Page 152 of The Eighth Isle

“It’s okay,” Grey whispered, just like the sirens would expect him to. “It’s fine. We’re okay. Come on, let’s go.” And with my hand in his, he continued to walk toward the lake.

“‘Atta boy,” Andya said from behind us, and Shadow was already flying over the water when we came out in the open.

“You’ve made us wait so long,” Oreinne said, shaking her head.

“But they’re here now. No harm done,” said Fessa with a wave of her hand. “Everything is going to bejuuuuustfine.” Her smile could have come straight out of a horror movie.

Something moved to our left, something behind a large tree that had wrapped its roots around a dark, almost black piece of rock. I saw his legs first, his body hidden away by these roots, and the blood in my veins turned to stone.

Another few steps and there he was, lying on the muddy ground, three feet away from the lake’s edge, face bloody and bruised, clothes torn, body zigzagged with a thousand tears everywhere.

My mouth opened as if to scream, but I couldn’t let out any voice. Valentine’s eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving an inch while Shadow sat near him on the ground and nudged him with his tail.

“Don’t tell us you missed him,” one of the sirens said, and they laughed again. “Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful day…”

I ran.

Drink,drink, drink!

My hand shook as I pressed my bleeding wrist to Valentine’s lips. Shadow had sliced it open with his tail and I hadn’t even felt it, and now my blood was coming out and it was slipping inside Valentine’s lips.

Because he was alive—he had to be. Even though he was bruised and battered and bleeding, he was a vampire. He was still alive.

What felt like hours later to me, his eyelids started to open—just slightly but it was movement. And then his tongue came out and licked some of the blood off his lips and off my wrist. His fangs extended, too—alive.

But…

“That’s enough, human. Come, stand up. Come here, let us look at you.”

A hand on my back. I thought it was a siren at first, and all that magic that was twisting my insides wanted to come out of me at the same time, attack whoever was around me.

But it was only Grey, and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up while Valentine was still trying to blink his eyes. He was licking the remaining blood off his lips slowly.

“Valentine, get up,” I urged him, and when he heard my voice, his eyes opened wider.

But Grey pulled me to the side, farther behind that rock, closer to the tree line.

“He will be okay,” Grey told me. “Keep your eyes ahead.”

And I did. I looked at the sirens, all four of them standing there by the green lake that bent the light of the sun sobeautifully. The sirens, too—what a sight to see with those smiles on their face and that spark in their eyes.

“I don’t think we had the chance to congratulate you properly on your pregnancy. Oh, we were so happy to hear it,” said Raxae, and you could tell just by the sound of her voice that she wasn’t. “So crazy that our sister Syra stored all of her magic in your womb, though—so crazy!”

And they laughed.

I risked a look at Valentine. Shadow purred as he nudged him on the cheek with his head, until he finally managed to push himself to sit up. I could be mistaken, but the wounds on him were closing, and all those purple and blue bruises that had been all over his face were fading away.

Grey grabbed my hand in his and I looked at the sisters again.

“We don’t want it,” he said, and I knew it was a way to distract them until Mama Si and Reeva came. “We don’t want the magic Syra put in Fall. If you give us the chance, we will get rid of it. She will be no more.”

The sisters looked at one another, smiling like fucking snakes.

“I see,” Andya finally said, more composed than the rest. “You are asking us totrustyou, then. Trust that you would even know what to do with that kind of power. Trust that you would be able to make it disappear, as it should.”

“We can, and we will,” Grey insisted, and when Valentine almost fell down on his face again, I moved. I couldn’t even help myself.

Letting go of Grey’s hand, I went to Valentine, pushed him up until he rested against that rock while Shadow settled on his shoulder right away.

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