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Home. Until a few hours ago, I would have said that was here.
“Yes, didn’t the prince tell you? He made a special exception for you that specified if you were ever expelled, you were to be sent back to your human house in the Tainted Zone. It may not have all the luxuries you’re used to here, but I assure you the Tainted Zone is better than fighting the scourge. The prince did you a kindness.”
At the mention of Valerian, a wave of bitterness washes over me. “He did, but not in the way you think. He taught me an important lesson.”
Never love a Fae. Lesson learned.
“Indeed.” She stands, her moth-like wings unfurling behind her. It’s still dark outside, and moonlight filters in through the stained-glass window, coloring her wings green and red and blue. “Unfortunately, whatever lessons you might have learned will be glamoured away, along with any memory of what happens here. We cannot have you spilling secrets for the entire world to hear.”
I smile, my hand twitching to go to the necklace burning against my sternum. “Of course. Can’t have the things I know falling into the wrong hands.”
Her eyes narrow.
“But first, I have to do something.”
The headmistress follows me through the darkened corridors to my Faerie Courts classroom. The question is still there on the chalkboard, the third component to power.
A few hours ago I would have guessed the answer was fear.
Not now. Fear may be a component of power, but there’s something stronger and more dangerous than making people terrified of you.
Lepidonis watches with a curious expression as I take a piece of broken chalk and scrawl an answer on the board.
Love.
The third component to power is love. Trick a person into falling in love with you and you can make them do anything. Forget their morals. Their promises. Their friends. Their obligations.
Trick someone into falling in love with you and they will give up themselves entirely. Trick someone into falling in love with you and they are yours forever.
I pause for a moment, then scratch something below it so hard the chalkboard squeals and my chalk breaks twice.
Fuck love. And fuck the Evermore.
55
Two Months Later.
The sun shines down, scalding and angry, and I shield my eyes as I hang another shirt on the clothesline. It’s only May but my cheeks are on fire and the flesh of my arms are tinged bright red. Even after two months back in my world, I don’t take the sun for granted. Every morning when it lances through my window like the asshole it is, I feel thankful.
I still dream of the cold. I dream of snow that spears the air like shards of glass, of frost that invades my marrow, and a prince who weeps sleet and ice. Sometimes I dream he carves out my heart and packs the wound with snow, and I wake up screaming, my chest aching with cold.
Very rarely, I dream that he kisses me. Those mornings I wake up to a pillow soaked with tears.
I don’t care what he says. Our connection was real, just like I know Valerian is his true name. Whatever game he was playing, whatever cruel kick he got from making me fall for him, a part of him fell for me, too. And giving me his name raised the stakes for him somehow.
He knows I could crush him with that truth. And, deep down, I know he likes the power I still wield.
Mostly, though, I’ve managed to forget him and the dangerous, intoxicating world on the other side of the Shimmer. For a while, Mack would email me updates about school and our friends.
Evelyn is still missing. The Council for the Mistreatment of Humans has started a formal investigation into the school. Because of the inquest, the academy has doubled the training for the end of year Wild Hunt. Rhaegar grows darker by the day, and Basil traded Mack to Asher rather than face her glaring looks. She still hasn’t forgiven him for not stopping what happened to me. Also, the prince is back with Inara.
Soon after that, I asked her to stop mentioning the prince at all.
A few weeks later a package arrived with a cell phone inside. Now we chat daily. Mostly she tells me she misses me and I say I miss her too. Sometimes we talk about Asher and their flirtatious—but platonic—relationship.
Between what happened to me and Evelyn, any potential romance between Mack and Dragon Boy is gone.
Occasionally we bring up Evelyn, but her disappearance is still too painful.
