“You seem strangely well-prepared for this moment,” I grumbled as I struggled into the suspenders and boots, dropping myself over the edge of the canal and into the water. One of the tiny electric fish attacked my toe, sending out a wave of energy that crackled the water around me. I made sure to keep my wings clear and waited for the rest of the school to disappear down the tunnel.
“Clearly, you were obsessed with the spirit whisperer girl; I knew you’d come.” I started walking when the fox let out a sound of exasperation, and I backed up against the stone walkway, letting him curl around my shoulders again. “Well, mostly it was the others that thought you’d come, but what choices did I have?”
“What happened to Brynn?” I asked again as I started running. Hadn’t the arrogant little asshole agreed to tell me once I was down here? Water splashed up around as I followed my magic down one tunnel after another, blazing through the stone maze like I’d been here a thousand times before. The magic of Reisender was subtle, but incredibly useful in a pinch. I always knew where I was go, and there were advantages to being a man who never got lost.
“Sleep whisperer,” the fox said grimly, and I gritted my teeth. That would explain the emotionless detachment I felt from Brynn. Good thing I had the cure for the spell that gripped her. Any other man might’ve questioned himself, but like I said, I always knew where I was going. “Razor wolf attack. My brother was killed defending your girlfriend.” The shadow creature bit me lightly on the ear, but I ignored him. If he’d wanted to bite it off, he very well could. An unbound shadow was a dangerous thing, as evidenced by the creatures that’d killed Prince Airmienan. No wonder the little fox’d been able to take out the guards and the spells down here; with his brother dead, he was free to do whatever the hell he wanted.
Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before he lost whatever humanity he had in him.
“What does a sleep whisperer have to do with any of that?” I asked as I navigated the dark tunnels with Trubble’s bobbing foxfire balls skirting the ceiling just ahead of us. By the time I reached the pile of rubble and the hole that led from the sewer to the Catacombs, I was panting heavily, soaked in sweat beneath the rubber suit. I was in good shape, but I hadn’t slept for days, and I was tired and thirsty and hungry. My body was getting close to rebelling on me.
“I’m not sure,” Trubble said, hopping off my shoulders and shifting mid-air, growing into a shape large enough for a full-grown adult to ride. All he needed was a fucking saddle. He glanced over his shoulder, that cluster of fluffy tails twitching. “But as soon as we this situation sorted, I intend to find out.” He bared his double row of teeth before turning and taking off down a much drier, dustier little tunnel.
It led out through yet another hole in the wall and into a well-kept tunnel with a goddamn dragon in it.
“Haversey’s tits,” I cursed, skirting around the sprawled body of a red dragon, its crimson scales glittering in the torchlight. It was, surprisingly, still alive, its massive side heaving with each slow intake of breath.
“I do have some self-control, you know,” Trubble said with what could only be described as a smirk. Even in fox form, it was quite obvious. “If I’d killed him, the Royal College Guard would make ten, twenty, thirty times the effort to find the culprit. Let’s hurry on before he wakes up.”
I skirted around the dragon’s body and past corridor after corridor of books, scrolls, artifacts, and tombs. We’d just broken into one of the largest collections of arcane knowledge in the world and it hadn’t been all that difficult. That scared me, really fucking terrified me. Either it was too easy to get in here or else this shadow, Trubble, was too gods-damned powerful for his own good.
After the first three guards we passed, I stopped checking pulses; they were all alive.
“This is where it gets tricky,” Trubble said as we headed right down a narrow tunnel, squeezed through a smashed metal door with more burnt runes on the ground and walls, and headed up a steep flight of stairs. We emerged … in the building Brynn had pointed out as the haunting of that professor. A haunting was the casual, uneducated person’s term for a ghost’s, uh, personal residence. “We need to make it across campus without knocking anyone out or causing a fuss.”
Trubble paused in the empty building, tail twitching as I took off the rubber suspenders, but left the boots. He glanced over at me with a small sigh.
“You hardly look like a student or I’d suggest borrowing a uniform. Gods, how old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” I said with narrowed eyes and he made a little sound in his throat, as if to say I figured as much. I’d never wanted to punch a fox before, but I was quickly getting to that point.
“Get on.” Trubble trotted in front of me and blocked me off from the doors. “And try not to fall off.” With a small snarl, I reached out and took a handful of the shadow’s fur, hauling myself up and onto his back. Usually, I was the one being ridden. To climb onto another creature’s back was slightly surreal. But I couldn’t exactly shift to my other form and fly across campus; I’d be shot through with arrows before I cleared the rooftops.
But Trubble was a shadow—a nearly undetectable entity who could move between worlds. As soon as he started running, I felt it, this sick lurching inside my stomach. If he actually did decide to use the Otherside—an in-between realm of spirits and shadows—then I’d be knocked off his back and onto mine. He was skirting it though, using the natural shadows cast by the moon and the torches and the tall stone buildings to toe the line, absorbing the sound of our movements. If someone saw us now, they’d blink and we’d be gone, just a figment of the imagination.
It wasn’t until Trubble left off a copper roof and onto the white stone street in front of the queen’s residence that I started to worry.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” I asked as the guard sitting out front stood up with strange, jerking motions and yanking open the door to the house.
“Hurry … up …” the soldier ground out between clenched teeth. “Can’t … hold … forever.” I jogged up to the house with Trubble on my heels, slipping past the guard and inside before it struck me. He was being possessed. One of Brynn’s ghosts had control of the man’s body. My money was on that prodigy student, Elijah of Haversey.
Trubble shifted and bit my ankle as I stood there in a brief moment of shock, reaching down to pick him up before he really clamped his jaws down on me. Without even bothering to ask, he slipped over my face again and revealed … the prince.
“Your majesty,” I said carefully, trying not to clench my jaw. Airmienan just looked back at me with tight lips and shimmering green eyes, stepping aside and holding out an arm to indicate the staircase.
“She’s upstairs, first door on the right.”
I charged up the steps and into Brynn’s bedroom, pausing when I discovered her surrounded by ghosts. The professor smiled tightly at me.
“You found your way in. Excellent.” He was sitting apart from the others, on a small chaise opposite the corner where the bed sat. With Brynn lying still atop it. My throat got tight and my hands curled into fists.
“Oh, Vexer,” her handler choked out, rising from the bed with pink in her cheeks and forehead. She flicked a quick glance over at the boy sitting nearby, with raven-dark hair and deep blue eyes. Not a ghost, that one. What was his name again? Matz? The scribe the queen had sent with Jasinda and Brynn. “We’ve been waiting for you. Gods, I was so scared something would happen to you and …” She trailed off and swallowed hard, gesturing back at her friend’s comatose form.
I didn’t need to hear anything else; I knew what she meant.