Spring (Evermore Academy #2) - Audrey Grey Page 0,17

I scowl. Ugh. Why are you singling me out, jerkwad?

I clench and unclench my fists as the murmurs and stares grow. Mack tries to grab my hand, but I gently pull away.

I don’t want her tainted by association with me.

“Now that we’re clear on how shadows are to behave, let’s discuss the trials. At Whitehall, we ensure only the best shadows attend beside us by holding three gauntlets. These trials are meant not to simply cull the deserving from the undeserving, but to remind them of their place in Everwilde. They are beneath us. Slaves bound by magic to do our bidding and enhance all of Faerie.”

They. He’s talking about us like we’re not here. Like we’re non-entities.

I thought there was no one I could despise more than Inara.

I was so fricking wrong.

“Because of its mortality rate, the final gauntlet is required for fourth years only,” Hellebore adds, as if this somehow makes him a hero.

The Unseelie Evermore Courts look rather ambivalent about the whole speech. As long as their favorite form of entertainment—watching us die—is still in place, they don’t seem to care one way or another who’s in charge. The Seelie Courts glance around, shocked but not exactly disappointed.

Prince Hellebore is a Seelie Fae, after all.

“One last thing.” Prince Hellebore smiles. “Fail any of the gauntlets and you’ll be expelled from the academy and sent to fight the scourge.”

Well, crap.

In one sentence, this Spring Court jerkwad just jeopardized my entire future.

My hand flutters to my throat where a giant lump forms. Expelled? Sent to an almost certain death fighting the scourge?

That can never happen.

7

The rest of the school day passes in a blur of nervous chatter as everyone scrambles to learn what they can about the Spring Court gauntlets. Even the fourth years are worried.

What sort of contest will the trials be? How dangerous are they? How many students pass, on average?

No one seems to know anything, but I can’t help assuming the worst. All my plans, all my grand ambitions for my future, and this Spring Court pretty boy dickwad comes and ruins everything.

If the contest was fair, I would pull my crap together and do whatever it took to succeed. But after Inara’s threat, everyone has a vested interest in seeing me fail.

The only bright spot in my day is that Mack shares every class after lunch with me. Since the last four periods are when shadows attend school with the Evermore, I prepare myself for more hazing, but Inara and her homicidal gang don’t show up until the last class, Advanced Properties of Magic.

I can’t help but grin as I watch Inara, Kimber, and Lyra slip quietly into the auditorium right as Professor Lambert begins to talk. Rhaegar and Basil follow.

All of them file into the back row, subdued, missing their usual arrogant I-own-the-school grins.

No one even notices them. The entire classroom’s focus is riveted on Hellebore and the girl he sits next to. Like him, she’s dressed casually in black leggings and an oversized gray tee, artfully ripped at the shoulders and frayed in the hem. Her hair is a shade lighter than his, the uneven ends tinted pastel purple, making her gray eyes pop.

Tapping her pencil on her desk, Mack leans over. “That’s his sister, Freesia Narcissus. She’s a first year.”

Mack tilts her MacBook Pro so I can see the screen. She’s pulled up the Whitehall Academy website dedicated to the most powerful Evermore students. The screen is split in half, Hellebore’s insanely photogenic face on one side and his sister’s on the other.

I enlarge Prince Hellebore’s bio and quickly run through his long-ass list of attributes. Top Whitehall student two years running. Champion sprite-ball player. Head of the Seelie Fae for Integration club. Rising star at Narcissus Asset Management, a real estate conglomerate run by his aunt, the Spring Court Queen.

The list of achievements goes on and on until I want to gag.

Geez. Did he write this himself?

“Who the frick is this guy trying to impress?” I whisper, sneaking a look at the teacher. The last thing I need is to be called out by Professor Lambert for talking on the first day.

Mack’s eyes sparkle as she looks over Hellebore’s bio. “He’s like a Fae male version of me. Overachieving bastard. I hate him.”

I peer at the photo, strangely intrigued. “What are his powers?”

“Beyond what we saw today? I don’t know. Whitehall students don’t have to declare their powers third year like Evermore, so we can only guess. But I heard a