Page 108 of The Evernight Court

“I miss him so much…” The words kept slipping from me, and I hardly even noticed I was saying them out loud.

I never got the time to realize it before he got banished, but the little time I spent with Grey was the only time in my life when I’d feltwhole—and now I was expected to live like this again?

No.It was different when I didn’t know what I was missing. It was different when I had no clue what it was like.

“I’ll just perish together with you on this mountaintop—how about that?” I asked, and when I looked up, I was surprised to find Storm had turned his eye toward me. He was looking at me. “We can starve together right here.” Or I’d die of the cold if I just threw that coat down the mountain and suffocated the heat of my magic until it no longer warmed me. It would be quicker.

A low growl came from Storm’s throat—like he was complaining.

“Well, you refuse to come with me, even though all you have to do is sit in my pocket,” I forced myself to say, and I didn’t back away, even though my instincts wanted me to. I didn’t move away because logic said if Storm wanted to kill me, he’d have done it in that cave. That I was still alive meant hewantedme alive, so I kept going.

“That’s all you have to do, just sit in my pocket, shrunk into a tiny dragon—ifI can even manage to do that with you—because let’s be honest, you’re not a pen.” I laughed at myself. “But assuming Icanshrink you, and we make it backto the castle, you can go through the mirror. I’ve seen Shadow do it. All the brothers confirmed it, too. Dragons can go through mirrors. You can go to Grey, and you can bring him back.”

Slowly, Storm lowered himself closer to me, and my heart all but left my body.

“Wha…what?” I barely managed to whisper, and at the sound of my voice, he froze in place again, one big eye blinking, his body perfectly still. He wasn’t even breathing at all.

“Storm?” I whispered again, and I pushed myself to my feet. “What is it?”

He turned toward the darkness of the sky all of a sudden, and he spread his wings to the side so fast his left one knocked me down on my ass again. I didn’t even get to scream before he took off flying just a few feet off the uneven ground, shaking all the snow off him, and half of it fell on me.

Then Storm roared at the sky.

At first, I thought it was another dragon. I thought that red one who’d been about to eat me first had come back, and Storm was telling them to back off or something.

But even when I stood up and looked at where he was looking, and even when Storm stopped roaring, I saw nothing but darkness. Not a hint of anything in the dark clouds.

“What is it?!” I asked, and his answer was to spit fucking fire at nothing.

I screamed, falling back a few steps, and then my foot caught on something and I fell once more. The honey container. I’d tripped over the honey container, and Storm was still spitting fire at the sky.

My hands shook as I grabbed the container and the dried meat and put them back in my bag. I was going to need them for later because I was about to go hide in that cave again until Storm calmed down. Whatever he’d heard or seen that was invisible to me, he wasmadright now—and back to roaringthat powerful, awful sound. I needed to run back to that cave and hide before he incinerated me.

And I was going to, but…

Two more dragons seemed to have appearedout of nowhere. They came from either side of the mountaintop, but they weren’t even looking at me. They, too, were roaring at the sky and spitting fire at it, as if they could see something coming or somethingmovingwhen there was nothing there.

No way did I dare to move away from Storm now. Instead, I inched closer to his back, as far away from the other dragons as I could. One was red—that same red one I’d met before, and the other a deep green, just as big as Storm.

“What is it?” I kept asking, my heart hammering in my chest. “What the hell, Storm—what is it?! Is someone coming? Is it…is it Balthazar?”

Because to me, that was the only thing that made sense. Romin was riding his dragon Balthazar to come for me, to take me back to the castle and punish me, chain me to his bedroom, force me to be his fucking bride.

To me, that was the most terrifying thing I could imagine, and as I looked at the darkness the dragons were roaring at, I almost saw the silhouette of Balthazar flying toward me.

But that was just my imagination and the dark clouds playing tricks on me because minutes later, nobody came. Minutes later, Storm finally tore his eye from the sky.

He landed on the edge of the mountain again, and he turned to me.

I knew in that very second that I was screwed. I should have gone back to that cave and hidden in the darkness, found a really narrow space where he or these other dragons couldn’t get to me.

I should haverun.

Too late now.

I screamed at the top of my voice when Storm’s talonswrapped around my arms. He picked me up from the ground and took me flying into the sky within a second. I screamed, but it made no difference, and I couldn’t even hear my own voice from how loudly those twoother dragons were still roaring.

Something was happening, something they could see that I didn’t—but whatever it was, I was as good as dead now. Because Storm was no longer roaring or spitting fire but flying toward the darkness of the sky.

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