Evermore Academy (Evermore Academy #3) - Audrey Grey Page 0,109
too much of a coincidence that first Evelyn named him as her master and now his shadow ends up pregnant as well.
“Honey.” She pats my arm. “We simply cannot divulge that information. Even if our benefactor didn’t expressly forbid it, there is no name listed in her files. There never are.”
She gives me a conspiratorial look, as if we’re both in on a mischievous secret.
“His court? A description? She didn’t say anything about the father of her child?”
“Sorry, truly.” She glances over her shoulder at the ajar door and back at me. “Is there anything else? The holidays, you know. Have to keep the girls busy. Idle hands and all that.”
Right. So busy that they don’t realize there’s a chance they’ll turn darkling and be used by my fiancé to raise the Darken. Bitterness fills my mouth with a metallic taste. I bet anything that the secret benefactor is also my fiancé.
How many women has he impregnated? Oh, God. Nausea churns my stomach. I cannot marry him. I’d rather die.
Actually, I’d rather kill him in the Nocturus and watch the evil drain from his eyes.
“Oh, my.” Donna peers at me as if I might fall apart at the seams. “Do you need some water?”
I shake my head, suddenly desperate to leave this place with its cheerful décor and secrets.
She waves the bag in front of me and this time I take it. The contents are light, hardly worth using a trash bag at all for. “There’s nothing else?”
She sighs. “I’ll double check her old room again this week. If I find anything . . .” She sighs again. “Leave your email with the front desk.”
When I get back to the visitors reception, Mack is practically jumping up and down. “Did you hear?”
A passing nurse shoots us a stern look, and we funnel outside into the cold December air.
“What?”
Mack’s cornflower blue eyes are huge as she wheels to face me. “Another piece of the Darken’s axe was stolen.”
Shock—I’m in utter, complete shock as my brain tries to grapple with what this means. She couldn’t have surprised me more if she said the cats on her shirt had just come to life.
“That makes . . . one left.”
A sick feeling comes over me. “Who has the final piece?”
“Summer—”
“Who?”
“The Spring Court.”
47
“I still can’t believe they canceled school,” Mack says.
It’s well past sundown, and she’s staring out the floor-to-ceiling gym window at the crowd of students, rebraiding her hair for the fifth time. She does that when she’s nervous. Subconsciously working over those lustrous brown locks—still streaked emerald and gold for my court colors—again and again.
I wish there was something like that I could do to calm my nerves, but when the entire trajectory of your life depends on what happens in the next few hours, there’s really nothing short of medical sedation to relax.
Not that I haven’t tried. The punching bags have suffered the most. I’ve also sprinted around the lake three times, done an hour of yoga and meditation with Eclipsa, and grappled with Asher. That was fun. Basically like wrestling a bear.
But none of it touches my growing unease.
I made the decision to ask Valerian to stay away the last few hours before the trial. Being around my mate reminds me of what I have to lose, and I just don’t think I can handle that right now. I need to focus. To get my mind right so I can murder Helle-Douche.
Eclipsa puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “You need to take a deep breath.”
I do. Inhale, exhale. But there’s a tight band around my chest squeezing my lungs. I look into her worried eyes. “Tell me I can beat him, Eclipsa.”
She blinks, her expression at war with itself as if struggling whether to lie or tell the truth.
“Eclipsa?”
“I—there’s—I.”
“I’m dead.” I duck away from her and assault the speed bag, pretending it’s Hellebore’s face. “I can’t beat him, can I?”
I’ve never outright asked her that. My usual survival skills of optimism and denial overshadowed reality and I was fine with that. It helped me train. Gave me hope.
But now, with the entire campus outside ready to witness the event, the truth smacks me upside the face.
Scenes replay in my head on an endless loop. Inara fighting in the Scourge, her inhuman agility and speed. Even without her magic she was lethal. Valerian and Rhaegar as they stalked one another in the last Nocturus.
And Hellebore is rumored to rival my mate’s power.