Page 8 of The Evernight Court

And now everything had changed again.

I walked the hallways of the third tower feeling like a damn ghost. I hardly felt my bare feet touching the hardwood floors or the carpets, but somehow, I found my way into the room that Grey had made for me. The books and the easels and the instruments—and the birds.

The birds locked in a cage just like I was locked in this tower, chirping happily when I switched the lights on. Tears spilled out of me instantly as I went to the container with their food in it, the one Grey had fed them from that night. I did the same, mimicking his motions, trying to smile at the birds while I cried my heart out, yet somehow the pain didn’t lessen.

Did these birds understand what the tears meant? Couldthey see how I was dying, how I was already halfway dead? Could they tell Grey was gone?

Had they accepted it already?

Because I hadn’t. Icouldn’t.I didn’t know how to handle my whole life being taken away from me once more.

Had the universe no mercy? How many more times was it going to break me until my heart gave up and stopped beating for good?

No answer.

I just fed the birds and I cried, then sat in the recliner where Grey had sat last time and I cried, and held onto the armrests and I cried, and prayed for an ending to my misery and I cried.

Once, Brandon told me that it was easier for me.

When his grandmother died and he was devastated, I told him that he was going to be okay, that life goes on, and that he would learn to live with the pain. And he said that I didn’t understand what it was like for him because I was different. Because it was easier for me. I’d had so much taken away from me, so much I didn’t even have to begin with, so I went through loss easier.

Somehow, in his mind, that made sense.

Somehow, he almost convinced me that he was right. Maybe itwaseasier for me. No father, didn’t know my mother at all—even before her death, she rarely spent time with me, and when she did, she was stoned. My grandmother hated my guts. I had no friends, nobody I really fit in with.

I guess that’s why I clung to Brandon the way I did.

It wasn’t true, though. Right now, I wished it was, but this wasn’teasier.Grey was banished, and he would die soon if he hadn’t already. Storm was away on a mountain, starving himself to death because he didn’t want to be in a world where Grey wasn’t. I didn’t want to be in a world where Grey wasn’t,either, but there was a rational part of my mind that insisted that I didn’t even know him.

I’d had two days—that’s it. Weeks and weeks of being scared of him, and then suddenly, it was him, all him, everything I saw. That wasn’t natural, was it? It was just the Blood Call. The magic. The curse. It wasn’t natural to feel so connected to someone in such a short time, toknowwho he was on the inside as clearly as I knew myself.

An illusion, that’s what it was. I didn’treallyknow Grey—I just thought I did.

That’s what the rational, logical part of me said.

Except my heart knew differently. My soul knew differently. Just the reminder of what it had felt like to be in his arms—like I’d finally foundmyplace—made me want to crawl right out of my skin now that it was taken from me again.

And it was all my fault. All my fucking fault for…existing.

“I’m tired,” I told the birds, sinking my nails into my legs. “I’m so tired.”

Yet somehow, in some fucked up way, giving up still wasn’t an option. In some fucked up, completely senseless way, I was clinging to survival, silently preparing to fight with everything I had to…what exactly?Live? Escape this Isle? Go back to the real world?

Grey couldn’t come back. Romin couldn’t summon him here again, so what was the point of any of it? What was the point of trying?

I had no clue, but apparently, that’s exactly what I was going to do.

As I watched the colorful birds flying and singing songs I could understand as perfectly as I did any melody from an instrument, I was already thinking about all the possibilities in the back of my mind.

Valentine was alive. Even Shadow was alive, so that meant he would be coming for me again. He failed to kill methat first time, so he would be coming for me again as soon as he was able to. Valentine was not a man to leave things unfinished—of that I was sure. I needed to watch my back from him first.

And then came the others.

Tristian, Emil, Romin. There was no doubt in my mind that given the chance, the first two would have their way with me in whichever way they pleased, and they wouldn’t stop no matter how hard I fought back or how much I begged. Romin might hold himself back because he was too proud to admit that he’dforcehimself on me. He’d try to get me to willingly submit to him first, so right now, the first two were more dangerous.

Everythingin this place was dangerous—all of it. And the only way I would survive was if I stuck to this tower for as long as I could, and I learned how to protect myself.

With magic. The same magic that now ran in my veins. The same magic that was supposed to have been fully unlocked in me with the Blood Call. Actual magic that I could use against Tristian and Emil, and even Romin if it came to it. Magic I could use against Valentine.

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