Page 96 of The Eighth Isle

Even so, I was crying, shaking with frustration, slamming my fists onto Storm’s talons as if I had any hopes of hurting him. As if I could make him let go of me, get me back to the Eighth Isle—which I couldn’t even make out in the dark of the ocean anymore because the moon was hiding all the way behind those dark clouds. She was hiding and taking all the light with her, and I couldn’t see Grey. I couldn’t see Valentine. I couldn’t see what the hell the sirens were doing to them at all.

I screamed.

I screamed loud and hard for as long as I had the energy because I couldn’t say the words that spun way too fast in my mind.

What the hell had Syra done to me?

God, the face of her, the look in her eyes, the way they’d bled…What the hell did you do?!

We flew for a long time.

Eventually my eyes began to close, and my mind began to shut down because there was too much going on and not enough sense left.

It could have been my imagination, but through the corner of my eye I thought I saw the sun rising somewhere in the distance, just a tiny bit of light. And with that light I could make out a shape below me, close to the ocean’s surface—a winged shape, and another below it.

Grey, flying and holding Valentine’s limp body by the arms.

I passed out.

The sun wason my face, bright and warm and blinding. I must have blinked a thousand times before I was able to make anything out. I couldn’t really feel my body, but I could tell that my left leg was wet.

Not just wet, but in water.

Something close to me moved—something big, and it finally blocked the sun from falling on my face directly, giving me some shade. Giving me the chance to see where I was, what I was lying on that was sticking to my back.

Rocks. Lots and lots of small rocks underneath me, and Storm was standing not ten feet away from me, his talons in the water, too. He’d dropped me on a beach, and someone else was moving on my other side, too.

Birds sang somewhere in the distance, and waves rushed to the shore close by, the sound of it like a lullaby trying to drag me under again. I resisted.

I blinked and blinked but my body was so weak I found I couldn’t even pull my leg up. All I could do was focus on those shapes and try to make sense of what was going on, where I was, and which beach Storm had brought me to.

I saw.

White walls hiding pink towers. A door that opened just as my eyes fell on it, and someone came out in a rush, someone I knew well. Someone I’d seen before, plenty of times, albeit neverlike this.

Mama Si wasn’t wearing her famous dresses, skintight and rich in color and revealing, nor did she have one of those hats on her head. Even her hair was straight, just a few waves here andthere, and I realized I’d never seen her without her hair in curls. Without her bold lipsticks.

Yet she still looked as beautiful as ever—maybe even more so than before.

Am I dreaming?I wondered.

It could very well be.

Mama Si was looking right at me when she stopped in front of someone else—someone else I knew perfectly well. Valentine, bloody and dirty and with his clothes torn, and behind him Grey on all fours, barely three feet away from me.

His head was up, but he was shaking and I could tell he was about to collapse. My heart jumped and I wanted to get up and run to him with all my strength, but it was impossible. I couldn’t move—I couldn’t make a single sound.

Then Mama Si was there, leaning over me, no smile on her face, her colorful eyes darker than I remembered.

“You’ll be okay, Fall Doll,” she whispered, touching my cheek with her fingertips. “You will be just fine.”

She released her magic in me, and though my instinct was to panic, it didn’t let me. It calmed my racing heart within seconds instead. My eyes were so heavy that they closed on their own, and in my mind I saw Syra, and I demanded over and over again that she tell me what she’d done to me.

But Syra only smiled at me from wherever she was.

She smiled and spit out blood and she said,don’t be good.

Unconsciousness took me again.

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