Page 219 of Mama Si's Paradise

“There has to be a way. There’s so much I need to talk to you about—can’t you just postpone it?!”

“I can’t. Impossible. We’ll talk after, okay? We’ll talk for days, but right now, I have to go.” He let go of me and smoothed my hair away from my face. My hair that wasdry—and that should have been the perfect indicator for me that hours had passed since that shower. A lot of hours.

“Grey…”

He kissed me gently, just a quick peck. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“No—I’m coming with.”

“Bad idea. Just go back to bed and get some sleep,” he said, but I wasn’t having it.

“I will get dressed and I will come with you. That’s non-negotiable.” If he thought I could sit here in this room and wait for that fucking challenge to end, he was delusional.

“She should come. Sheshouldsee what happens when the Evernights get challenged. Right, brother?” Emil said.

“Yes, I think so,” said Romin.

The sound of them made Grey flinch, and he was trying so hard to block them out.

Fuck, I suddenly hated them with a passion for not leaving us alone. And I wanted to spite them so badly, so I whispered to Grey, knowing they’d hear, “Please, let me come with. I’ll be a very good girl for you if you do.”

The smile that broke his face was full of surprise, but he knew. He knew very well what I was doing.

I was going to that challenge no matter what he said, but damn if I didn’t want to piss Romin and Emil off just for daring to barge in here like this.

“Then you’ll be there, baby,” Grey said, giving me another kiss. “Go. Get dressed. We’ll wait outside.”

He let go of me and turned around, spreading his wings so that his brothers couldn’t even catch a quick glimpse of me before they walked out. Grey turned around to pull the doors closed, a mischievous grin on his beautiful face that made my heart stop and stare, too, for a beat.

Then he closed the doors, and I was all alone in his bedroom, feeling like I was about to witness the end of the fucking world for real.

Forty-Seven

So many thingswent through my mind as I watched the brothers stand in a circle. Tristian was looking just fine, his jaw unbroken, and he couldn’t look away from Grey for a single second. He wanted tomurderhim so badly, I could see it from half a mile away where I stood in the dark, wrapped up in a jacket that was way too big for me. It belonged to Grey. I’d gotten it from his closet because I hadn’t wanted to waste time going back to the fifth tower to get my own.

He’d loved the sight of it. Not his brothers, though, which made it all that much worth it. And it was warm, so I wasn’t complaining about that. The cold didn’t bother me.

The brides—allof them standing ten feet away to my side in a clearing in the woods, throwing me dirty looks every second—didn’t bother me, either. They could kiss my ass for all I cared. I hadn’t done anything to them, yet they treated me as if I’d killed their puppy or something.

They were doing me a fucking favor.

What terrified me, though, was the fact that Valentine and Grey were saying their oaths to Romin in the middle of thewide clearing, and they were going to go through with this challenge no matter what. They were going to have their dragons fight one another any second now, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

God, I was so frustrated.

Didn’t they know that there were much bigger things to deal with? What the hell was Valentine planning that he’d wanted tokill meto achieve it? How dare he pretend he was my friend, that he wanted me, claiming me as his, listening to me playing the piano for him—howdarehe make such a fool out of me?!

And how many more times was I going to go through this before I learned how to read these people?

What was Valentine trying to do? Why had he wanted me gone? Why did he go to such great lengths to kill me—why?

“This is wrong…”I whispered to myself. I had to talk to him. I had to confront him about it.

“Of course, it’s wrong. The more Evernights in the world, the stronger the spell that keeps us all alive.”

I jumped so fast my neck almost broke.

Lucinda had been standing right to my side and I hadn’t noticed her even approaching, so consumed by the thoughts in my head. She wore a thick jacket made out of black wool, arms crossed in front of her chest, watching the brothers.

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