Page 93 of The Evernight Court

But I’d seen. Valentine had disappeared in the sky the exact same way as Grey, and after, I’d seen Shadow on that apple tree in the courtyard. He’d been calm then, too, but I hadn’t made anything of it. Romin had been so sure that Shadow was gone already when I spoke to him again that I didn’t even question it.

Nobody had, yet he was here now, watching me, waiting for me to move, as if he knew exactly where I was going. As if he planned to follow behind me like he always did.

I shook my head at myself, at a loss for thoughts, for possible explanations once more.

“Let’s go,” I said to Quinn because I simply didn’t have the time. I had no clue how much longer Grey would be alive—I needed to get to Storm right now.

“Are you sure about this?” Quinn asked as we moved toward Shadow.

I wasn’t, not even close. “I am,” I said anyway, for both our sakes.

Something was most definitely going on here, and I couldn’t wait to find out what. For some reason Shadow being here, so calm andnormal,didn’t surprise me as much as I thought it would because once again, it was typical Valentine. He was chock-full of secrets and so unlike anything or anyone I’d ever come across. Of course, Shadow would be the same. His size alone confirmed it—he hadn’t grown at all since he’d hatched, which I’m sure meant something I had no clue about.

Valentine had planned something while he was here, something big. The question was, did it all stop with his banishment—or was his banishment thebeginning?Was thatthe reason why he’d been so desperate for it?

I had no idea, but Shadow followed us silently, sometime flying ahead and sometimes behind us, and when we got close to the lake where I’d seen Sedelis, I was suddenly sure that the hooded man she’d spoken to was Valentine.

I was suddenly sure that whatever he’d planned, it was all connected to the sirens as well.

I just hoped the result wouldn’t be as disastrous as a part of me believed, and that Grey would be here to put a stop to whatever was coming.

Twenty-One

Grey Evernight

A few hours earlier

The dark mocked me,the magic in those clouds twice as powerful as that of the Whispering Woods. It stopped me with twice as much strength the first three times I’d tried to get to the other side.

I was about to try for the fourth soon.

I stood atop the tomb mountain, the rocks broken and blackened by time, by the magic of the curse that had withered everything it had touched on the Eighth Isle. Every tree and every plant and every animal mutated, deformed, a shadow of what they used to be—all because Syra’s body rested inside this mountain, and all the magic that the sirens had put upon the small piece of land to keep her here, to keep her dormant, had ruined everything.

Just like it had in the rest of Ennaris.

From the rocks, I could hardly see movement behind the trees—my eyesight was not what it used to be. My movements,either. My stamina, my speed—nothingat all was what it used to be three weeks ago. I was being consumed by the curse little by little, and I was well aware that this was the last time I’d be able to use my wings. It was the last time I’d be able to try to fly out of this Isle and get back to Fall.

And when it didn’t work, I’d die.

Which was almost funny because I should have been long dead by now.

By my calculations, I’d been banished some three weeks ago. For three weeks the curse had taken from me—strength and magic and sanity. For three weeks this fucking Isle had tried to kill me in every way possible, and if it wasn’t for this tomb and what was in it, the mutated animals would have torn me apart long ago, the same way they’d done each one of my ancestors who’d ended up in this place.

Not me, though. I was still alive, which shouldn’t have been possible. I was still able to fly into those clouds that shielded the Eighth Isle from the rest of Ennaris, albeit for the last time.

Not that I was complaining; it just made no sense. I should have been dead by now. I should have been long gone.

“Een aeva,” I said to the darkness, looking up at those clouds as I prepared to launch myself in the air. If I was strong enough to withstand the magic of the curse, there was a chance that I could break through it. There was a chance I could force my way out of this hell and get back to the Whispering Woods, to Fall.

The thought that she was all alone, that she was suffering at the hands of the people who lived in that castle, tortured me worse than any magic of any curse. The idea that those fucking vultures were circling her and waiting for her to give in was worse than a knife straight through my gut. It made me mad to think that she was alone with my brothers. Defenseless—and I couldn’t be there to keep her safe.

The rage made me jump even before I’d fully made up my mind. The image in my head ofmy wifesurrounded by my brothers, those vile fucking beings, didn’t leave me any space to think. I just shot for the sky, beating my wings as hard as I could, and I reached both hands for it, for the magic, releasing my own, everything that was left inside me.

It made impact.

The sound of my magic hitting that of the last layer of the curse was deafening. They clashed hard, and the idea was to weaken it a little bit so that when I slammed onto it, it gave. It broke. It let me through.

I’d tried this three other times already and it hadn’t worked. The fourth would be the last.

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