Page 48 of The Eighth Isle

The hallways were narrow and dark, the floors and walls made out of stone, and torches were mounted everywhere but none of them burned. I must have gotten more used to darkness than I’d realized while I’d lived in the Whispering Woods because I saw everything I needed to see—which was the stairs at the end of a narrow corridor that would lead me up.

On the second floor, there were windows without glass everywhere, and sunlight brightened up every little corner, but there really was nothing to see. Stone floors and torches and carvings of strange symbols here and there, but that’s it. I have no idea for how long I ran, but everything looked the same. The walls and the arches and the windows, every line and every crack—even the intensity of the light seeping through was exactly the same and I feared I was running in circles.

“Grey!”I called at the top my voice, terrified but also desperate, because I was here.I’d made it—I’d come to the Eighth Isle, and I couldn’t fucking find him.

A roar somewhere over me—Shadow, frustrated, as pissed off as I was, even if for other reasons. He was mad at me for what I did to Valentine, but it was okay. He’d get over it because Valentine would recover, just like he had last time.

But then another roar filled my head—this one from Storm.

Storm, who was outside. Storm who’d been here all along and who knew beyond a doubt where Grey was.

I don’t know how I managed to climb a flight of stairs, moving in the direction of his roars. I hit a dead end, then hadto turn around and run for another couple of minutes before I found a large window shaped like a tear.

Through it, I saw Storm flying in circles, roaring for me.

“I’m here!” I called, not nearly as loudly as I’d intended—I was breathing so heavily still—but he heard.

Storm saw me, and the next moment, he began to climb higher into the sky, moving east.

I don’t need to be told twice.

“Find stairs, go east, find stairs, go east, find stairs, go—” I chanted to myself, until I found a large staircase just around a sharp corner, with two of those creatures on either side of it.

I stopped in my tracks even though neither of them moved. They looked the same as the ones outside—plastic skin and wire-like hair and plain black clothing that covered them from their necks down to their booted feet. Their eyes were black and lifeless, an object rather than real—and again, if they heard me approaching, they couldn’t have cared less. Storm’s roar took me out of my trance, and Shadow flew ahead of me, to the wide flight of stairs and a floor up.

I finally followed. The golems remained as still as the walls behind them, staring ahead at nothing.

Move, move, move!my mind shouted at me, and I did. I climbed another two stories before I saw Storm through a rectangular window at the end of the hallway where the staircase led.

He was flying in a circle right outside that window, waiting for me so I could approach. Waiting for me so he could give me guidance.

I ran so fast my feet barely touched the floor, and I slammed against the stone ledge of the glassless window, looking out at the sky, at the dense jungle surrounding the castle, and Storm.

He roared but he didn’t take off flying anywhere. He didn’t move east or west, just stayed in place, beating his wings steadily, looking at me through his one eye.

“Where is he?” I called, looking around me. “Where?—”

My voice cut off when I turned to my right and saw there was a doorway barely three feet into the corridor around the corner.

My legs took me toward it all on their own. The doorway led to an open room, round and wide and with chairs and a table and chandeliers inside it—an actual room instead of empty space surrounded by stone blocks.

Two big chairs were at the head of it, very close to the doorway, and I saw their sides. I saw the first one, empty, and the second one where someone sat. Someonelay.

I kept walking, tears sliding down my cheeks because I knew who it was before I even saw his face.

Grey—dirty and bloody, half lying on that chair with his eyes closed, not moving at all.

The room spun and tilted out of focus, and it felt like I was picked up and thrown back a million times a minute, yet I was still standing somehow. I was still breathing, still blinking—and the view in front of me didn’t change. Shadow shot forward, through the doorway and into that room, and Storm kept on roaring outside as if to tell me,go! Get in there! Go to him!

So, I did.

The stone floor underneath my feet, the sunlight coming in through the many windows, the air going down my throat—none of it even registered as I ran to Grey, feeling like I was moving both in slow motion and fast forward at the same time. Even so, it took my whole life flashing right before my eyes until I finally got to him, until I kneeled in front of that large chair that could be considered a throne, with gold-colored cushions and sharp edges around the armrests, and with Grey sprawled all over it, still as a statue.

Eyes closed, hair all over the place, his clothes torn and his skin bloody like he’d been in a fight. No bruises or wounds on him that I could see, but the dried blood was a clear map of everywhere he’d been hurt.

Were these from the fight in the tomb mountain or after? Grey had fought Genevieve for a long time, and then Sedelis had attacked him, too.

“Grey,” I whispered, hands shaking so badly as I reached out to touch his face, not sure what the hell to do at this point. “Grey, wake up!” I urged him because his skin was so cold.

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