Page 41 of The Evernight Court

Every drop of blood in my veins turned to ice.

My instinct was to shout at her. My instinct was to grab her and shake her—which was weird because I’d never been a violent person before.

Then I wanted to sit down and explain to hereverythingthat had happened until she understood that itwasn’t my fault,even though I believed that it was. But ifshebelieved it, maybe I’d believe her? Because right now I didn’t believe myself at all.

And lastly, I wanted to just turn around and go back to the castle and cry my eyes out and be mad at the universe and the fates and myself for ending up in this position.

I just wanted to give up. To hell with all of it—I give up!

Except that’s not how life works. Giving up wasn’t goingto simply get rid of all that I was facing. Giving up wasn’t going to change my future.

ButIcould—by learning how to protect myself from predators first. Then, I’d take it from there.

So, for the first time in my life, I forced every emotion I was feeling down, swallowed them whole until they faded away, and I looked Quinn Adringer straight in the eye.

“All you need to know is that I am who I say I am, and I want to learn how to fight.”

It didn’t matter what she’d heard or what the people said—thiswas the only important thing.

The girl squinted her eyes at me, pushing down the hood of her shirt to reveal thick wavy hair, just the ends of it braided loosely. “Why, though? I’ve never heard of a bride needing tofight. That’s what your Evernights are for. They do the fighting, don’t they?” Then her eyes moved down to the ground. “Who do you even want to fight, anyway? I guarantee nobody will fightyouif you asked them.”

“Nobody,” I said, fisting my hands to remind myself to stay calm. “I don’t want to fight anybody, but I want to learn how to defend myself if someone wants to fight me.”

“But they?—”

“Just in case,” I cut her off. “Just in case someone wants to fight me.”

I didn’t really have any hopes of fighting one of the Evernights and winning—of course not. All I was hoping for was to give myself a chance, a single chance to catch them by surprise when they came and to run. Just to make myself feel a bit less worthless in this skin. A bit less helpless.

“Right,” Quinn said, looking me over up and down. “Right, right, yeah. Just in case. Sure thing, sure thing.” And just when I thought that was the end of it… “Butwhythough?!” She suddenly sounded exasperated. “I need to be making sense of this—why? Just tell me. Put me out of mymisery. Why? Brides don’t fight—they’re practically queens of this place, and queens are protected by other people, not to mention the Evernights. So please, just—justendmy suffering, woman! Tell me why.”

She said all of that in a single breath and with so much facial expressions and hand movement, the performance was worthy of a standing fucking ovation.

I tried my best to stifle the smile. So damn dramatic.

Then I grabbed the bag of coins from her hand. “I’ll end your suffering this way—money.You want money. This is a lot of money, and you get half of it right away.” Pulling the leather tie open, I took her hand and emptied half the bag on her palm. A lot of gold coins fell to the ground, and she immediately squatted down to pick them up while I put the bag back in my jacket. “You’ll get the rest when you’re done training me, and then you won’t have to suffer at all.”

She was shaking her head, smiling when she stood up again, putting the coins away everywhere she had pockets. “You’re weird. How old are you, anyway?”

“I’ll turn twenty-one in a couple months.” Even less than that.

“I’ll turn twenty in one.” She reached out a hand for me. “It’s good to meet ya, Fall, wife of Grey Evernight. I’m very good at fighting and I shall teach you all that I know for that gold—but I am warning you right now: if I get caught and if the Evernights order me to walk away, I willnotbe returning the money you gave me today. Do you understand?”

“Deal,” I said without missing a beat. “Where will we be training?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Right here’s fine.”

I raised my brows. “The woods?”

“Yep. It’s as good a place as any.”

“But don’t you have a place we can go to? Like your backyard or something?”

Quinn laughed. “Good one, good one,” she said, as if she really thought I’d made a joke. “We can meet here every night if you’d like. I’ll find a rental close by with these coins in no time.”

Well, fuck. “You’re notfromhere?!”

“Nope. I’m actually a witch raised on Skinwalker Soil. Just passing by the Woods, but I’ve been here before. No worries, I know these woods around the castle,” she said in a rush when she saw the look on my face.

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