Page 138 of The Evernight Court

Bile rose up my throat. “No…” I whispered because this couldn’t be right. He couldn’t justkillthe entire Isles. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough, nobody was!

Nobody, except?—

“Syra.”

Grey’s voice rang in my ears, and my eyes moved to that rock, to the dragon wrapped around it, still asleep somehow. Still not moving, even though we were shouting. Maybe Valentine had put him to sleep for good when he first came here, and right now I was thankful for it. If that creature woke up, we were all really, truly fucked.

“Syra, yes,” Valentine confirmed.

“You’re trying to break the curse and awaken Syra?” Grey’s words struggled to make sense to me even before Valentine confirmed it with a deep and proud nod.

No way,my mind insisted.No fucking way this is real.

Because that would mean…

“The end,” I breathed. “She’ll destroy everything the wayshe was always going to. It will be the end.” For real. Ennaris would really be gone, just like Valentine said.

My God…

“It will be freedom,” he said. “This is no life. We’re being consumed by our own nature, our own magic. We were never meant to live like this. We need to be set free once and for all.”

I shook my head. “Valentine, the people are fine. I was in the Blood Burrow and in Faeries’ Aerie—nobodyis being consumed by anything. They’re just weak. Their magic is weak, but they’re fine!” He’d seen it for himself, hadn’t he? In the mirror room, as well as the towns in the Whispering Woods. I’d been there, too—people weren’t half as miserable as he seemed to think.

“Wearemagic!” Valentine said. “Without it, we’re not us!”

“So, you want to fuckingkilleveryone?” Grey said, and he, too, had been caught by surprise, except he wasn’t half as worried as I was when he shook his head. “Whatever you did here today, Valentine, we can fix it. Come home with us. We’ll fix it.”

But Valentine laughed, and the sound was ice-cold. It echoed all the way to the ceiling, and Grey and I both turned to the Great White, expecting to find his eyes open.

Still closed.

My heart was in my throat. “Valentine, please…”

“Don’t worry, Sunshine. He won’t wake up unless I call for him,” Valentine said. “And there’s nothing to fix here anymore, brother. Ennaris will be no more.”

Grey stepped closer to him. “If you messed with the curse, the consequences can be dire. Stop this nonsense,” he spit, but Valentine wasn’t worried.

“It has already started. There’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it,” he said. “Watch the spell unraveling.Feelthe layers of it peelingoff.”

As if on cue, just as he said it, Ifeltit.

It was in the air, the magic thick and heavy, like it was retreating within itself when I paid attention to it.

“You’re mad!” Grey shouted. “You can’t awaken Syra if you try—youcan’t!”

“Of course, I can,” said Valentine, and I knew him well enough by now to know that he meant it.

“Grey,” I whispered, pulling him back by the arm, but he was too focused on Valentine still.

On Valentine, who produced a small knife out of thin fucking air. He ran the blade down his palm lightning fast, then squeezed his fist over the pool’s edge.

To watch the way his blood dripped into the turquoise water made my skin crawl.

“Siren blood put her under, together with Hansil Knight’s,” Grey said, and I prayed with all my heart that he was right. “Your blood won’t awaken her, Valentine. You need siren blood for it to work.”

The loaded second of silence that followed Grey’s voice could have weighed as much as the mountain. Valentine’s sneaky smile took over his face just as something moved to our right. Something in the water.

I turned, heart still, lungs empty, eyes unblinking to see the creature slowly coming out of the water’s surface, eyes wide and blue like crystals, a huge smile on her distorted face, her skin just as grey as I remembered.

---