Page 39 of The Eighth Isle

So hard to breathe.

The night was bright, very unlike what the Whispering Woods used to be, and I still couldn’t come to terms with it. I still stood underneath the open sky, not a single cloud in sight, and I shook my head at myself, at the stars twinkling in the darkness, but I wasn’t sure whether they were mocking me.

The end of the Seven Isles was indeed upon us. I myself had seen it written in the stars.

“Why?” I asked myself with barely any voice. “Why don’t you care?”

It was the end of the world. The fucking apocalypse for the Seven Isles—and I couldn’t even be bothered to think about what it would be like, how many people were going to lose their lives, what would happen to the Enchanted. No, I couldn’t be bothered to think about that at all. It was as if my instincts hadn’t picked up on what those words actually meant—Fall of the Seven Isles.They had no clue what was coming, and so they only fired up about Grey. Only Grey, all the time, every waking second.

Tomorrow morning, Mama Si and Reeva Lorein were going to get on a boat and sail to the Eighth Isle.

Tomorrow morning, they were going to tell Syra all about what the stars had predicted, and if she chose to go back to Witches’ Wing to see it herself, I’d be on my way to Grey.

If she chose to remain on the Eighth Isle and ignore the warning or even just believe the women without needing to confirm it with her own eyes, I’d also be on my way to Grey.

Knowing that, at least, gave me some peace of mind. No matter what happened tomorrow, I would be there. Hopefully I’d see Grey, even if it was for one last time.

Then, it would be over.

The sound of those wings beating never caught me by surprise anymore. I heard it and I knew Shadow was nearby, that tiny dragon that made no sense to me more often than he did. Since the day Mama Si brought me to the Whispering Woods and he bit me, sneakily slipping under Storm’s talons to do it, he was the exact same dragon. He hadn’t changed. He hadn’t grown in size at all, which was strange. All the other dragons had grown—even Emil’s, though he was the smallest of the four.

Shadow had remained the same since he’d hatched, and he was always behind me, always watching out for me, those wings always beating in my ear.

Then I felthisenergy as well.

Valentine Evernight might be the most unusual, absolutelyabsurdperson I’d ever meet in my life, and a lifetime of studying him wasn’t going to shed light on who he was. I doubted evenheknew. I really doubted he understood himself any more than I understood him.

He’d lied and manipulated to get banished just so he could go to the Eighth Isle and awaken Syra. And when he did and doomed basically the entire Isles, he still came back here to this castle, and he still came close to me, knowing exactly how much I hated him with all my being. He still found me in the dead ofthe night when I was all alone among the trees around the castle, and he stillspoketo me.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Sunshine?”

The sound of his voice made ice-cold chills rush over my skin. Goose bumps covered my arms as I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath and begged myself to not let him get to me.

It was done now, everything was done. What he said, or whether he still existed, didn’t matter. All I had to do was get to Grey.

“Today, when you left on that tiny boat. Did you find what you were looking for?”

His footsteps echoed in my ears as he approached me. Shadow sat on a branch nearby and watched in silence just like always, his long, thin tail swooshing to the sides—he was definitely a cat in another life.

Valentine stopped maybe five feet behind me, and I had to constantly remind myself that it wasn’t worth it. I could turn around and fight him and I could call him names, but it wouldn’t be worth it. I’d just be wasting breath.

“You disgust me,” was all I said, even though I knew it wouldn’t hurt him.

“That’s okay. I disgust me, too,” Valentine said, perfectly calmly, and by the tone of his voice alone, you’d think he was asking me how my day was.

Here I thought I could wait for dawn out here in the open, where the walls of the castle didn’t threaten to close in on me. Here I thought I could spend the night in peace now that I wasn’t afraid of Emil or Tristian or Romin or any animal that could be wandering about the yards of the castle.

“So, what was it? What were you looking for?” he asked again, taking another step closer to me.

A bitter smile stretched my lips. “Do you even regret it?” Not that it mattered or that I was trying to make sense to this, butdid he? Because he came out here and talked to me like he hadn’t fuckedeverythingup—and not just for me but for all his people. He just…talked.

“I do,” Valentine said. “I hurt you. I’ll regret it for as long as I live.”

I turned around just to see him, to convince myself that I wasn’t making this shit up—no, he actually talked to me that way.

“You’reawful,” I whispered because it really was him standing there under the moonlight, looking like a drawing, a work of art, so beautiful it made me sick to my stomach.

“I am, Sunshine.” He came closer. “I’m awful. I’m worse than awful. I’m plain wrong.”

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