Chapter 12

I’d always prefer a premonition or a prophecy over a vision.

A vision was done, over, something that’d happened that could not be undone. It was even more frustrating when I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that someone, somewhere was bleeding, dying, suffering—and that’d received that vision by touching Brynn of Haversey.

“You’re truly a nightmare of a god,” I cursed as I clutched my hand around the metal eye hanging from my neck. Verstand ignored me; he was far too mad to take out any revenge on unworthy followers. His blessings were intentional or direct, more like the scattered nonsense of a shattered mind, bits of that glass leaking down from the sky to paint unwanted pictures in my own mind.

I kept myself apart from the others: why on earth would those students want me tagging along with them? It was good to be free of my point of binding, but the loneliness I thought would dissipate sooner rather than later … has amplified tenfold.

I was surrounded by people, but not a part of them. I was bound to Brynn, but not in her confidence. As I followed her through the streets of the Royal College and toward Professor Tiukka’s office, I wondered if I made the wrong decision. At least when I was trapped in that building, I knew I was missing out on life. I just didn’t know the exact events and interactions that I was missing out on.

Laughter, hugs, kisses, sex.

All of that.

Slicking my fingers through my hair, I sighed and did my best to maintain a safe distance back from the others, far enough away that I wasn’t intruding but close enough to prevent that awful lurching feeling when the connection got taut.

“You don’t have to sit back here like an outcast,” Prince Airmienan said, falling into line beside me. Knowing the only heir to our kingdom was dead was not a promising thought. And demigods were not known for being particularly fertile, so the chances of the queen having another child were quite slim.

My irezumi, my living ink, shifted on my skin, uncomfortable with the direction of my thoughts. Well should they be, too, because something eerie was happening in Amerin. I couldn’t quite place my finger on it—and my patron god had been unnervingly quiet about it—but I could feel it. Restoring both of these dead princes to power was tantamount. And, if given a lucky second chance at life, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist traveling to Vaenn to see for myself what destruction the shadows had wrought.

An entire kingdom falling silent … was not a good omen for anyone.

“Brynn doesn’t like me, does she?” I asked, wondering if I should’ve told her the truth about my death. Maybe that could’ve restored some small chance of building trust with her, after I so thoroughly shattered my chances before.

“I don’t know what Brynn does or doesn’t like anymore,” he snapped, and then cringed slightly as I raised a dark brow at him. Speaking to royalty had never fazed me, but as I walked alongside the prince with his bright blonde hair and sea green eyes, those slighted pointed huldra teeth, I could feel the magnetism of his blood, that natural magic calling out to me, even in death.

“You were going to make her your queen?” I asked, because even if I tried to stay out of everything, I was still human; I eavesdropped. The vision from earlier, the one of pain and death and blood flickered through my head again and I stopped suddenly, putting a hand out to steady myself on the pink wall of some student housing. I’d been dead long enough that I knew how to do that, act like I was still alive enough to interact with the world.

Brynn stopped walking suddenly, and I saw it, this chill skitter down her spine.

She turned and looked over her shoulder at me, those beautiful gold eyes meeting mine with a shock of sudden fear. Before I even had the chance to recover, she was turning around and running in the opposite direction, her handler calling out from behind her.

The shadow boy—Trubble—jogged along behind her, and the rest of us were forced to follow. Of course, being a spirit made it easy to keep up. We could run, if we really wanted, but we could also fly, skim the ground and maintain speeds no person could ever keep up with.

Brynn didn’t wait to explain anything, just kept running, out the gates and down the winding road toward the Eaters’ district. She was panting and covered in sweat by the time she got there, her white hair sticking to her forehead. For a moment, she paused and looked around the busy square, scanning for someone.

That’s when it hit me.

Vexer, the griffin Master of the Travelers’ Guild.

She was supposed to meet him tonight for dinner—after her meeting with Professor Tiukka, which we were now going to miss. But as soon as I realized what we were doing here, I knew.

He’s dead,I thought as I stood there and watched her search through the crowd, spotting the sign of a nearby restaurant and pushing her way in through the doors. I followed along behind her, the crowd so dense that people were passing through my body as I moved. The vision, it has to be about him. Who else?

“Vex!” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting before she paused to survey the crowd. A man stood up from a nearby table, sporting the same gray eyes and brown wings as Vexer or Reisender. Only … it was most definitely not Vexer. A sibling, perhaps? I pulled my glasses from my pocket and slipped them on my nose, looking for magical signatures. Even though I was deceased, a figment of my former self, and the glasses weren’t real, they still functioned as if they were.

The man’s aura was similar to Vex’s, a violet haze with big white spots in it, like he’d been relaxed but wasn’t anymore.

“Vexer isn’t here,” he said, brow crinkling slightly. “I haven’t seen him in a while. What’s wrong? I got back into town earlier than I thought, and this is his usual spot for a Saturday night.”

Brynn backed away slowly, her eyes wide and her pulse thundering. She looked up at me again, and I knew she’d want to know why I’d stumbled at the precise moment she’d felt a cold chill.

An emissary of death had paid a visit to us both.

I left through the front wall—no point in going through the door—and starting off down the road toward the city gates. That’s where she’d want to go next, to confirm if anyone had seen Vex land, on his way back from taking a client to Markt, a particularly ancient and horribly uncreative name for a market town just south of here.

“You felt something,” she said, grabbing me by the sleeve. I let her hold onto my arm, not just because she was hurting, but also because I was selfish and I wanted to touch someone. Anyone. I just wanted to be looked at like I still mattered, and in this moment, I did. “What is it? Where is he?”

Already, tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Brynn of Haversey was powerful, and she was smart, and griffins didn’t just mate for life based on some moral principle. They could only gift their fertility to one person through a bond of natural magic. Usually, it happened without the people involved even realizing it. That’d happened with Brynn and Vexer, I was sure of it.

She’d know if he were dead.

She’d know.

“I had a vision,” I said carefully, pausing as we left the city and entered the clearing where all the griffin mounts were hired. It was an official Travelers’ Guild sponsored location. If Vexer had come back, he would’ve checked in here.

“More blood and ice?” Dyre growled out from my other side. Brynn flicked her eyes briefly to him and then back to me.

Waiting.

She was waiting for an answer.

I stared back at her for so long that she finally pulled away, moving from person to person in the small clearing and asking when they’d last seen Vexer of Reisender.

“Is he really dead?” Airmienan asked, his face pale. Everyone here was jealous of the man, that much was obvious, but I was also fairly certain that they didn’t want him to die. Because if he died, Brynn might shatter. I stood there for a long moment before answering, watching as Brynn’s handler chased her around the clearing, grabbing onto her arm and trying to get her to calm down for a moment.

“He’s dead,” I replied, even though I didn’t want to say it. The vision I’d received had been vague, more pain and hurt and guilt, longing and frustration and fear, than actual images or sounds. But I didn’t need to see Vexer’s body to know he was gone, and neither did Brynn.

Tears streaming down her face, she stormed back over to us and swallowed hard.

“I’ve hired three mounts,” she ground out, “one for Trubble and Dyre, one for me and Spicer, and one for Jas, Eli, and Air. Try not to startle the griffins; they don’t like ghosts on their backs.” Brynn whipped back around, her hair and feathers flying right through me, but smacking Trubble in the side.

This isn’t going to be good, Spicer,I told myself as I moved forward and climbed up behind Brynn. I felt awful about it, but it felt nice to put my arms around her scoot close. She’s a student, you insensitive scobberlotcher, I told myself, and she’s hardly in any mood to entertain the amorous advances of a dead professor for fuck’s sake.

We were barely seated before Brynn was requesting takeoff, the large beast bunching its muscles beneath us and flapping its massive wings.

Silence reigned between us as we went up, up, up, soaring above the massive circular walls of New Akyumen, the castle sitting atop it all like a cherry on a sundae, and the Royal College jutting out off the right side like the handle of a spoon. It was all quite scrumptious from up here, but down there, something awful was brewing.

“Tell me about the vision,” Brynn said as the griffin flapped its massive wings and I solidified my body enough to feel the wind of my face. There were so many parts of me that enjoyed the hot warmth of another human—even a half-human—pressed up tight against me, but I did my best to ignore all of that. Even if Brynn wasn’t in crisis, a relationship between the dead and the living was scandalous enough … add in the student/teacher aspect and it was entirely unfeasible.

And even all of that was premature assumption on my part as Brynn had never given me a single indication that she was interested in me in the first place.

Taking the glasses off my face, I put them back in my pocket and rubbed my hand down my face. This is the freedom you wanted, my mind whispered as I opened my eyes back up and looked down at the scenery unfolding beneath us. Our country was beautiful, more so to me than any other I’d ever visited, and seeing it from up here after years of being trapped … It did something to me inside that I just didn’t know what to do with.

Still, with Brynn crying in front of me, tiny drops of tears catching on the wind and blocking back toward me like shimmering blue jewels, it all felt tainted.

“We’re going to Markt, I assume?” I asked, trying to keep a respectful distance between our bodies.

“Tell me about the vision,” she repeated, and this time, I knew I had to tell the truth, a truth that she was already realizing. Not only had she lost our prince, she’d seen another give his life for her, watched the thief boy give up his spirit to protect her … and now this.

I wondered how much more this woman could take before she broke completely.

“I say vision because it’s the easiest term to understand, but what I should say is impression. Sometimes, I feel things that’ve already happened or are currently happening. There’s a surge of emotion that isn’t mine, a quick flash of a place I’ve never been, and then it’s all over.”

A heavy silence sits between us, and I hate what I’m about to do. I’m about to crush this woman’s soul to dust, aren’t I? I debate lying to her. Once we get to Markt, finding any information about Vexer or the whereabouts of his body are going to be slim to none.

I could lie to this girl and she would never really know.

But I already betrayed her trust once, and I can’t do it again.

“Vexer is dead,” I told her, those ebon dark wings of hers trailing out behind us, one on either side of me. They slumped as soon as I said that, dropping low and hanging like wilted petals. There was a tenseness in her shoulders that made my own hurt just looking at them. “I can’t tell you exactly how or where—” I started, but I didn’t get the chance to finish.

Brynn spread her wings wide, beat down with them once, and then lifted up off the back of the griffin in a sudden surge. Ghosts could theoretically fly, but it was extremely difficult for unpracticed ones like Air or Dyre. If Brynn got too far from us, we’d all start to feel the pull and find ourselves literally dragged from the back of our mounts.

The other boys might fall, and then the force of the magic stretching between us could end up dragging us all to the ground … Closing my eyes, I exhaled a sharp breath and touched on the madness and magic inside of me, encouraging our mounts to follow along behind Brynn.

It took every ounce of my power to do a compulsion like that, leaving me faded at the edges and straddling the Otherside. But I did it. I did and then I slumped forward, my tattoos shifting restlessly, my heart—even as dead as it was—thundering with rapid, frantic beats. In the back of my mind, I could hear my god whispering his mad thoughts, telling me things I didn’t want or need to know.

Sit up, Spicer, and get over it,I told myself as the three irezumi bound into my skin snarled and clawed at the surface, desperate for release. I pushed them back, clamped down on their urges … until I saw where Brynn was going.

In the snow, near the edge of a mountain peak was a pack of razor wolves.

“Brynn!” Elijah shouted, taking off after her with massive beats of his own wings. She was already diving, heading straight down toward the pack as they rested in small round forms in a patch of bright sunshine.

Last time we’d fought them, the blade whisperer had been alive.

This time, he was going to have to use Brynn’s body to fight for us.