Evermore Academy (Evermore Academy #3) - Audrey Grey Page 0,132

magic.

Asher limps over. There’s blood running down his clothes from several wounds, his arms still shackled. “He got the prince. I tried to stop him. I tried but—”

Mack rushes to him and slides an arm around his waist for support while Wynter freezes off his shackles.

His arms spring free. Groaning, he falls to his knees. “There’s some type of poison tipping Rhaegar’s sword.” He coughs, and I’m alarmed to see blood on his lips. “Nothing . . . I can’t ha—handle.”

That same sword is now pointed at Valerian’s back. The bastard. Rhaegar shoots me a taunting grin, daring me to try and free Valerian.

My eyes slide back to Valerian in time to see my mother approaching from behind Rhaegar and Hellebore. Hope flares to life inside my chest. She’s going to help Valerian. She’ll use her magic to—

Rhaegar turns to my mother and bows. “My Queen. Here he is, as promised.”

Someone screams, followed by another, but I’m focused on my mother. Trying to understand what I know in my heart is happening.

Our eyes meet, her gaze sliding to the knife in my trembling fist. “Put the blade down, daughter. You’re safe now.”

I look to Valerian, my heart clenching, before lifting my focus back to her. “Liar.”

“Hyacinth, stop acting like a child and come here.”

“Make me,” I hiss.

She sighs. The screams are growing louder, tugging at my attention until finally I whip around to see a wave of something rushing down the meadow.

Not something.

Darklings.

The darklings descend before anyone can so much as run. We’re hemmed in, immediately. A few foolish Fae think jumping off the cliff is a better alternative, but a swarm of darklings wait below, snapping up the Fae before they even reach the ground.

They’re torn to shreds in less than a second.

An Evermore with huge, billowy-white wings streaks in the air—only to be cut down by Spring Court archers.

All at once, the wall of feral monsters stops. The snarling, hunched creatures sniff the air and gnash their jagged teeth in hungry anticipation, but they don’t attack.

They’re being controlled.

“What have you done?” I whisper, slowly glancing back at my mother.

“Done?” She smiles. “I secured our future. Your future. A life not ruled by males or mates. A life of freedom.”

“Freedom?” I stare at her as the ugly, incomprehensible truth sinks in. “You’re controlling the darklings.”

She shrugs. “Does that surprise you?”

“But I thought—” I look to Hellebore, who somehow, despite the darklings and the dead queen just yards away, manages to appear bored. “The Bloodstar.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Bloodstar?”

But even as I say it, I remember her telling me that day in her office how her ancestors had the Bloodstar made into perfume. A perfume she still wears. Even now, the exotic scent drifts from her figure, a strange and intoxicating mix of cloying sweetness and almondy poison.

Evelyn wasn’t talking about Hellebore’s tattoo; she was trying to tell me about my mother’s scent.

“What about the pregnant girls?” I persist. I just can’t believe she would do that. Would enslave mortal girls to such a nightmarish life. And Haley Richardson . . . that can’t be a coincidence.

“What about them? They are a means to an end. And every, single one of those girls willingly slept with Rhaegar knowing the potential consequences. They were never forced.”

Rhaegar? Oh my God. Of course.

“What about Haley Richardson?”

Rhaegar frowns, and I realize he can’t even remember the names of the girls he impregnated and turned. “Wait.” An oily grin carves Rhaegar’s jaw. “She was the one that looked like the Spring Court Princess.”

I glance at Hellebore, wondering how he’ll take that information, or how much he knew, but that bored mask is still there, impenetrable.

“Once the Darken conquers the mortal lands, we will get half of everything. That is the bargain I struck with him. It will be ours, Hyacinth, yours and mine. A new Summer Court territory where we will rule.”

“And the mortals?” I glance at Nick, Sebastian, and my aunts.

“What about them? As long as they recognize our rule and bend the knee, we will treat them fairly.”

I glare at Hellebore. “What does he get out of this?”

“My bargain was with the Spring Court Queen,” my mother says, her gaze drifting over the dead queen’s body. The poor dragonflies can barely lift higher than a few inches now. “But she got greedy. She suspected who you were and had Hellebore deceive you into admitting it, publicly. Once you became property of her court, she could bargain for more territory, whittling my lands away