Page 44 of The Evernight Court

She turned around and started jogging back toward the castle, deeper in the woods where it was darker.

Spitting out the rest of the blood, I wiped my face and picked up my dignity that had fallen all over the ground, and I followed, fully aware that the night was going to suck even before Quinn fisted me on the face thesecond time.

Quinn fistedme in the face plenty of times the second night, too, and I never once was able to block her or move away in time.

But on the third, I saw it coming because I decided to focus on herenergyrather than actually seeing her arm extending or her fist coming for me.

I got the idea when I met her in the woods that night, when Ifelther long before I saw her, but it only worked because I was looking for her. I’d come out of the castle a bit earlier because impatience had gotten the best of me, and I’d been wondering if she was early, too, if maybe I could find her waiting for me somewhere, and I had. I’d found her making her way into the woods from the town about three minutes before I actually was close enough to see her.

So, while she was teaching me how to hold my position, how to hold my arms, and trying to show me how to block fists and kicks coming my way, I’d tried to feel the energy of her body first.

It worked.

I could hardly believe it, but it worked. I felt it, and I moved my head just in time so that her fist went right in front of my face.

“Well, at least you’re notcompletelybroken,” Quinn then muttered, but she was grinning ear to ear. I was used to her comments by now, and she didn’t mean any of them. It was just her sense of humor, and she made me laugh most times when she wasn’t making me bleed.

She only managed to hit me another two times before I learned how to read her energy—it was much more reliable, faster than my eyes, at least for now. And when she couldn’t land a single hit on my face with her fists anymore,she knocked me to the ground with a kick on the side of my leg. A really hard kick.

“I can make it up to you,” she said when I complained that that hadn’t been fair—and it hadn’t. It fucking hurt to be kicked around like that every night, and my muscles were sore from the warm-up workouts she made me do. Not to mention that the few hours of sleep I got the past two nights were full of dreams about broken teeth and blood and pain.

“Hey, come on, Fall!” she called when I turned to leave. Two hours were already done, anyway. I needed a shower, and then I needed to lie down on the closet floor and tell Grey’s portrait about how Quinn hadkickedme when she said all we’d be learning tonight was how to avoid getting fisted on the face.

Pathetic. So fucking pathetic that I had lengthy conversations with colors on a canvas regularly.

“I’ll buy you an ale. It’s on me, come on. We can go to Mina’s. Let me buy you an ale!” Quinn kept calling, but I didn’t turn. I could already see the edges of the castle’s wall, and the familiar dread of having to run the distance from it to the third tower returned, and…

I stopped.

I closed my eyes and forced a deep breath down my throat. Fuck, one of those disgusting ales sounded so good. And watching the soundmakers on stage again, dancing, or playing that heartbreaking sound the way they had that night?

“It’s just for a little while. C’mon, I’m sure you have an hour,” said Quinn when she realized I’d stopped walking.

I didn’t just have one hour—I had the whole fucking day that I wished I could spend outside of that prison of a castle. I had my whole life to spend anywhere but between those walls.

Besides, Grey would want me to try to relax a little bit, especially after getting my ass handed over to me for the thirdnight in a row. He’d want me to listen to the music of the soundmakers tonight.

So, I turned around and I went back to a grinning Quinn, and together we went to Mina’s for ale.

Quinn seemed to know both Toss and the other bartender, so they gave us a free table at the edge of the room, and we got to sit down and listen to the beautiful melodies of the soundmakers—Lenna and Ralf, Toss had called them. This time, though, only Ralf was playing his purple piano, and Lenna had a yellow-colored violin with black dots all over it in her hands, and the sounds it let out each time she moved her bow was otherworldly. Together, they made for the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

The boost it gave me was incredible. The motivation it filled me with just to listen to them, to see how theylivedas they played, was insane. I wanted to do that so badly. I wanted to play my heart away and make my own sounds exactly like that someday, too.

And maybe I could go downstairs to the room Grey had made for me tomorrow and start. I had no piano, but I had a violin and a guitar, and even a clarinet. Maybe I could figure out how to use this magic that I now had to alter the sounds of the instruments into something special, something uniquelyme.

“When do you want to meet tomorrow?” Quinn asked when the melody slowed down a bit and Lenna sat on the stage’s edge to rest while Ralf continued to play.

“Same time?” I said, taking a sip of the ale that didn’t taste so bad once you drank about half the cup.

Quinn laughed a little, shaking her head. “I’ll admit, I was sure you’d give up by now.”

I raised a brow at her. “I won’t.” Not because I didn’t want to.

“Why? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t complain about anykind of work, especially if it pays what you’re paying me, but why?” She never gave up on the questions, either—I’d give her that. Sometimes I thought she was even more curious than me.

“Because I have no choice,” I said reluctantly. “Because I don’t want to be helpless. I want to be able to protect myself.”

“But that’s why you have magic. Magic protects us just fine—especially someone like you who doesn’t even need it.” She drank about half the ale in her cup at once, then licked her lips. “I’ve thought about it, but it doesn’t add up. The rest of us make sense, butyou’vegot a lot of magic in you. That should be more than enough.”

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