Chapter 48

A roar filledmy ears so suddenly, I’d have jumped if I wasn’t so frozen in this skin.

Shadow was so close that I had no doubt in my mind he’d fly right through my chest, taking my heart with him the way he’d taken Storm’s eye.

But then a claw covered in black scales was right in front of my face, and it caught Shadow. It squeezed him into a tight fist, and the screeching sound that came from the small dragon had my insides trembling.

What happened? Am I dead?

I was supposed to be. Because Shadow had been about to rip my chest wide open.

I knew it. I felt it.

But no—Storm had caught him. Storm held him in his fist even now, and Shadow was hurting. He barely managed to get his head out between Storm’s claws as the bigger dragon squeezed and squeezed and squeezed…

Then he slammed Shadow against the ground and fucking broke him.

A scream came from across the clearing. Valentine was on his knees again, his hands gripping his hair like he was trying to pull it out of his skull.

Wrong, wrong, wrong—this is all wrong!

I fell on my ass, my legs no longer able to hold me. Storm was backing away. I barely saw Grey as he looked at me, so angry his eyes had turned red. He’d been looking at me even when I thought nobody else had noticed. He and Storm had saved me from Shadow.

God, he was so mad his fangs had extended all the way below his bottom lip, and he looked like he was about to set this whole fucking woods on fire, but…

“Grey Evernight, you have broken the fourth law of dueling. Your dragon has attacked your opponent’s dragon after ending the duel and choosing to spare him!”

My heart jumped. Romin was in the air again, flying, Balthazar spitting fire right over him.

“Grey,” I whispered to the night, and Grey was just as shocked as me when he turned to his brother.

What the hell was happening?!

Why was Romin focused on him, not Valentine?

Had they not seen Shadow coming for me?!

Wrong! that voice in my head screamed.

So fucking wrong…

Suddenly Grey looked afraid. Grey looked terrified. Grey looked enraged.

Romin’s voice filled my head once more.

“I hereby banish you from the Whispering Woods!”

The world broke into a million pieces right before my eyes.

“No!” I thought I shouted, and Grey’s wings began to move. He jumped in the air, and he was coming for me. He was going to pick me up and fly me away, take me somewhere else where we’d have time to come to terms with what the hell had happened. Where we’d have time to figure out a way to fix this. Fix all of it. Just make it right!

I ran, too.

I reached out for him and I ran, desperate to jump in his arms, to be alone in the universe again—and we were close. We were so close…

But we never touched again, Grey and I.

An invisible force pulled him back, making his wings immobile. It pulled him back and up toward the dark sky that was suddenly raging, coming alive with lightning and thunder, opening like a vortex right over our heads.

Storm’s screeching roars wouldn’t let me hear how hard I was screaming, as he, too, tried to reach for Grey but couldn’t get even close, pushed back by that same invisible force.

I ran and ran but I couldn’t reach them, and the stupid wind wasn’t picking me up and pulling me toward the sky, too. It just left me there on the ground, helpless, reaching for Grey as he tried to get to me, tried to resist the current with his arms and legs and wings, but couldn’t. Of course not—it was magic, and he was spiraling into it faster the harder he tried to push back. He was spiraling right into the hole in the dark cloud, so far away from me.

The image of his face as he screamed my name and tried to claw his way to me would remain imprinted on the back of my lids until the day I died. He became smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see him anymore, until the dark clouds spinning around themselves swallowed him whole.

Until a big part of me died forever.

When he disappeared behind the darkness, the sky groaned. That same power that had pulled Grey into itself slammed against us.

I hit the ground on my back hard.

Am I dead now?

God, I wished it with all my heart, but I wasn’t.

I must have passed out for a second there because all I remembered was sitting up with an incredible pain in my ribs, trying to breathe, trying to find sense in the darkness around me.

A few blinks and I began to see again.

No dragon flew over us. The brothers, a couple of them, were farther ahead, struggling to get to their feet, and I did the same.

The lightning had stopped. The vortex had disappeared. The air was perfectly still once more.

“Grey?” I called, but not much voice left me.

No answer.

The woods around us whispered, as if the trees were talking to one another behind my back—and I knew exactly what they were saying.

I fell to my knees again, shaking, but I had no voice left to cry with. To scream with.

Gone.

Grey was gone, just like that. Banished. Disappeared.

And the Evernight brothers were coming for me.

—THE END