Page 100 of The Evernight Court

Storm.

I was actually going to try totalkto Storm, the same dragon who could swallow me without bothering to even chew. The same dragon I’d seen biting his own wings, trying to hurt himself just weeks ago.

Shadow was still watching me, perfectly still except for his tail. “What—you think I’m crazy?” I asked him, and he snickered like he usually did—like he was sayingyes.“I know that.” But I’d be crazy. I’d be absolutely batshit if there was a chance that I could see Grey again.

I sighed. “I know, little guy. I’ll take it. Doesn’t matter, anyway.”

Even if Storm ate me, or even if I couldn’t get him through that mirror, I was never going back to the castle. I was never going to be at the mercy of the Evernight brothers again.

“Look at this,” Quinn said, dragging behind her the carcass of what could have been an enlarged fox with grey fur and a black muzzle, with long, pointy ears and a short tail, and paws as big as my palms. “Fucking hell, this would last us a month if we decided to stay here.” And she laughed.

“Right.” Except wewouldn’tstay here, and when I saw the side of the fox’s neckmissingand its fur coated with blood, bile rose up my throat. I usually had a very strong stomach, but something about mutilated animals with dirty, bloody fur and the idea of puttingthatin my mouth…

“Hey, Quinn,” I said as she inspected the carcass, and she was so impressed her eyes glistened.

“Yeah?”

“What’s the Eighth Isle?”

She turned to look at me. “What?”

“The Eighth Isle. What is it?”

Her brows narrowed as she shook her head. “There is no Eighth Isle. We’re theSevenIsles, remember?”

She sounded perfectly genuine—but then again, she’d been lying through her teeth since the beginning, and I hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

“Why? Where’d you hear that?” she said and went back to inspecting the dead fox.

I wasn’t about to tell her anything I’d seen or heard—especially that talk between Romin and Emil. “I thought I read it somewhere. I probably didn’t understand it well,” I said instead.

“Yeah, probably. Look at this—he cut its neck clean off.” And she was back to being impressed by the fox, and by the way Shadow had killed it.

“He’s very good at that,” I muttered, looking up at Shadow sitting on that branch, watching me.

“Yeah, Valentine’s been teaching him since he hatched,” Quinn said, producing a small knife from her pocket that she was about to cut into that fox with.

“He has?” I had no idea Valentine taught Shadow anything.

“Oh, yes. They trained daily before you arrived,” Quinn said, sitting down on the ground as she turned to me. “Then again every night after.”

“Wow. Makes sense that Shadow is always sofearlessin the face of everything.” I’d never seen him turn away from anything at all. Even that morning when he was coming for me, pretending to want to kill me, knowing Storm would get him—he hadn’t hesitated a single second.

“Yeah,” Quinn said, throwing him a look. “Valentine was obsessed with keeping an eye on you. Keeping you safe. He didn’t trust anyone else to do it.”

My insides twisted and turned violently. “Except that time he tried to kill me.” By sending me to Faeries’ Aerie. Lying to me about the ring and the curse.

“Well, I don’t know about that, but he cared about you,” Quinn said, and again, she was looking at me like that, like she wasblamingme for something. “He said you were almost like his family.”

My poor heart.

It took me another second of reminding myself of the truth, of his actions, not his words.

It took me another second to remind myself that he’d taken me out there and had tried to kill me, and then had made me into a fool in front of everyone when I confronted him about it.

Thatwas Valentine Evernight. Maybe he cared about me, but what mattered was what he did. His actions—thosespoke the loudest. His words meant very little.

“And I genuinely came to care about him, too. But I’m learning,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. I was learning not to trust the way I used to. To understand that almost everyone around me had ulterior motives for what they did, even the smallest, most unsuspicious actions.

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