Chapter 2

I slept like the dead, this long, quiet void where I wandered alone and confused down a stone corridor with no exit. My voice echoed in the silent space as I called out for Air, for Elijah, for Talon, the poor thief boy who’d jumped in front of a razor wolf to save me. But nobody answered, nobody called back to let me know that I wasn’t completely and utterly alone.

There was no light, no torches or candles, but somehow I could still see through the darkness, down that endless stretch of black shadows and gray stone. I was freezing cold, my arms and wings wrapped tightly around me as I tried not to think of Dyre’s blood splattering across the snow. The Vaennish prince was now dead because he’d tried to save me. But why? We hardly knew each other. Exhaling, I watched my breath frost in the icy air and wondered if I were in the Otherside now, that purgatorial space between life and rebirth. Some said the gods lived here, but I didn’t think so. Why would the gods want to live on the same street as a bunch of spirits and shadows?

No, there were no gods here. There was nobody and nothing.

Spreading my wings out behind me, I closed my eyes. Why not? It was all black-on-black anyway. I searched for my mind for memories of that last few minutes after Dyre was killed, but … all I could recall were my knives plunging onto a razor wolf and then nothing. Nothing at all. Had I died, too? If so, why wasn’t I being reborn? Why wasn’t I a spirit?

Opening my eyes again, I found that I’d reached the end of the tunnel. A wall of stone greeted me, just inches in front of my face, so I turned around. And when I did, there she was, the woman with the melted fox mask. She seemed to stumble toward me, her gait uneven, almost like she was drunk. Reaching up a hand, I took hold of Haversey’s five-pointed star hanging around my neck.

But … what if I were sleeping again? What if, like last time, I almost exorcised Air or Elijah instead of this woman?

“What do you want?” I asked her, but she didn’t speak, her copper eyes blazing as she reached out a hand toward me, grasping me around the wrist. Her mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t speak, that fox mask melting down her face and over her lips.

Speaking of, I felt something warm and comforting against mine.

And … was that Vexer’s voice?

The woman faded away with a scream at the same time the ground did. I found myself falling fast, my arms and legs thrashing as a hot mouth covered mine and kissed me in mid-air. With a jolt, I hit something soft—my flubbing mattress!—and sensation shot through me, overwhelming in its intensity.

My eyes flickered open and there he was, Vexer of Reisender, kissing me and running his fingers through my hair. My wings opened wide and smashed into the wall and the lamp on the nightstand—good thing it was screwed in, thanks Air!—as I sat up with a gasping scream stuck in my throat. Vexer was smart enough to move back so we didn’t bash our foreheads. He was wearing Dyre’s mask—Dyre’s brother—and smiling at me.

“True love’s kiss,” Vex said as my eyes darted around the room, taking in Jasinda and Matz, Professor Cross, Dyre, Elijah, Air. But no Talon. He was gone, swallowed up by a razor wolf to live century after century in darkness. “I woke you up.”

“You … what?” I asked, putting the heel of my hand to my forehead and closing my eyes against the wild spinning in the room. I felt so disoriented in that moment, detached from the whole world, and I didn’t like it one bit. Nothing a little good ol’ fashioned embarrassment couldn’t sort out. Sometimes, I had to wonder if the goddess hated me.

“With the exception of a sleep whisperer, the only thing that can break one of those spells is a kiss from a lover.” Vexer’s voice was low and even, a deep rumbling sound that seemed to travel down through his chest to his arm, his hand, and into me. I could feel that sound in my bones, and I loved it. “Well, I woke you up.”

My eyes opened to find Air and Elijah crowding close, their faces tight with worry and fear. Jasinda was there, too, with tears in her eyes, but she was also blushing profusely which was weird. I mean, I too was blushing profusely, but that was to be expected. I’d just been woken up by a griffin with a seriously huge erection in his tight breeches. When he caught me looking, he gave a slightly apologetic smile. I saw slightly because his eyes were sparkling with mischief.

“Sorry about that. You’re just so fucking beautiful; it’s just a natural act.” He gestured at his crotch as my blush intensified about a hundredfold. “I won’t violate your trust, of course.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said as I scooted up into the pillows and tried to ignore my own ‘natural acts’, i.e. my hardened nipples and the molten heat gathering between my thighs. Vexer, he was so big and beautiful, his face so thick with stubble, he was almost sporting a beard, his muscles tight as he placed his tattooed palm on the bed and leaned in toward me. He smelled like sunshine and fresh grass, and Hell, mostly he smelled like sweat.

Alive.

He smelled alive.

I wanted nothing more in that moment than to throw my arms around him and hug him close. Instead, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to get oriented as best I could.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice husky and rough. I had to swallow several times to clear it. “The last thing I remember is …” Dyre rose up from the floor, katana in hand, his eyes shimmery and see-through, like any new spirit. And he was here, in my room, which meant … I’d bound yet another ghost to me?! What was wrong with me?

“We were put under by the Royal Sleep Whisperer,” Jasinda said softly, reaching out and putting her hand on my bare ankle. I was dressed in one of my silk nightgowns, a solid black one this time, and somebody had scrubbed all the blood off of my skin. From what I could remember, there was a lot of it. A lot of blood … and a lot of spirits. Fuck. A feather popped off as I rubbed my hands down my face, but I didn’t care. Now that I was thinking about all those flubbing spirits pouring out of the wolves and into me, I wanted to throw up. Curling my wings around my body, I checked for missing feathers and sure enough, there were a few bald patches here and there. Fortunately, they were mostly invisible unless you knew specifically to look at them, but it was just more proof that what I thought had happened, really had.

Spirits poured into me, blood oozed down my face, my feathers sloughed off in clumps.

What in Hellim’s hell had happened to me?

“Who woke you up?” I asked before I noticed Jasinda’s eyes flicking over to Matz. Her blush turned copperberry red before she turned her wide eyes to me.

“The person who’s sleeping, they don’t have to … Well, only the person doing the waking has to feel love. I—” Jasinda rambled on for a moment and then took a deep breath, putting her fingers over her eyes for a split-second before dropping them into her lap. “Matz woke me up, and I am forever grateful. Now, we’re sort of on a time schedule here. Need I remind everyone in this room that the queen had us knocked out and locked up here?”

“Locked up?” I asked, rubbing at my forehead and wondering how the flub I could I be so damn tired when I’d been in a magically induced sleep for … “How long was I out anyway?”

“Two days, thereabouts,” Air said, moving over to sit beside me. I reached out for him, but he was nervous and scared, and he hadn’t had my spirit to ‘warm’ him, so when I made contact with his arm, he was ice-cold. Still, I pulled him to me and laid my head on his shoulder as I stared at Vexer and Elijah. Dyre and Professor Cross stood behind them, watching me. I still had yet to process the fact that the professor had used me to escape his point of binding. As of right now, however, I had plenty of other ship to worry about, much more pressing ship.

“Why would your mother put Jasinda and me out like that?” I asked, just as the sound of the front door opening echoed through the house. Elijah didn’t hesitate before dropping through the ceiling … and popping right back up. He might’ve been a ghost, but his face was clearly ashen.

“It’s the Royal Spirit Whisperer and her handler,” he hissed as Vexer rose to his feet and I followed along behind him, dragging Air with me.

“In the wardrobe,” I whispered as I tried to move and stumbled. My legs were shaky and I felt completely disoriented. Those spirits had done their best to drive themselves into me. I felt them pummeling my metaphysical shields, looking for an opening. I hadn’t been able to tell if they were trying to possess me, if they wanted me to exorcism them, or if they were attempting to bind themselves to me the way the professor had done. It’d been too overwhelming to even guess. And even having slept the past two days away, I was exhausted.

“The wardrobe?” Dyre asked with a scowl. “That’s original.”

“She’s a spirit whisper for flub’s sake,” I snapped back at him as Air and Elijah helped me to stay standing. “She won’t be looking for a griffin in the closet.”

Fortunately, Vexer didn’t wait around for us to argue, squeezing his large body into the wardrobe and yanking the doors closed behind him.

“Whatever,” the Vaennish prince growled, running his fingers through his blue-white hair. I felt awful fighting with him, even in something so small as this. He’d died for me. And we’d both known it was coming; he’d locked eyes with me just before his guts spilled into the snow. “Trubble will keep him hidden.”

Ah.

Trubble.

The shadow.

The unbound shadow.

Yet another problem that’d need to be dealt with later. Right now … the door was opening and Ame of Haversey and her handler were stepping into my room. To say they looked shocked as ship to see me awake was an understatement. Pretty sure I almost gave Ame a heart attack.

“Your majesty,” she greeted, looking first to Airmienan before she bothered turning her attention to me. “Brynn of Haversey, I’m surprised to see you awake. I’m here by order of the queen, to check and see if the flesh whisperers have healed your injuries to a sufficient level that you could be woken up. But I see that’s already been done?”

There was so clearly a question mark clinging to the end of that sentence that I glanced over to Jasinda for help … and saw Matz standing by her side. So cute, right? He liked her enough that his kiss had the power to break a spell. We’d have to have a girls’ night soon, so I could finally get to the bottom of this thing between her and the scribe, see if she liked him back.

“Matz kissed us both and broke the spell,” I blurted quickly, carefully extracting my arms from both Elijah and Air. I teetered a little, but managed to stay standing, watching as Ame and her handler—totally could not remember the woman’s name—scanned the other ghosts in the room.

“You’re certainly lucky to have someone who cares so much about you,” she said, giving the scribe a long, lingering look. The blush on both mine and Jasinda’s faces probably helped seal the deal for that lie. I was embarrassed as hell, and a little shocked that Vexer liked me that much. Oh, Vexer. Biting my lip, I raised my brows at Ame and waited to see what she’d do now.

Clearly, Everess had something up her sleeve, something that Air would eventually figure out. It was hard to hide much of anything from a ghost. But whatever it was, she must’ve figured it’d work out in the end. It wasn’t like Airmienan had a lot of choices, considering he was dead and all.

“There were supposed to be several guards inside with you, but I’m not seeing any of them.” Ame exhaled and put her hands on her hips. She was dressed in voluminous purple, red and white silk robes, a symbol of her station. Pretty sure she was about a hundred times more powerful than I’d ever be, my strange double blessing aside.

“I just woke up,” I choked out, wishing I’d had even a few minutes to adjust before having to deal with all of this crap. A feather popped off and drifted to the floor near my feet, causing Ame to raise a brow as she folded her white wings behind her.

“I possessed them and walked them outside. We deserve more privacy than that, don’t you think?” Air said with a lift of his chin. Ame’s ice-blue eyes flicked from him to Elijah. Clearly, she knew it would take a much more skilled spirit than Air to possess a human without leaving any memory of the occasion. Then again, dead or not, Air was still the crown prince, so she kept her mouth shut. “Inform my mother that Brynn is awake and let her know that I’d like to speak with her right away.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Ame said, turning toward her handler. But her eyes, they lingered on mine for longer than was comfortable for either of us. I saw her scowl just before she turned away and closed my bedroom door behind her. Still, none of us spoke until we heard the front door slam shut.

“She was here to switch the prince’s point of binding,” Professor Cross said, toying with the buttons on his white Royal College jacket. I glanced over at him and he smiled. It was a sloppy, lopsided smile, but I liked it anyway—even if he had tricked me and bound his spirit to mine. “The handler had all the same supplies I used in her bag and then some. Since it was doubtful that sort of spell would work on anyone but you the first time around, they had enough silver ash to do it twenty times over.”

“They had silver ash?” I asked, totally and completely confused. The queen knew how vital that stuff was to the resurrection spell. And yet, she’d let the Royal Spirit Whisperer waste it on a possible futile attempt to move Airmienan’s point of binding from me to her? Why? It made no sense, no sense at all. “You read that all from their minds …?” I continued as Spicer’s words sunk in. “And what do you mean anyone but me? Because of the double blessing?”

The wardrobe opened and Vexer stepped out, still wearing Trubble as a mask.

“My gift makes me a bit strange, certainly, but it can come in handy at times.”

“Blood and ice,” Dyre choked out, leaning his shoulder against the wall, the most forlorn sort of look on his face. “Yeah, totally and completely useful. Thanks for the advance warning.”

“How’s this for an advance warning,” Professor Cross said suddenly, his sapphire and turquoise eyes flaring bright with magic. “There’s a mind whisperer on campus tracking whoever it was that left all those guards knocked out in the Catacombs; they know someone’s broken in.”

“Can you keep them from finding Vexer?” I asked, reaching out and curling my fingers around the griffin’s muscular arm. Hell’s bells, he feels good! But I didn’t have time to let my hormones take over my brain. “Also, wait, guards in the Catacombs? Clearly, I’m missing a pretty big part of the story.”

“I can keep them from reading his mind, but the campus guard will use other means to track him once they realize that’s not working. I highly suggest you get him out of here while you still can,” Spicer said, his eyes still glowing. Even as a spirit, it was impressive, and quite pretty. Blue-green splotches decorated the ceiling and the walls like a mosaic.

“We’re practically on house arrest,” Elijah growled out, even more flustered than I was. Pretty sure I was still in shock at that point. And poor Talon … Poor fucking Talon. As soon as we got all of … whatever the fuck this was sorted out, I was going after him. I mean, I had to, right? Who else was going to give a shit about the spirit of some random thief? But he’d saved my life, and I wouldn’t leave him to suffer for centuries as payment. “How do you propose we get Vexer out of here? Sounds like the way he came in is a no-go.”

Trubble shifted off of Vex’s face, curling around his shoulders in fox form. I didn’t miss the way Dyre’s copper eyes locked onto his brother’s.

“I can keep him hidden in shadow,” the little fox said, swishing his tails flirtatiously. “Once the hubbub dies down a bit, walk out the front gates and I’ll follow you. We can get him out that way, just not right now. Besides, they’ll search every dorm, every apartment, every classroom … except this one, right? This is the prince’s house, is it not?”

“You really think you can keep him hidden?” I asked, my eyes meeting the fox’s bronze ones. He smirked at me—seriously weird expression to see on that little face—and nodded. “Physically? Magically?”

“I can keep him hidden from everyone but a shadow whisperer. That’s where you come in. Just don’t let one in the doors of this house and we’ll be alright. Why should they need to send a shadow whisperer when one already resides within?”

“You have other things to worry about,” Dyre growled out, stalking toward his brother and pointing at him with the hilt of his ghostly katana. “Like what you’re going to do now that I’m dead. We both know what happens to unbound shadows.”

“One thing at a time, Dyre of Ha,” Trubble growled, standing up on Vex’s shoulders and raising the fur along his spine in an angry mohawk. “I’ll be fine for a couple of days. Have some faith in me, you virgin fool!”

“You’re being ridiculous!” Dyre shouted back, but my head hurt too much to get involved in any of it. Although, Dyre did have a point. Unbound shadows were bound to sour eventually; they always did. When a living person had a child with a spirit, they were born as shadows. No matter how hard the parents tried, the child never turned out to be anything but a nightmare. The only reason Trubble was okay now was because he’d somehow been bound to his twin in the womb. But with Dyre dead …

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said as I let go of Vex’s arm and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “But you’re certain that Vex is okay here for now?”

“For now, yes,” Trubble said, narrowing his eyes and sitting back down on the griffin’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know if I think otherwise.”

“Good,” I said, leaning back into the pillows and closing my eyes for a moment. “I know I’ve been sleeping for days, but I’m exhausted.”

“Sleeping spells like that are intended to keep the dreamer on their toes,” the professor said as I felt my head swimming with exhaustion. “So that when the target wakes up, they’re exhausted, virtually useless. You all know the tale of Sleeping Beauty, right? As soon as the prince woke the princess up with a kiss, he tried to get her out of the castle before the dragon could kill them both. She was so tired that she fell asleep climbing out of the tower and fell to her death.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Vex growled. “That’s not exactly a pleasant story.”

“Fairy-tales always have a lesson we can learn about life,” Professor Cross said as I struggled … and failed to open my eyes back up.

I drifted off listening to the men in the room talk … and then dreamt about Talon’s head getting crushed by a razor wolf’s jaws.

At least I didn’t see the woman in the melted mask again. Not that night anyway.