Page 92 of The Evernight Court

I sighed. “Hurry up!”

She started to run down the street lightning fast, and I turned to the trees, to the darkness of the woods, and went a bit deeper until the light of the town didn’t reach me. I didn’t want to be seen by anybody, and I also wanted to make sure that nobody else was around us right now, that Emil or Romin or anybody else hadn’t followed me outside the castle.

So far so good.

Sitting down with my back against a tree, I allowed myself to breathe in deeply. Grey’s silhouette that had flashed in that mirror was right there behind my closed lids, and it gave me more motivation than I’d ever need—not just to get to Mount Agva, but to come back here with Storm.

He’d bring Grey back here if he could find him. I believed that with my whole heart—he would bring Grey back even if he had to carry him across the world.

A noise caught my attention—a small noise that was familiar to me by now, and it made my heart jump.

I froze, straining my ears, all my attention on them, and…I heard it again.

It was a snickering-like sound, like a squirrel but a bit different. It was a sound I’d heard before, many times, and I’d know it in my sleep.

I jumped to my feet, eyes wide and unblinking as I looked at the trees again, sure that I was hearing things. Sure that I was imagining this because there was no way it was real. No fucking way…

“Shadow?” I whispered to the woods because it sounded just like him.Exactlylike him.

And something moved to my right fast—a small winged creature jumping from a branch higher up the tree, to one lower. To one I could see.

Every drop of blood in my veins turned solid. Shadow was sitting on that branch, wings folded to his sides, his beady eyes on me as his long pointy tail swished to the sides gently. My mouth opened and my hands closed over it. Tears in my eyes, blurring my vision, and I blinked them away as I slowly moved closer to him.

“Shadow, what…what…” I shook my head because it made no sense. “Howare you here?”

It was Shadow—I knew that dragon as well as I knew Valentine. I knew the shape of him, the colors on him, his pointy face and those black eyes. It was him sitting there on that branch, watching me as he made that sound again, as if to confirm it. As if to answer my question, except I didn’t speak dragon, so I didn’t understand a thing.

“What the fuck.”

I didn’t even jump this time when Quinn spoke from behind me, much too close—and I hadn’t even heard her approaching. I turned, shaking my head still.

“It’s…it’s Shadow,” I told her, even though she was looking right at him, too.

“That’s not possible,” Quinn said, and she was just as terrified as me.

“It’s him,” I told her because it was. It was Shadow sitting on that branch, not a single doubt about it.

“It’s really,reallynot possible,” Quinn insisted, coming to stand next to me. “Valentine is gone. Shadow is in Agva by now. That’s not him.”

“It is! I know Shadow, Quinn. I named him myself—it’s him.” Then I reached up my hand and said, “Shadow, come here,” because I must have lost my damn mind.

Shadow moved.

My God, he jumped off the branch, and Quinn stepped back just as he touched his small talons to my knuckles.

Pointy face. Black eyes. That sound of him coming from deep in his throat. “It’s you,” I whispered, shaking my head still. It was Shadow.

And he spread his wings the next moment and flew away, deeper into the woods to find another branch to sit on and watch us.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Quinn whispered, her face pale and her eyes wide like she was looking at a damn ghost.

And me, too—because he was. Shadow was Valentine’s dragon, and he was still here, and he was so…calm. So relaxed as he swooshed his tail slowly.

I’d seen what happened to dragons when their master was banished, hadn’t I? I’d seen Storm in that clearing trying to fucking rip his own wings off his body with his teeth. The image was in front of my eyes even now.

“Dragons go insane when their masters are gone, Fall. They go insane—they lose their minds!” Quinn insisted, pressing her fingers to her temple. “It’s not him, I’m telling you. Itcan’tbe.”

I agreed with her—itcouldn’tbe. But it was. That wasShadow, I knew it in my bones. And if I hadn’t seen Valentine get swallowed by the sky with my own eyes, I’d have searched this whole damn Isle for him myself.

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