Page 83 of The Evernight Court

Oh, God, please…

“We do not force ourselves on anyone, for fuck’s sake. We arenotsavages,” Romin said, but he sounded defeated. Fucking hell, he sounded like he had already given up.

Every hair on my body was standing at attention.

“Youknowshe’ll beg for it once you bite her. Let her fight—it makes it that much more thrilling.” Emil sounded like a fucking lunatic.

“I don’t know, Emil,” Romin said, and it was a damn miracle I hadn’t started running yet. These men, these fuckingmonsterswere talking about me like I was a thing. Abody, nothing more. Just someone they could do whatever they wanted to and try to get pregnant.

I would rather jump off the third tower, said a voice in my head.I’ll go to the balcony at the top right now and jump.

None of them was ever going to touch me. Not a fucking chance—and my resolve was so strong it even surprisedme. I had no clue where it was coming from, but I took it. These men would die before they laid a hand on me, no matter what I had to do.

“What’s not to know? Grey’s gone. There’s nobody to stand in your way of anything anymore—you can literally do anything you want now.” Again, Emil laughed. “Valentine’s gone, too.Good riddance.”

“What concerns me is what they left behind. What concerns me is that we do not have an he?—”

“We are young! We’ll be living a long,longtime. Do you really think that we won’t be siring an heir before our first century is over? Think about all the other brides that will be coming to us. Think about all the years to come!”

“Yes,” Romin finally whispered. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

He’s not!I wanted to shout at the top of my voice, but I had the good sense to bite my tongue first.

“Of course, I am,” said Emil. “And stop thinking about what Valentine left behind, will you? Whatever it was, he’s on the Eighth Isle now, probably unconscious already, just waiting to die. You canseethat, can’t you?Look!”

And he pulled Romin forward, put him right in front of the broken mirror, then stepped behind him with his hands on his shoulders.

“He’sgone,” Emil whispered, while they both looked at the mirror still. “He’s over there now, and you know the Eighth Isle swallows anything that goes to it. He’s gone, brother, and whatever he had planned is gone with him.”

My ears rang. I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts over those three words—the Eighth Isle.

But there was no such a thing, was there? There were only seven Isles, not eight.

“He’s gone,” Romin said after a minute.

“Yes, he is.”

“The Eighth Isle has him now,” Romin again.

“It does. He’s not coming back.”

A deep sigh.

My eyes closed.

“You’re right. It’s over, whatever he was trying to do,” Romin said. “And we’ll sire an heir before our death, as is our duty.”

“We will,” Emil confirmed, stepping to his side, and they both continued to look at the broken mirror.

“We’ll sire more than one. Each of us,” Romin continued, and he was talking to himself more than he was talking to Emil. “It’s what we were born for. It’s why we exist.”

And despite everything, those words killed me a little. So fuckingsadI suffocated on thin air, though I didn’t know what the hell I waseven thinking yet.

“It is, indeed. So, let’s go have a drink. Let’s relax—can we do that now?” said Emil.

Laughter—this time from Romin. “I could really use a drink right now…”

The brothers were already walking out of the circle of mirrors and toward the door. They were moving toward it, talking and laughing as they went, perfectly clueless that I was still there. Perfectly clueless that I’d heard everything.

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