Spring

“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.

That only infuriates her.

“You spineless bastard,” she hisses. “I won’t let you humiliate me like this. You took that mortal slut from the infirmary and are keeping her in your house. Your house! That’s not a fling with your shadow. You’re infatuated with her and everyone knows. Everyone!”

She tries to slap him, but he catches her wrist. Her other arm rears back but he catches that one too. Even though I can’t say a word, I cheer him on.

Take that, Spawn of Satan!

“I hate you,” she seethes, fighting his grip—but only enough to be dramatic. “Without my father’s support, your claim to the throne is weak. You won’t last a month before the other courts pick you apart. Why are you doing this to me? To us? To your future?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

The callousness in his voice causes her face to crumple before twisting into a simmering mask of vile hatred. “This is the final warning I’ll give you. Screw her. Play house with her. Pretend you actually care about her. Whatever will get her and this mortal fetish out of your system. But by the time this school year is over, if you’re not publicly done with her, I will make it my mission to tear your life apart piece by piece.”

Then . . . nothing.

30

When I wake up, I’m in bed. Although I can’t be sure whose bed until . . . Sweet Jesus, the silkiest, most luxurious infinity thread count Egyptian cotton sheets wrap around my legs.

Wait. I know this place.

One groggy look at the ice-blue curtains swaying in the honeysuckle breeze from the nearby window, the ivory rug, and my suspicions are confirmed.

Yep. In my old bed again—in the Winter Prince’s cottage. My thoughts are slightly derailed as I stretch, the sheets gliding along my skin. Oh, outrageously expensive sheets, how I’ve missed you.

“You’re awake!” Mack screeches from the corner where she sits, holding her phone and a book.

Squeaking in surprise, I barely have time to sit up before she’s strangling me in a death-hug.

“You scared me,” she accuses. “Never, ever do that to me again.”

“I’m sorry . . . what am I apologizing for?” I ask through a yawn, my brain scrambling to figure out why I’m waking up in Valerian’s on campus house and not my own dorm. Holy Fae hells, I think something died in my mouth. “I have the breath of a troll—how long was I asleep?”

When she pulls away, I make note of even more alarming details. Like that I’m in an oversized Evermore Academy T-shirt and someone’s very soft silk boxer briefs.

Who the frick put me in this?

A slight ache drags my attention to my left shoulder, poking up from the wide hem of my worn shirt. I touch the jagged red scar that starts at the very end of my collarbone, snakes down my shoulder, and ends mid-bicep.

“Wicked.” Or it would be—if I could remember how I got it. A hollow bubble of panic swells beneath my ribs. “What am I forgetting? How did this happen?” I frown as bits and pieces of my memory float to the surface. “Why didn’t they heal this?”

Her lips tug into a frown. “You don’t remember the darklings?”

Darklings. Right, mindless humans-turned-zombie. They were here . . . inside the main hall.

“Evelyn,” I whisper.

At our friend’s name, Mack’s eyes mist over, but she pulls it together, no doubt for my own benefit. “Do you remember the vault?”

My eyes stretch wide as the image of the darklings swarming over the stone walls flashes with perfect clarity inside my head. “We were looking for weapons to fight them.”

“Yes, and during the fight, a darkling bit you, severing an artery, part of the muscle, and some tendons.”

“Ouch. So I bled out? That doesn’t explain why they couldn’t heal my wound.”

“The blood loss was bad, but not the thing that nearly killed you. Apparently, sometimes the forbidden magic that infests darklings can enter a human’s bloodstream after a deep bite. For Evermore, it’s like having a bad case of the flu.”

“And for us?”

“For mortals, it’s almost always fatal without the antidote. Only a few mortals have ever survived without it . . .” Her mouth tightens, and frown lines etch across her forehead.

“What?”

“Ruby said there’s rumors that the humans who do survive a bite turn months or even years later from their exposure.”

“Oh, God, does that mean—”

“No, you received the antidote in time. There was still a chance you wouldn’t wake up, but the antidote stripped all the corrupted magic from your body.”

I exhale, trying to breathe out my rising frustration. “Why have they never told us this?”

“Probably because ‘Hey, darkling magic is hella poisonous for humans,’ isn’t good for morale. That and the antidote is incredibly rare and expensive. They only keep one vial in the infirmary, and Jace said they only stocked it recently, to look good in front of the Council for the Mistreatment of Humans.”

Just when I thought I couldn’t despise the Fae any more. “They could at least educate us in class about the deadly side effect of a darkling bite.”

“What, and scare all their ignorant human shields away?” She shakes her head in disgust. “Most humans never survive the attack, so it’s easy for the academy to downplay the risk. And the poison has to enter a major artery to take hold.”

I rub my head. “Wait. Was anyone else poisoned?”

“Not poisoned but . . . five students were killed, their necks all neatly broken, like . . .”

“Like they were more interested in something else,” I finish.

“We think the students tried to fight them or simply got in their way.” She pauses, her gaze dropping to the cloud-white duvet cover. “Kyler was one of them.”