Spring (Evermore Academy #2) - Audrey Grey Page 0,8

winky face emoji he added before my grin falters.

Summer Solstice, you’re so epically screwed.

4

The first day of school starts off completely different than last time. First, I’m not freezing my lady balls off. Second, I actually fill out the hunter green shorts and white tank top, and my arms ripple with muscles. Third, thanks to the highly complicated espresso machine Mack’s dads gifted her for the first day, a latte warms my fingers. The rich coffee aroma, intermingled with the perfume of tulips and lilies drifting in the air, makes me grin like a maniac.

If victory had a smell, it would be this. And my day doesn’t start with swimming for my life, performing CPR, and then being ogled and fought over.

The only downside is not getting to punch Reina in her surgically enhanced nose—but the day is young.

I take a sip of my latte and sigh. “This year is going to be my year, Mack. I can feel it.”

“Correction, it’s going to be our year.”

Mack tucks a strand of her chocolate shoulder-length hair behind her ear. It’s longer than the last time I saw her, and she must have had it straightened, large chunks dyed pink and yellow. No doubt to expertly match the tulips lining the path to school.

A flower print romper and brown leather booties make her even more adorable than usual.

Her sprite, Thornilia, flies just above her. Thornilia lists off Mack’s class schedule, which she’s already memorized, the showoff, and reminds Mack which books she needs for the first period.

Somehow, Thornilia also carries Mack’s triple almond-milk latte.

Ruby, on the other hand, hasn’t even woken up. She’s nestled on top of my backpack, snoring in my ear.

My new phone buzzes in my short’s pocket. I grin as I pull it out, ignoring Mack’s knowing look.

Valerian’s message pops onto the screen. Sorry I can’t be there for your first day. Want me to send Asher back, just in case?

I release a breath. Eclipsa told me this morning during training that she was accompanying him to the Winter Court, but in her typical cryptic fashion, left out why. I gathered from her grumpier than usual morning mood that it was pretty serious.

If Valerian is taking both the dragon shifter and the lunar assassin with him, it’s really bad.

No way will I leave him unprotected.

Besides, what have I been training for this entire time if I can’t survive the first day of school?

No, I one-handedly text back, I’m a badass now, remember?

An eternity passes as he types out a response, and I grin imagining him searching for the right letters, erasing, and grumbling. He’s the absolute worst at texting, or technology in general.

Stay out of trouble. The snowflake emojis punctuate the command.

Smiling, I hurriedly type back, Too bad you’re not here tho. Mack and I thought it would be funny to sneak in a couple baby orcs on the first day.

Funny. I look forward to bribing your way out of detention. Be thinking of ways to repay me.

I send him little angel emojis and then slip the phone back into my pocket.

Mack hip checks me. “Just friends, huh?”

I erase the humor from my face and sigh. “Just friends.”

“You lying little B. There is no ‘just friends’ with the ILB.”

As we near the wide steps leading up to the main courtyard, second year shadows Jace, Layla, and Richard join us.

Jace grins, his handsome face brightening, and tips his head. “Ladies.”

Richard stares glumly forward, his fingers clenched tightly around his backpack straps.

A pang of sympathy threatens to darken my happy mood. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling after Evelyn’s transformation to a darkling. Especially considering what caused her change.

She was pregnant with a Fae child, what both Fae and mortals cruelly call a dirty-blood.

Evelyn never once mentioned dating a Fae or even liking one.

We enter the courtyard, and I search the throng of students. Each time I find a Fae male, I scour them for signs that they fathered Evelyn’s child.

Which is dumb. It’s not like the Fae who impregnated Evelyn is going to be wearing a shirt that says, Baby Daddy, on it.

“Fae’s teeth, is that for . . . us?” Mack asks.

I follow her wide-eyed stare to linen-draped tables brimming with trays of food and refreshments. Shadows have already started tentatively filling their plates.

Jace groans. “Oh, God, I smell real coffee. Could it be a trick?”

“It’s definitely a trick, right?” I swallow, remembering the hazing from last year. This feels wrong, somehow. There’s no way the Fae are suddenly being