Page 158 of The Eighth Isle

I did.

“Oh, how you amuse me,” said Fessa as she moved behind me at the same speed without much effort. I turned to look at her as I went deeper into the woods, trying to find a sign that told me which way the Evernight castle was, and all I saw was her silhouette. She disappeared and reappeared closer to me as we went, like she was playing with me, messing with my head.

“There’s no way out of here, human. This whole forest is a loop—you couldn’t get out if you ran all day,” she said.

And her every word rang true.

A frustrated scream left me when my foot caught on magic again, concrete like a fucking stone block, and I fell on my side for the second time. The box slipped from my arms, but it landed next to me, and I barely raised my hand over that lid. Pressed my thumb over that green crystal.Feltall the power that was vibrating inside it.

Power that could kill me if I touched it. Power that wasnot meantfor anyone alive. Anyone at all—let alone these sirens who wanted to play god. Who wanted to start over. Create life from scratch.

My God, they were actually going to do exactly that.

“You know, I kind of liked you when we first met,” Fessa said, and she’d stopped somewhere behind me where I couldn’t see. I was glad for it because I was still gathering energy to get up and keep running. Just keep going. Don’t stop—neverstop.

Fessa laughed. “By the waves, why are you stilltrying?! You’re already as good as dead. Your Evernights are both dead. All your friends will be dead soon if they aren’t already—why bother?”

Stabs at my heart.

Your Evernights are both dead.

No. It couldn’t be. She was lying through her fucking teeth.

Except a roar came at me from far away, a desperate roar I could have sworn I’d heard before.

That’s because I had. It was Storm, and he sounded exactly like he did that morning Grey got banished.Exactlylike it.

Another scream left me, this one deliberate. I just needed to get it out—all of that feeling in my gut. I needed to let it all out, and screaming was the only way I knew how to do it, andget up, get up, get up, keep moving!said the voice in my head, but I tried and I couldn’t. My body was halfway paralyzed.

I fell against the ground again and saw nothing but the blur my tears offered me. So goddamn thankful for them.

“That’s better,” said Fessa with a giggle as Storm roared again, that awful, awful sound. “You see, people just don’t understand what it’s like to be a siren. To be here since the very beginning. To deal with you lot constantly, every day, for years and centuries and millennia. So damn exhausting, and you little brats don’t even appreciate it. You don’t appreciateanything!”

So close.She was close enough to me now that I felt her energy. I felt her magic clearly against my skin, and it made me want to crawl right out of it.

My eyes squeezed shut and my mind raced, the fear letting go of me little by little. Because finally I was starting to believe it. After all these days and weeks, I was really starting to comprehend whatthe endmeant.

I was giving up for the first time in my life.

“It’s only fair that we cleanse this world of you, isn’t it? Start over. Startbetter.Do more,” Fessa was saying, and she must have been pacing around me because I felt her energy shifting, and her voice coming from everywhere at once.

“So exhausting to live the way we live. We give and give and give to the lands. We just…give.”

Her words sparked a memory in me—a memory of Syra that she had showed me back on the Eighth Isle. Of herself and Hansil on that beach. Of the joy she’d felt to be bearing a child, a baby girl.

It broke my heart to remember it even now as Fessa went on and on about what they deserved. It broke my heart to remember her pain, when her sisters had killed her baby, had eaten Hansil in front of her. How she’d felt when they were gone, when she put that piece of his heart in her mouth and swallowed it.

And then the rest of it—all that I’d seen in the Storyteller in Faeries’ Aerie. Her rage, her pain, the way she’d acquired so much power—the same power that was now in this box that wasradiating raw magic. This fucking box that was going to be our doom.

I remembered how Syra had put her magic into the ground, had ordered Ennaris to fall. Had ordered the entire continent to break apart and catch fire—and it had.

Fessa kept on talking.

My hand shook so badly as I reached for that green crystal on the lid, trying to pull it up.

It mattered little what the hell happened now, right? I was already as good as dead, and Grey and Valentine and everyone else were gone. It mattered little if I killed myself with that magic—better than to let these sirens get their hands on me.

Didn’t they say that they hadplansfor me and my baby?

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