Page 164 of The Eighth Isle

Then Grey moved.

He was still tired from all that fighting, but Grey moved and everything turned to a blur again, and someone screamed, too.

My heart skipped a long beat, the sirens at the center of my mind. The fear of them still very much alive and breathing in me.

But when the dust settled, I found Greystandingon Tristian, one foot on the small of his back, the other on the ground, while Tristian spit dirt from his mouth.

“What the—aargh!”

Grey ripped his fucking wing off his back.

I didn’t even have it in me to be terrified and surprised anymore—all I could do was watch, completely stunned, still as a statue.

“Grey, what are you doing?!” said Romin, but he and Emil were backing away, not getting closer. Tristian moaned in pain when Grey took his other wing and pulled that off him, too.

The way blood sprayed out of Tristian’s back shocked me out of my trance, and finally, some voice left me.

“Grey!” I called, but I was too paralyzed still to move.

Grey threw Tristian’s second wing to the side. “You better thank your lucky stars that she made me promise not to kill you for what you did,” he said, putting his foot on Tristian’s head to keep him from moving. His back was a fucking mess, and he was bleeding everywhere.

Fuck, what a sight…

“But I’m begging you—look at her again. Justlook at her,” Grey said and pressed his foot down on Tristian’s head harder until his skull cracked.

Tristian was no longer moving.

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, ready to scream out his name again, but Grey let go of his brother and came back to me. Put his arm over my shoulder. Looked Emil in the face, and said, “I will deal with you later.”

I had never seen a more terrified look on Emil’s face as he stepped aside.

“This is fucking insane—lookwhat you did!” Romin spit, when Grey pulled me toward the stairs. And he was mad—he was outraged, eyes bloodshot and fangs extended.

But Grey gave him an exhausted sigh and said, “Get out of my way, Romin. My wife needs to lie down.”

Romin wasn’t happy about it, but he stepped aside anyway.

I had no words to speak with and no thoughts to think. All I saw was the faces of the brides, their wide terrified eyes.

Snickering laughter came from behind me—from Mama Si and Reeva and even Assa.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I whispered as we made our way through the hallways and to the third tower.

“But it felt incredible,” Grey said with a wicked grin. “Let’s go to bed, baby. We’ll think later.”

That’s exactly what we did.

Thirty-Four

My hands looked so…ordinary.My skin was smooth, unbroken. No sign of blood or a wound—even a scratch.

Nothing, just skin.

“You’re being silly,” I whispered to myself, shaking my hands because it felt like they were burning again. And when that didn’t work, I reached out for the tiny piece of oak, where Grey had engraved my eye and those two words for me—my birthday gift.

Een aeva.I read it again and spun it around my fingers, hoping it would distract me.

Since I woke up before dawn inourbed, inourbedroom in the third tower, I’d been having these hot flashes, these memories coming back to me so suddenly, and they didn’t last. Only for a split second I’d feel as though I had magical flames burning me orpouringout of me or coming inside me the way the magic from that box had done.

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