Page 98 of The Eighth Isle

“Calm down, Fall,” he told me, and when I pushed the covers off me to see I was wearing one of my old nightgowns in a pale yellow, he grabbed me in his arms and sat me on his lap. “Calm down, we’re okay. They don’t know we’re here—calm down, baby.”

I held onto his neck, hiding my face under his chin, and I forced myself to breathe. We were okay for now—I felt great and Grey was here, too. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it? That we were alive. That we had a chance.

“What happened? What…what the hell happened, Grey?”

“The siren sisters tried to attack you. We stopped them and managed to run away from the Eighth Isle. Then we came here, and Mama Si took us in. She’s put up shields to keep us hidden for now. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” Grey said slowly.

I moved back a bit. “Syra died.” I’d seen it with my own eyes. She’d died right in front of me, her hand around my neck, her eyes and mouth and nose bleeding.

Don’t be good.

“She did,” Grey whispered.

“She…she did something to me.” And I’d felt it. I thought it was just a layer of ice, some kind of a shield magic she’d put on me, but…

I looked down at my stomach when Grey closed his hand over it. “According to the sirens, she put her magic, her energy into you,” he reluctantly said.

Bile rose up my throat.

I must have blacked out for a second there because the next time I was aware, Grey’s wings were around me, supporting me while his hands were on my cheeks, and he was kissing my face and whispering to me that we were okay, that we would figure it all out.

But what was left to figure out?

Really, it didn’t take a genius to understand what happened next. This world was doomed, anyway—all of us were doomed with it. “They’re coming for me.” The sirens were coming for me, and neither I nor Grey and Valentine—even Mama Si—could stop them.

“Breathe, baby,” Grey told me, holding me in front of his face, his eyes closed, squeezed tightly. “Breathe for me, will you? I will not let them come near you—do you understand? Whatever I have to do, I won’t let them near you.”

And I believed him with all my heart, but I had a problem with that. I had a very big problem with him doinganything he needed to do, jump in front of their magic for me the way he’d done on the Eighth Isle.

Because, again—if Grey died, what the hell was the point of any of this?

“How?” I breathed. “How could she haveput her magicin me?!” It made no sense. Magic wasn’t supposed to work like that, was it? “I didn’t feel it, Grey. I felt her magic, but I thought she was attacking me. I didn’t…” My eyes closed and Grey squeezed me to his chest harder. “Justhow?”

“There’s a lot of this that doesn’t make sense to me still, but she did it through the hatchling.” My muscles locked again, and I wasn’t even breathing.

“Shadow?” My memories came back to me slowly, and I began to remember details,moredetails about last night than just Syra’s face and magic.

“Yes,” Grey said, caressing my hair. “He is what’s called aRuit, a very rare dragon species. There’s very little about them in the books because they’re very unlike traditional dragons. Their power isn’t measured by how big and strong they are, or how much fire they can spit. They serve another purpose—they connect.”

“Connect, how?” I asked, and even though I wanted to lean back and see his face, I was too comfortable resting my head on his shoulder. I needed the comfort against the absurdity of the situation we were in right now.

“Like a vessel, if you will. We don’t know a lot right now, and I don’t have my books with me to find out more. Valentine isn’t very sure, either—he knows only what Syra told him,” Grey explained.

My heart jumped. “Where is Valentine?”

And Grey said, “He’s here.”

“In the Paradise?” He nodded. “And he’s okay?”

“He is.” Grey kissed the top of my head. “If you want to see him?—”

“I do.” Ineededto see him. I had to talk to him right now.

Grey sighed as if that’s exactly what he was afraid I’d say. “Then you will.”

“What happens now, Grey? Where are the sirens?”

“They’re still on the Eighth Isle as far as we know,” he said. “Now we lay low and make a plan. I don’t want you to worry about it, baby.”

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