Page 58 of The Evernight Court

I closed my eyes, getting my teeth. “I amnot crazy,” I spit. “I was there. I was there and I came back.”

Why in the fuck couldn’t he just believe me?!

“Hush, my beautiful Fall. Let it go. You don’t have to live like this,” he whispered. “I swear it, I won’t let go of you at all until you say so. I will be next to you every second of every day for as long as you want, and I won’t stop until I’ve taken all your pain away,” he insisted, and he was close.

So fucking close his lips wereright there,barely an inch away from mine.

Alarms rang in my head. I opened my eyes to find Romin’s face in front of me, his hands on my cheeks, his bloodshot eyes on my lips as he came in to kiss me.

No.

I couldn’t control myself and I didn’t want to. Just like last time, I pulled up my leg with all my strength and slammed my knee right in his dick.

This time, though, I didn’t move on instinct—Iintendedtohurthim. This time, I must have gotten much stronger, too, because Romin’s eyes opened wide, and he let out a moan as he slowly doubled over and let go of me, the veins in his neck protruding. He was in more pain than I’d hoped to cause him, but I couldn’t even enjoy the look on his face as I moved back toward the doors, thinking,now’s the time he kills me. Now’s the time it ends for me for real.

Except Romin didn’t sprout wings on his back and didn’t come to suck me dry. “Fall,” he whispered instead, muscles still strained, but I was already at the doors.

I pulled them open and I stepped outside, shaking from head to toe. “They’re lying to you, and they’re planning something, Romin. Someone is going to march into the Woods any time now, and it will be too late to stop them. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Pulling the doors closed with all my strength, I turned around and I ran out of the first tower like my tail was on fire.

Fourteen

Day fourteen.

It had been two days since that talk with Genevieve and with Romin. Two days of constantly waiting in my tower, thinking he’d be coming to give me my punishment for making false accusations or to simply kill me.

But Romin never came.

All I did was wait, even as I spent time with Zane in the greenhouse. The cougar was indeed gone, but the winged rabbits were warming up to me.

I waited, even as I spent time with the birds in the room Grey made me, and I tried my hand at the clarinet. I had yet to touch the books or the colors, and I spent every free second reading that book on the basics of magic Quinn had bought for me.

So far, though, I couldn’t do any of the things that the book wanted me to try—like conjuring up light or a flame or putting one out with a thought or calling a small object to my hands from across the room or changing the size of an object. I was convinced it was because I didn’t have enough magic, evenif I felt like I did. Even if I felt like I was buzzing with it, and I could feel it in others so clearly it scared me.

Not only that, but by now I was halfway convinced that others couldn’t feel iton mewhen I was trying to sneak up on them, either.

It had happened with Sedelis and that person she’d been talking to by the lake. It had happened with Quinn—I tested her on it every night and she never knew I was there when I wastryingto sneak up on her deliberately—and it had happened with Emil while he’d been finger-fucking Amita in the hallway two days ago, too.

Not that that would serve me more than doing actual magic, but I still tried to expand my senses farther and farther every night.

That’s why I was out of the castle almost an hour early again, trying to feel the woods until Quinn got there—and to check on the lake again, like I’d been doing every night before training. There was never anything there anymore, which almost convinced me that I’d indeed made the whole thing up, but I kept going back anyway.

Except tonight, I was halfway there, walking as slowly and as silently as possible, when I heard that sound coming from somewhere to my side. That sound that was so unmistakable even out here in the woods with the trees whispering all around me—Shadow’s wings.

I froze in place and closed my eyes and focused all my being on my ears. The sound was right there, I hadn’t imagined it, and it was louder than usual, like Shadow wasn’t trying to keep it down so it was easier to detect. Easier to pinpoint that it was coming from the east.

He’s coming for mewas my first thought. He knew I was out here in the woods, and he was coming to end me, so my instinct was to turn back. To run as fast as I could back to the castle before he realized I knew he was there.

But then I looked to the east just to make sure he wasn’t closer than my ears were telling me, and I saw the silhouette.

Valentine.

I’d know the shape of him anywhere, even in the darkness of the woods. I knew the width of his shoulders and his slicked-back hair—and most importantly, I knew the way he walked, each stride precise, purposeful.

Not only that, but Shadow just landed right on his shoulder, as if to confirm that it was indeed him.

Valentine was right there, possibly just fifteen feet away from me, walking in the woods, and he had no idea I was here.

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