Page 106 of The Evernight Court

The talons were still around my body and they moved me about like I weighed nothing. The darkness deepened and I was pushed back, my feet dangling in the air still as I didn’t dare make a single sound—until my back pressed against a hard surface, and another roar filled my head.

Except now, we were inside, it seemed, and so the sound was twice as powerful, and my ears were whistling seconds after he’d stopped.

Storm’s face was in front of me, just as big as my body, his left eye missing, completely shut off, his right one bloodshot, so red it looked filled with blood. Thin lines zigzagged across the scales of his jaws and he looked so fucking massive from so close up, somadthat I couldn’t remember to even try to move away if I could. On the contrary—if he wasn’t holding me up with his talons, I’d have fallen to the floor of the cave long ago.

Then he opened those jaws lined withsharp teeth, and once again, he roared right at my face, loud and hard and for alongtime.

I couldn’t breathe. My ears rang and I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open either. All that roaring could have lasted hours, and when he was done, I was shaking, crying, basically seeing my whole life flashing me by because I knew my end had come. Storm was going to eat me any second now. He didn’t care about who I was, just like I knew he wouldn’t. He was mad. He wasn’t himself. He’d lost it, and he didn’t care about anything because Grey was gone.

But…Grey was alive, wasn’t he?

That was the reason why I’d made it all this fucking way. That was the reason why I’d gone on this suicide mission—because death would be worth it. I’d known it since the beginning, and that still hadn’t changed.

That thought finally gave me a bit of strength, just a tiny bit so I could speak.

“H-h-he’s alive,” I said, stuttering so badly I would be surprised if Storm understood. “H-he’s alive, Storm. He’s…he is…I saw him.” God, it was so much harder than I thought it would be—and I really needed to stop shaking and crying.

So, I closed my eyes and I bit my tongue hard for a second, just to get my body under control.

“I saw him. I saw Grey,” I tried again, and the words came out clearer, and I could have sworn that Storm opened those jaws to roar at me again. “Iswearit—I saw him. He’s on the Eighth Isle—I saw him! He’s alive, and-and-and you?—”

The roar came, taking my breath away, nearly suffocating me. Screaming or moving or doing anything at all but take it was impossible. My ears were bleeding by the time he was done, and as much as I wanted to get angry, the fear was too strong.Knowingthat I was about to die took all the bite out of it.

Storm growled as he brought the tip of his jaws closer and closer, and his scales touched my cheek.

Grey’s face was in front of my mind’s eye still, and I kept mine closed, squeezed tightly, so that I didn’t accidentally see it when he opened his mouth and swallowed me. So that I didn’t accidentally see the inside of a dragon—no, thank you.I’d rather just die in blissful ignorance.

Except…Storm sniffed.

He sniffed my cheek so hard, and it was so powerful it felt like he tore the skin of my face completely. A cry escaped me out of surprise, and then he moved lower, moved those large nostrils to my neck and he sniffed that same way.

Before I knew it, I wasn’t about to die anymore. I was instead beingsniffedby a mad dragon, and his talons were slowly moving away from my body, letting me go. My feet touched the ground and my legs held me. They actually held me as Storm knocked the coat from my shoulders next and continued to my chest.

He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive,I chanted over and over again in my head, and eventually I began to whisper it out loud, too. I whispered it when I realized that Storm was sniffing the tooth of his mother, the one hanging by a leather cordaround my neck that the dragon riders had given me.

He’d smelled his mother’s tooth, and now he was going even lower, to my hips and legs and all the way to my feet, sniffing until he smelled every fucking scent of my body.

Then Storm stepped back.

Impossible not to open my eyes just to see him on all fours—a mad, one-eyed dragon who looked at me like he couldn’t believe his remaining eye at all.

“He’s alive,” I said, my voice a scratchy whisper. “He’s alive and you can get him back. I can take you through the mirror. You can?—”

Once again, he roared, except this time he was a bit fartheraway and so I didn’t close my eyes. Isawhis open mouth in detail, his tongue and teeth and the roof of his `mouth, even his fucking throat that would fit me without trouble if he decided to skip the chewing and just swallow me whole.

But Storm wasn’t planning to eat me. Instead, as soon as he was done roaring—amadroar, by the sound of it—he moved farther and farther back, and out of the cave he’d put me in.

Then he flew away and disappeared into the darkness, leaving me all alone.

Tears slid down my cheeks again and my legs finally let go. I sat on the floor with my arms around my knees, not really sure what to make of anything yet, just thankful that I’d taken that dragon tooth with me. It had saved my life—if Storm didn’t come back later to eat me.

For now, I closed my eyes, rested my forehead on my knees, and I let go.

Storm didn’t come back.

I waited for what could have been hours, and I went all the way to the edge of the cave he’d put me in, only to realize that there was a ledge in front of it, much narrower than the one I’d climbed first. The one where that red dragon had been about to eat me—then threw me off the cliff with his wings.

Shivers ran down my body every time I was reminded of it. Every time my brain insisted on replaying the feeling of falling—which was way too many times within the minute.

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