Evermore Academy (Evermore Academy #3) - Audrey Grey Page 0,36

I ascend. Hobbling like an eighty-year-old. Grunting, lifting, throwing myself up a step, resting against the sun-warmed stone railing, both arms hugging the damned thing like it’s a body pillow, and then doing it again. My slingback heels wobble dangerously.

Fail me again, I warn them, and the next feet you feel will be a wart-riddled troll’s.

Ruby cheers me on the entire time. Never once does she ask me to stop. She understands why I have to finish the climb.

“Summer, enough.” I look over to see the headmistress, her arms crossed and dark eyes full of pity. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You’ve never lied to me before.” I push off the railing, my heartbeat pounding in my skull. “Please don’t start now.”

The beginnings of an argument twitch her stern lips, but I must look beyond reason because off she goes, those powdery-soft wings flexing nervously on the warm breeze.

I drag onward. Smears of my blood brighten the railing and spot the mossy stairs. Each step sends molten spears of agony slamming up my ankle and into my calf.

The last step looms. I clutch the banister as my world tumbles around me. The clear blue sky spins like a record, only instead of music it plays my wheezing. That can’t be good, right?

Vines of wisteria slither over the railing and push beneath my arms, as if the Everwilde is willing me to keep going.

Summoning the last of my strength, I conquer the final step. My vision swoops in dizzying loops as I tilt my head back, ignoring the fiery ache of my injuries, the way the landscape fades in and out.

Silence fills the courtyard, making the growing buzz in my ears grow louder and louder. I limp to the podium on numb legs. My pain is all but gone. I tell myself that’s a good thing even as a nagging inner voice says otherwise.

My fingers are sticky-red as they wrap around the microphone. How much am I bleeding?

My mind blanks. Even as I draw the mic to my busted lips with shaking hands. Even as I clear the pain from my throat.

I find Inara near the front.

Squinting past blood-tinged sweat, I wait until my fuzzy focus sharpens. Until I catch the glitter of triumph in her eyes, shards of glass ready to cut me to the core.

Then I stretch my bloody lips into a victorious smile and rub at the ribbon of red trickling down my chin with my middle finger.

There’s my girl, Valerian purrs.

I look at the crowd of Fae and say, “My name is Summer Solstice. I’m the freak. The mortal wannabe Fae. The magicless Evermore princess. The girl who”—I meet my mother’s furious gaze—“who just can’t do what she’s told. I’m also the top student this season. If you have a problem with that”—I let my attention drift to Inara—“you’re going to have to do a lot more than tripping me down a flight of stairs.”

I have more words cocked and loaded, ready to unleash on this miserable crowd of bullies, but . . .

I stumble backward, there’s a loud whooshing in my ears, and my world fades.

15

Valerian

Watching Summer struggle to climb those steps is torture. Witnessing her agony and shame, knowing she’s hurt, fuck . . . feeling her pain cuts like nothing I’ve ever experience before. I want to lift her up and carry her away from this whole messed up place.

But that’s not what she needs.

That’s the thing about our bond. I no longer act selfishly to satisfy my own wants. At least, not like I did before. This thing between us forces me to consider her needs above mine.

So I grit my teeth and watch her fight to climb the stage, taking on her injuries as my own.

When Summer gives Inara the finger, pride swells my chest. Eclipsa laughs while Asher claps me on the shoulder. “Your mate has bigger balls than you do.”

“No argument there,” I grind out without taking my eyes off her. She stumbles, only slightly, but my entire body clenches.

She’s fading. Fuck.

I send her words of encouragement but I have no idea if she can hear them. Then she gives her speech, and while I want to cheer as she basically tells the entire campus to fuck off, her eyes are rolling back in her head—

Leaping toward the stairs, I throw out my hand and send a gust of magic to slow her descent. The magic does its job and I reach her before she hits the hard stone. I