Page 90 of The Eighth Isle

My heart jumped as I turned to him, and I could have sworn he was moving in slow motion. I could have sworn it took him a long,longtime to smile and wink at me and then add, “You know—just in case I don’t make it.”

He jumped forward, too, straight into that blinding light.

Thinking back to that moment now, it really was a miracle I hadn’t passed out yet. A miracle that I somehow got my body to move, to turn around and run all the way to Grey, to grab him by the arm and pull him up because he was awake, too. A goddamn miracle that we were both still alive.

“The dome,” Grey said, leaning half his weight on me as he struggled to stand up and almost knocking me down—he was big, too big for me to carry.

“We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay,” I kept chanting, pulling him with all my strength anyway, and Storm spit fire at the sky, and beat his wings so hard they almost knocked us both down as he flew up.

“Listen to me, Fall—the dome is gone,” Grey said. “I need you to?—”

That’s as far as he made it.

A scream coming from the other side cut him off. The way the ground suddenly shook, it was like someone had grabbed the entire Isle in their hands and was pushing and pulling it back with all their strength. The raw magic that burst everywhere at once, together with the light, picked us up and suspended us on air for what felt like a long time.

My eyes were on Grey and his were on me, and we both knew we were going to die. We both reached out our hands for one another as the magic kept us back, the warmth of it slipping under our skin, burning us slowly…

I love you.

The world continued to move at normal speed again.

The magic pushed us back and slammed us against the ground, breaking us apart the same way Syra had done with her sister.

Everything went dark.

Twenty

Thoughts spun in my head.Images that struggled to make sense to me were at the center of my mind, and this annoying voice whispered in my ear that it was over, that I was already dead. We all were.

Strangely I wasn’t afraid, even if a part of me believed it. All those sirens, and Grey and Valentine—and evenme!—but Syra was still stronger than all of us combined. She’d still killed another siren, her sister Mea,whilewe were all attacking her at the same time.

Too powerful, just like we knew she would be. Far too powerful for all of us. For the whole world.

Yet somehow I was still alive.

I knew it when that whisper no longer reached my ears and instead a white noise went on somewhere around me—or was itinside? No idea, but it poked at my mind, urging me to wake up, to start focusing on my senses, to try to open my eyes and see what was around me.

I did.

No more of that blinding white light anywhere that I could see, only the night sky and the moon, barely half, hiding behindclouds as ifshewere afraid of what went on down here, too. As if she didn’t want to watch what happened next.

Every person who’d been under the dome with Syra was now on the ground—and her, too. I pushed myself to sit up as my ears picked up more and more sound, but nothing else moved here except for Storm.

Storm, who’d been thrown against the trees behind the back leg of the Great White, and even though I couldn’t see him, I heard his growls and groans as he tried to stand.

“Grey,”I whispered, eyes searching the bodies sprawled all around me, the four remaining sirens, and Shadow right next to Valentine, who was on his back, motionless, eyes closed, and chest torn.

And then Grey, who lay on his side behind me, five feet away, half his body resting against the edge of the ruined fountain that still spilled water from everywhere, his wings gone.

I immediately began to drag myself toward him. Storm would be on his feet any second now, and he could grab us and fly us away. We’d leave the sirens here on this Isle, and hopefully they ruined it completely—andeach other. Hopefully they sank underwater and remained there, never to be heard of or seen again.

“Grey, wake up,” I said when I reached him, my own body in shock, limbs numb, yet I somehow managed to grab him by the arm and push him on his back.

God, he was a mess. So many cuts oozing blood on his chest and neck and face, but he had to be okay. He had to be alive—he was just unconscious.

My magic raged.

“Grey, open your eyes. C’mon, wake up!” I said, and I barely whispered it, both because my voice didn’t work properly, and because I was afraid someone might hear. I was afraidSyramight hear and wake up—she was on the other side, near the treeline behind which Storm was finally rising to his feet, and she was still on the ground.

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