathing heavily, arms raised and magic buzzing on my palms, ready to unleash at them.

I never had to. There were six of them right there, but not a single one moved.

Storm roared once more, and he was closer now, just over the Great White. I held my breath and kept my eyes on the sky, and a heartbeat later…

“There you are,” I whispered when his grey underbelly came into view, and his massive black wings stretched all the way as he hovered in the air, his eye on me, even though he was too far up for me to make out his face with clarity.

I ran forward again, and straight into the first and largest doorway of the castle with Shadow flying right behind me.

Darkness.

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