Evermore Academy (Evermore Academy #3) - Audrey Grey Page 0,117
being kidnapped and enslaved to a sociopathic sadist who will most likely murder my mate on my wedding night.
No one ever outright says as much, but I suspect my phone has been spelled to prevent contact from my friends. Part of me is relieved. I let them down and I don’t know how to face that. At some point my mother must be really worried because I roll out of bed past noon to find Ruby snoring beside me.
Her presence is welcomed, but as happy as I am to see her impish face—and as much as she tries to lift my mood with candy and horrible jokes—she can’t touch the white-hot agony eating me alive.
No one can.
Every night, I lie in bed and close my eyes, waiting for Valerian to reach out through the bond. To appear in a dream.
Something.
Anything.
Just a whisper of him. A piece. An echo.
My soul aches as if a wound is festering inside me. I need to know he’s okay. Need to talk to him one last time before my wedding. To selfishly hear his voice and know that he doesn’t hate me for what happened.
But at the end of our connection, all I feel is a hollow, resounding emptiness.
I spend my days nodding to the endless wedding preparations. The elaborate, ungodly expensive wedding dress, an emerald green concoction of diaphanous satin and gold ribbons. The gold and ruby hairpins crafted into butterflies, their delicate wings spelled to move as if alive. The invitations and rare wine list and seating arrangements.
All of it takes my mind off the fading ache of my mating bond with Valerian.
Then one night I thrash awake in an absolute panic. Gasping for breath, I rip the sweat-drenched sheets back and flip on the light—to see Valerian’s mark gone.
50
The weekend of my forced wedding arrives like a nightmare shrouded in a dream. Everyone pretends this is consensual, a fun event where I get to dress up and look beautiful and pledge my life to a dashing prince instead of a deranged psychopath.
On autopilot since the Nocturus, I let the onslaught of preparations lull me into that same fantasy as a means of survival.
But now, with my mother barking at her servants to pack our things and confirming the last minute details for the event, the dam of denial breaks, and my awful reality hits like a tsunami.
Consumed with panic, I contemplate fleeing.
That is, until I remember hearing somewhere during the last few trance-like months that my friends will be in attendance. Not that I would escape far, but not showing up would endanger them.
So I don’t resist. Not even when my mother casually mentions the location of the event—the academy grounds. As a neutral territory, apparently it’s not uncommon to use the protected island for weddings between different courts, especially now, with half of the Everwilde taken over by the Scourge.
I guess it seems fitting. The academy was the location of nearly everything bad that happened to me the last three years of my life. Why break the trend when there’s one last final public humiliation? I thought the academy would give me the skills to free my people from the binds of the Fae.
Instead, I’m the one who will be bound. Pinned like a butterfly to the board of a madman.
At least I’ll be wearing a pretty dress.
The night before the ceremony, an elaborate dinner is held on the other side of the mountain range. I’ve never been to this part of the campus, and I’m surprised to learn there’s an entire set of lodgings at the base of the mountains overlooking the ocean. Apparently, the building and facilities—which look suspiciously like Windsor Castle—are only used for outside events, or when high-ranking Evermore and their courts visit.
My room is situated at the top of a tower. No one says the obvious. That the location makes escape harder. Not that there’s any chance of fleeing. Officials from the Spring Court came to my room right before dusk and performed a pre-wedding spell.
After they finished, a new set of markings were branded into my arm, just above Hellebore’s Bloodstar tattoo. The lovely little wedding brand keeps me magically locked on the island. Even if I could break that part of the brand and escape, no matter how far away or remote, there’s now a long, magical leash around my neck that allows Hellebore to drag me back to him.
Surprise, surprise—I’m not the first female Fae bride who’s contemplated escaping their wedding.