Page 150 of The Eighth Isle

“God, we should have talked to Reeva first before we let him go. We should have?—”

“Stop, baby. There’s no point in beating ourselves up over this. We were navigating in the dark since the get-go. We did the best we could,” he said, and he was absolutely right. Everything had been different in the beginning—we thought the sirens would be at the Burrow within a day.

“We’ll be okay, right?” We had to—the alternative was just incomprehensible.

“Of course we will,” Grey said, and once again, he sounded so sure I had to believe him. “And then we can decide where we want to settle—how’s that? I’ll take you to every Isle, to every country in the world if you want to, and you can choose any of them.”

I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. “That sounds like a dream.”

Grey kissed the breath out of me, squeezing me to his chest. “And I promise to make it come true.”

Thirty-One

I heldonto Grey’s neck with all my strength, and I barely blinked as I looked ahead at the massive island in front of us, so much bigger than it had seemed when it was completely wrapped up in a dark cloud of magic. The Whispering Woods was alive, the trees green and the beaches white,thriving, and you could feel it in the air around it. You could feel the magic radiating from the land itself.

Shadow roared that awful sound from the makeshift bag I’d made with some sheets to keep him comfortable, to keep him around me at all times because Grey insisted that he carry me all the way there. Storm flew behind us, a few dozen feet higher and in perfect silence, while Mama Si, Assa, Reeva and her witch sisters were in their boats below us, sailing so fast it was a miracle they hadn’t tipped over yet.

“I feel them,” Grey whispered when we were still far away from the nearest beach. “They’re here, all right.”

“How?” I asked.

“The land. It’s chockfull of magic. Can you see it?”

“Yes,” I said because I could. “I thought that was just the Woods.”

“It’s the sirens. Ennaris is so well connected to them that now that the curse is gone, the land thrives the most where they are. You remember Syra and the Eighth Isle, don’t you?”

“I do.” The way she’draisedit from the ocean with a wave of her hands. The way she’d made every tree green and had healed every mutated beast within minutes.

“What if…” I stopped to swallow hard. The wind blowing on my face wasn’t doing me any favors when I could hardly breathe as it was because of the thoughts in my head. “What ifthat’show it happens, Grey? What if we actually kill them today and that’s how the end comes to be?”

If the land was so tightly connected to those women, it would most definitely not survive their death.

“We won’t,” Grey said. “We won’t kill them. Mamayka was right—we can’t if we try. Stop worrying, my queen. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“I know that. It bothers me so much.” It was one thing to putmyselfin danger, but Grey? The people that I loved?

That was a whole different monster.

“Nobody will hurt you again, baby. Do you understand? I could do nothing against Syra, but I can keepthemoff us for hours if need be.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully the first part of that spell works, and as soon as we have Valentine, Reeva can do it.” She’d take this magic out of me and store it in a box—a very simple box made of wood and gold, no wider than a few inches, with symbols engraved everywhere on it, inside and out. They said that it could hold magic, any kind of magic inside it. The green crystal that was on the lid in place of a lock would be enough to keep anyone else from opening it again.

They said it would work, the witches, and maybe it was my paranoia because the first spell hadn’t, but Reeva didn’t seem so sure. I saw it in her eyes—she was terrified. She looked defeated,just like she had that day when I first went to visit her in Witches’ Wing.

Either way, I took it. We were all going to the Whispering Woods to confront the sirens for the last time—and we either died in battle today, or we survived and the Seven Isles became free at last.

We landedon the beach not two minutes later, and Storm disappeared into the woods somewhere. Easy to do because of the large pine trees, and he knew this place by memory, Grey said. He knew how to keep under the radar until we needed him.

That, and… “There’s something he needs to do first, but he will be back in time for when we need him.”

I was going to ask what thatsomethingwas, but Grey then brought his finger to his lips to tell me to keep quiet, and I did. Shadow was wrapped up in sheets around my shoulder, and Mama Si, Reeva and the others were almost there, too—we could see them approaching fast.

Grey took my hand in his and moved forward, between the trees. We all knew the plan. We weren’t going to that lake together. It was important that the sirens thought we were alone, at least in the beginning.

We were close to it, barely a mile out, and Grey had decided to land us here because we wanted to confront the sirens in daylight. The dark would work in their favor in the woods. Their senses were even more enhanced than Grey’s.

Ten feet into the trees, Shadow moved and moved relentlessly in the sheets until I had no choice but to pull him out, and he finally jumped on the ground.

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