Page 19 of The Evernight Court

Those goddamn tears were back to pooling in my eyes again, but maybe it was a good thing because they blurred the image of the sirens completely, and all I saw was their silhouette.

So, when they stopped talking and waited for me to answer, I said. “He ordered me to never tell anyone about him.”

That lie they could do nothing about. Grey wasmy masterin their eyes, and his order I couldn’t disobey, just like I couldn’t disobey Romin. They didn’t need to know what Grey was like when it was just the two of us. That side of him was only meant for me, and so it would remain forever. I knew who Grey was. Despite having spent such little time with him, I knew who he was in a way these people never would. And I’d take that to my grave.

“Oh,boo!” said Raxae. “That’s no fun.”

“But he’s dead! So what if he ordered you?” said Fessa, and it was all I could do not to launch myself at her.

He’s not dead!I wanted to shout at her face.Grey’s not dead. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Except I didn’t know that, did I? Grey was banished. Grey wasn’t in the Whispering Woods anymore. And when vampires were forced out of this fucking Isle, they died.

“Shut it, Fess,” Sedelis said. “A bride can never disobey her master.”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it,” Andya said. “He’s either dead or dying—what does it matter what he was like?”

They all sighed.

“I guess it doesn’t. Too bad, really,” said Raxae again.

“Exactly. Now, can we move on, so I’m not bored to death?” Andya impatiently waved a pale hand at the table. Magic charged the air, and something appeared in the very middle of it—something round and maybe a few inches tall and covered in a piece of white shimmery satin.

“Your gift,” Sedelis said. “You may have the honor.” And she pointed at the satin covering whatever they’d hidden underneath.

My hand shook so badly as I forced myself to reach for it. The sooner I was done with this, the sooner I could get the hell out of there, and there was no better motivation that that—but I still could do nothing about the way my body was shaking.Just get it over with, just get it over with,I chanted in my mind, and I gripped the piece of fabric with two fingers as they all watched me, smiles on their faces, their hands in front of their chest as they waited…

I pulled the fabric toward myself.

It revealed a fishbowl with a fish inside. Agreyfish inside.

A greydeadfish inside.

Bile in my throat.

The sirens burst out laughing, so hard and so loud the entire hall heard it. Even the music from the band faded at the sound of their laughter, ugly and alluring at the same time.

“A dead fish—get it?” they said.

“It’s grey—get it?!” they said.

“Because your Master Grey is a dead fish now, too!”

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

The entire room had joined them. My eyes were stuck on the dead fish floating upside down in the water of the transparent bowl until they were filled with tears again, and those tears spilled down my cheeks. I couldn’t look away from it as every single person in that room laughed their hearts out.

A dead grey fish in a fishbowl.

What a sense of humor, right?

What a fucking sense of humor.

My shoulders shook as I cried or laughed—maybe something in between? I couldn’t be sure, but my limbs were too heavy to move, and the tears just wouldn’t stop spilling, and I couldn’t look away from the fucking dead fish in the bowl for the life of me.

Look away, look away, close your eyes, look?—

“That’s enough.”

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