Page 44 of The Eighth Isle

“No, Valentine—yougot me in trouble. You got all of us in fucking trouble, and now it’s already as good as over. So, why don’t you just go somewhere where I’m not, and let me be?” I turned to look at his face. “Idon’t wantto see you.”

I said the words slowly just so he didn’t miss anything, and I held his eyes, never blinking mine, so he could also see that I meant it with all my heart.

And he did.

His dark eyes were so fucking dull. “I know that, Sunshine. But I can’t let you go do something stupid. I know you want to go to the Eighth Isle, and?—”

“It’s none of your business,” I cut him off. “Whether I die today or not, it’s none of your damn business!”

“It is. I’vemadeit my business,” he said without batting a lash.

So goddamn frustrating. “And what do you think you can do to stop me? Are you going toattackme, Valentine?” He opened his mouth to answer, but I didn’t let him. “BecauseIwill. I won’t hesitate. You remember what I did to you in the tomb mountain, don’t you? I will do the same thing now and make it hurt even more.”

The words got stuck in his throat. “You wouldn’t,” he ended up whispering, and it really was funny this time.

“Then you’ll be proven wrong soon.” And I turned to the ocean again.

“What you said to Romin and Emil this morning,” he said a moment later. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you mean that you brought on the end of the world—literally?” He said nothing. “Yes, it is.”

“We’re all going to die.”

“I’m sureyou’llfind a way to survive. You and Genevieve together, right?”

“I don’t really blame her, to be honest,” he said, taking me a bit off guard. “She was to me what I think Mama Si was to you.”

I shook my head. “Mama Si was different.”

“Not really. She represented what you never thought you could have. She promised you a life that was a million times better than the one you knew.”

My lips opened and closed a couple of times. “Mama Si didn’t doom the whole world by tricking me.” Even if they weresimilar, it wasn’t the same. I could hardly believe I was thinking it myself, but Genevieve was nothing like Mama Si.

“That is correct,” Valentine admitted. “I asked you once why you believed her, what it was that made you buy into her lies. Remember that?”

Oh, I did remember. I’d been sitting on the floor by the door in my bedroom in his tower, and he’d been sitting right outside.

I said nothing.

“I think I knew since then that I was being played. I was trying to find out how to…find out. I guess I didn’t really want to, but I believed her for the same reasons,” he continued. My heart kept on breaking—notfor him, per se, just for…everything. The way we’d ended up. The distance that had come between us.

“You don’t know my reasons. I never answered that question,” I reluctantly said.

“But I knew the answer anyway,” he said, and again—it hurt. It hurt because I really did understand it. I understoodhim,even though I didn’t want to. Even though I hated myself for it, I still understood him. “It’s because you get tired of hearing that voice whispering in your ear every single day that you’re wrong. That you’re a mistake. That you should have never been born.”

I bit my tongue so hard there were tears in my eyes.

Fuck, that killed me a little bit. Just to imagine Genevieve talking in his ear when he was just six years old, telling him that he was a mistake…

Don’t you dare,I told myself in my head when I thought about sayingsorryor hugging him or touching his hand.

No.“This all would have matteredbeforeyou grew up and became responsible for yourself, Valentine. This all would have mattered before you were old enough and capable to make up your own mind about yourself and the people you live with.” It simply didn’t anymore. Just like my falling for Mama Si’s lies was nobody else’s responsibility but my own.

I could go around blaming my mother, grandmother, Brandon. I could blame my naivety or just young age, and definitely Mama Si—but it wasn’t them, at least not since I was old enough to make my own decisions.

It was all me, and…

“That day in the tomb mountain, that was all you. You made the call to chant that spell, gave your magic and your blood.”He’ddone that willingly before Genevieve even arrived.

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