Page 15 of The Eighth Isle

“Syra is awake, Romin. This is not a joke. He and Genevieve and Sedelis woke her, and they broke the spell?—”

“We know,” he cut me off once more. “Valentine told us everything. We know, Fall.”

And that was why he looked worse than I’d ever seen him before.

“So…so, what now?” Such a silly question. I even looked at the others, at Emil and Tristian, as if I was hoping they’d have an answer for me

They didn’t. All they could do was look at me with their mouths sealed shut.

Romin sighed again, rubbing his face. “Let’s sit down.” And he made for his table.

“Romin—” I warned, but he wouldn’t have it.

“Sit. Down,” he ordered with a growl. “All of you, now.”

I figured if I wanted to get this over with sooner, I had to do what he said. Otherwise, we were never going to see the end of it, and I really needed to get to the fucking point already.

Valentine’s eyes were on me. He waited until all of us were sitting down, me on Romin’s left, like always, and the others on his right. Then he slowly came to sit next to me, pulling his chair away like he thought I might lash out and slap him again.

He wasn’t wrong.

“She’s awake,” I said because I needed to be repeating it every minute just to believe it.

Romin waved a hand and his precious wine appeared right there in front of him. He poured us all a glass and his magic brought them in front of us, and I took a big sip, too. God knew I needed the distraction, if only for a second.

“And the spell is broken—yes, like I said—we know,” Romin said. “But Syra’s been awake half a day now, and she still hasn’t attacked any Isle.”

“Regardless. Grey is there with her. She threw us all out of the Isle with her magic, right into the ocean, but she kept him there.”

The way Romin looked at me…

“And there’s really nothing we can do about it.”

“She thinks he’s Hansil,” Valentine said from my side, and just to hear the sound of his voice made me cringe.

“Of course she doesn’t—shesawHansil’s remains. She fucking ate his heart herself,” I spit.

“But she was dormant for five hundred years. Her sense of time or of anything else can’t be trusted right now,” Valentine continued, as if he thought I cared about his opinion.

But Emil beat me to it. “Yes—because she wasn’t supposed to be awake, you little shit. You fucked everything up, you realize that?”

Never in my life did I think there could come a day when I’d hate Emil less than I hated Valentine, but here we were.

“Sedelis tricked us,” Valentine started, and I laughed.

It came out twisted, but I laughed. “Of course she did—she’sa siren!” Did he really need me to remind him why sirens can’t be trusted when he knew the stories a million times better than I did?

“Was,” Romin said. “Shewasa siren. Syra killed her.” And then he downed the rest of his wine in one gulp.

“Yes, I was there. She killed her without making an effort,” I told Romin, and he turned a shade paler right away. “Sedelis was actually hoping to take her power from her. She attacked Syra and knocked her out, then tried to spell her.” The memory was like a dream because my brain still refused to come to terms with what had happened in the past day, but I still saw it in my mind in detail.

I still saw how Valentine had attacked Sedelis and had stopped her before she could finish chanting.

How that had given Syra time to wake up and stop Sedelis.

“And do what? With all that power—what was she going to do?” asked Emil.

“Shecouldn’thave just taken the power for herself,” said Romin.

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