Evermore Academy (Evermore Academy #3) - Audrey Grey Page 0,1

unrelenting desire to punish everyone involved in Hellebore’s deception.

Whatever alliances I need to make, whoever it hurts, I won’t stop until my mate is safely back in my arms.

Even if the cost is my soul.

1

The snow is blinding. A prism world of pure crystallized white that clings to everything. The land. The giant fir trees crusted with ice. The jagged black peaks in the distance. The glittering specters twirl in lazy spirals from the midnight sky. Fat snowflakes so big they can’t be real. They pummel this icy landscape like a snow globe that’s just been shaken. A swollen moon glares from above, its ominous gaze casting an ethereal hue over the night.

Breath curls from Valerian Sylverfrost’s lips in thick ivory clouds, and while he doesn’t quite feel the sting of the cold, I do. Shards of frigid agony burrow deeper into my chest with every ragged inhale he takes.

Wake up, Summer.

But months of this routine have taught me I can’t do anything except endure what comes next. It happens almost nightly. My mate wakes from his own nightmares, leaves the Winter Court palace in the dead of night, marches through knee-deep snow, and enters the frozen lake.

I know what will happen, but hard as I scream I can’t stop it. All I can do is watch, trapped, as his bare feet sink deep into the crust of snow. Gusts of wind push him back, as if this wintry world is trying to help him, to force him back to his bed. Back to his nightmares—which are honestly just as bad.

But at least they aren’t real.

He drives forward, using his powerful magic to shape the wintry winds into a battering ram. The snowflakes drive into him like daggers, flaying his porcelain skin, ramming the cold deeper inside his immortal flesh.

Punishing him for not protecting me.

My mortal body aches as needles of ice sink bone deep. I try to cry out, to beg him to stop, but he can’t hear me.

A break appears through the wall of trees and snow. Nestled in a small clearing, the teardrop-shaped cove awaits, a sparkling jewel of ice and snow.

I steel myself for what is about to come.

The ice groans beneath his weight. Cracks fissure outward, muffled by the howling wind.

He glances down at the ice. Only then does he drop the wall of armor that stifles his pain. Agonizing memories invade his mind, my mind, jagged snippets that endlessly torment him.

He said he loved me, despite how much it terrified him. How vulnerable and weak it made him feel. And then he awoke with Eclipsa and Asher not knowing where I was.

If I was hurt. Scared.

And when he discovered I had been torn away from him . . .

The rage that followed was terrifying.

A burst of white spews from his lips as he croaks my name, almost violently. My face settles over his mental landscape. A snapshot of our last night together. I’m on my back in the grass, propped on my elbows, my soulstone glowing as it nestled in the hollow of my neck. My moon-white hair tumbles over one shoulder, my head tilted back, lips parted, eyes glinting with warmth.

I’m laughing, and the sound is like music to him. A drug.

The hedge-maze.

Pain shoots through me as I remember how it felt when he said he loved me. The rush of promise for our future, together.

My mate.

Now my mate conjures those broken promises, that brittle and shattered future, and turns it into a weapon of ice magic. The blast that cracks the thick layer of ice below splits the cruel winter air, parting the curtain of snow and casting moonlight over this entire horrifying affair.

I watch, helpless and screaming and struggling to move as the water envelopes him.

The cold paralyzes with swift efficiency. Every muscle in his body locks, contorting his limbs, constricting his chest. Driving the last shred of oxygen from his throat.

From mine.

His immortality protects him from the swift death of drowning, but even immortals can only stand so long under water.

With a single thought, he could stop this. The pain. The drowning. The flood of panic as the searing lake slams into his lungs.

Instead, Valerian Sylverfrost sinks, sinks, sinks until the black expanse scrubs any trace of me from his wounded Fae heart. Only then does he surface.

But each time it takes longer.

And each time I feel him die a little more.

2

When I was just a mortal shadow, returning to school was simple. Pack the few supplies I could afford,