Spring (Evermore Academy #2) - Audrey Grey Page 0,83
If we can figure out who’s using her, perhaps we can save her. “Anything, Evelyn. Anything you can think of that might help us so we can help you.”
“Did this to me,” she snarls. “Did this to me. Did this to me!” The darklings react to her anger, growling and baring their teeth.
“Easy,” I whisper as the others press against the wall. “Who did this to you? Who is controlling you?”
“Flower. Flower. Star.” She grunts in frustration, beating and tearing at her skull with her crooked fingers. “Star. Star. Bloody star.”
“Evelyn, I . . . I’m trying to understand.”
Her head stops jerking and when she meets my stare, my heart breaks at the very human pain in her eyes. The brief flash of sentience. Evelyn is still in there. Trapped.
“Blood . . . star,” she moans. “Bloodstar!” As soon as she utters the word, she shrieks, leaping over the others as she flees. The darklings rush after her.
It takes less than two seconds for both Evelyn and the darklings to disappear from the chamber, leaving us shaking and in shock.
“How are we still alive?” Richard asks. He’s cradling his right arm. “We should be dead. So dead. Painfully dead and in pieces.”
“You don’t have to describe it for us,” Mack snaps, sagging against me.
Ruby hovers in front of my face. One of her wings doesn’t seem to be working properly.
Her eyes widen in alarm as she takes me in. “Kid, you’re hurt!”
“What?” I glance over at my shoulder, surprised to see my sleeve is covered in blood. Mack jerks from her stupor and drags down the hem of my onesie.
“This cut is really deep,” I hear Mack say, only from far away. When did she move? Her face, too, is vignetting around the edges.
“I’ve seen this before,” Ruby says. “The darkling’s magic got into her bloodstream from the cut. We have to get her to the infirmary, now!”
“I’m fine,” I insist, growing woozy as I try to both breathe and talk, which is growing harder for some reason. “I don’t feel a . . . thing.”
Jace limps over to me, frowning. “Should we carry her?”
“No. You’re all injured.” I try to argue more, but my body is shutting down. Cold seeping into my limbs. As soon as I try to take a step, my world careens dangerously.
A growl fills the air. “Crap,” I murmur. “They came back. Just leave me.”
“No one’s leaving you, Princess.” Valerian’s voice drags my eyes open in time to see him scoop me into his arms.
“Oh, hi,” I say, as if I’m not low-key probably dying. “We couldn’t get the weapons, but I kicked one in the face.”
“Stay with me, do you understand, Summer? I order you to keep your eyes open.”
“Always so dang bossy,” I murmur.
And then a tidal wave of darkness crashes over me.
29
My dreams are strange, surreal. I’m watching myself sleep in a small cot, in a hospital, I think. My ashy-blonde hair spills over the white pillow. Red streaks one half of my head where a nasty gash has mostly healed near my temple. I’m still wearing that hideous cat burrito onesie.
Good Lord, who let me make that terrible fashion choice?
One of the sleeves is cut off, revealing my bandaged shoulder. A spot of blood seeps through the white gauze.
People come and go. Mack. The headmistress with her mesmerizing wings that curl as if alive. I even think I see Zinnia at some point standing over my bed, crying, but whoever’s eyes I’m looking through never leaves.
Valerian. I can tell by the emotions raging through him.
Rage. Helplessness. Agony.
A wrenching, searing agony that splits me in two.
At some point, Hellebore shows up. Visceral fury explodes inside Valerian as he slams the Spring Court heir into the hospital wall, hard enough to crack drywall and leave a gaping hole.
Eclipsa comes running from somewhere. After that, a brief period of nothingness follows.
The next thing I know, Valerian is posted at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor of his on campus cottage.
Inara paces in front of him, her claws fully extended and face half-shifted with fury. “She’s up there, isn’t she?”
“You need to leave, Inara, before I make you.” I recognize the steel edge of Valerian’s tone. She can’t intimidate him and she knows it.
Tears flash in her crystalline eyes, her lower lip shaking. She tries to touch Valerian. Over and over.
Every time, he gently but firmly holds her back using magic.